The widespread layoffs are more because of copycat behavior than cost-cutting
> I'm a Stanford professor who's studied organizational behavior for decades.<p>And I've actually been <i>inside</i> an organization or two. It's cost-cutting. Companies are ludicrously bloated because caring about it is too much effort for the value; during a downturn, they care a bit more, so they trim a bit of the fat. Musk was the one that pointed out that the emperor has no clothes, but that doesn't change how long it's been that way for. There's always this blind spot with academic types observing the software industry, where they assume that the dysfunction is rumors and the real issue is something thinky and academic (see e.g. the declining value of a CS degree - couldn't've been always worthless, must be a supply-and-demand issue), because it's just about impossible to fathom how something as dysfunctional as the software industry really is could possibly stand on two feet without falling over, until you've seen it firsthand.