It’s a bunch of stuff.

The big companies all seriously upped their hiring game when COVID sent everybody work from home and all of a sudden a nice, cheap, workforce opened up all over the place. It’s not that they’re overstaffed at this point, but now that they can say look they’re doing it over there too! The market’s rough! A lot of big places have decided it’s a good time to shed souls. They now have the opportunity to cut the more expensive people and the underperforming people, at the same time they get to increase their margins and improve their stock performance.

Interest rates are up so money’s not free anymore (for the time being), advertising on the internet’s getting harder due to legislation and public sentiment. SEO is getting harder. Everyone’s dumping every available dollar they have into AI hoping to win big at buzzword bingo. Wages are starting to catch up to inflation they’re paying more for what people they have. And honestly it’s just an easy time for them to grab an extra couple of bucks.

A great number of the big guys probably are about to take a bath in corporate real estate.

There’s also a another possible recession sitting around the corner. I believe there’s already talk of the feds cutting rates again for a bit to try to side step it.

Honestly most of the stuff isn’t really that new. But when Microsoft decides to do it, Google says hey that’s a good idea let’s do it! Everybody else is going to jump on board. Three - six months from now (assuming we’re not mid recession) they’ll probably be taking out billboards and reengaging bring a friend incentives again.