To me, complaining about the reasoning used by companies while not currently at the head of such a company feels pretty darn foolish. You just don't have the numbers at hands to qualify what they are saying.
And I don't understand why you would care about layoffs from the tech industry (of all people) anyway, it's one of the best industry today and will probably for a while still (forever?). Maybe one of those engineers can help his local tech shop instead.
I'm not an accounting nor a forecasting expert, but I'm comfortable theorizing that the current quarter's financials of a company doesn't necessarily dictate its next moves.
I find people's tendency to generate outrage from nothing other than headlines to be very annoying.
This would make more sense if any quarter stood completely in isolation, but some of these companies have been making sounds about "economic headwinds" since before the last quarter started, setting expectations low, and then still managed to "somehow" deliver outstanding or even record results.
Hearing how bad things are going to be for more than three months as they continue to not, in fact, be that bad, I started to wonder if they even believe what they're saying.
And if they do, that's fine, but then why use the money for buybacks/dividends rather than saving it for the downturn they're sure is coming?
And I don't understand why you would care about layoffs from the tech industry (of all people) anyway, it's one of the best industry today and will probably for a while still (forever?). Maybe one of those engineers can help his local tech shop instead.