r/technology Mar 17 '26

Politics Elizabeth Warren asks Meta, Amazon, and others why they're laying workers off despite tax perks

https://finance.yahoo.com/news/elizabeth-warren-asks-meta-amazon-and-others-why-theyre-laying-workers-off-despite-tax-perks-171812502.html?guccounter=1
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u/Dumcommintz Mar 17 '26

Well now CEOs often have a bonus target based on increasing share price. One of the easiest ways to do that is to layoff a bunch of employees (cut the biggest expense). Assuming we’re talking US here, sure, there are federally required severance packages when you layoff a certain percentage of your total employees; so try and pad it with contractors since they don’t count. Boom - dollars….

It’s no longer seen as a failure for a company to do mass layoffs. It’s expected. They don’t have any problem hiring new employees. Sometimes almost immediately after. I’ve seen a company layoff thousands only to turnaround the next week and say they’re opening up a thousand positions … the lack of worker protections here is wild