---
title: "COVID hangover"
url: https://stanko.io/covid-hangover-5En5QhX2ecem
author: Stanko Krtalic Rusendic
published: 2023-01-21
updated: 2026-10-06
tags: [people]
---

# COVID hangover

With a lot of tech companies laying people off in the last month I got to see
how insane the firing practices in the US are and how greed rules supreme in the
tech industry. But this is only a harbinger of what’s to come.

Through friends and from what I’ve seen first hand, the standard procedure to
fire someone in the US is to invite them to a meeting, tell them that they have
been let go, and immediately suspend all their company accounts. [Or email them
to tell them they have been let go (effective
immediately)](https://blog.google/inside-google/message-ceo/january-update/), or
worse yet [tell them they have been let go via a
tweet](https://www.npr.org/2022/11/17/1137265843/elon-musk-fires-employee-by-tweet).

There is zero humanity in laying people off this way. These people dedicated
months or years of their lives building these companies and then one morning
they get kicked out the door [with a 60 day severance package - which is the
legal
minimum](https://www.forbes.com/advisor/personal-finance/what-is-the-warn-act/) -
and aren’t even given the decency to say good bye to their former coworkers.

These layoffs weren’t triggered by financial losses but by speculations of a
looming recession. Companies are afraid that money won’t be cheap and profits
will be low in the coming years and they are cutting their losses while they
still can in an effort to keep investors and shareholders happy. In other words,
they are cutting headcount to cut expenses in an effort to prop up profits.
Which is extremely greedy after a year of record profits and shows no regard for
the humans that made this growth possible in the first place.

I believe that these layoffs are not an indication of the tech bubble bursting,
but are just the hangover after the COVID lock-downs when tech seemed like the
only unaffected industry. This caused every company in the industry to over-hire
and expand in the pursue of even higher profits. But expecting 20-30% returns
year-after-year and infinite growth is unrealistic - that can only be a bubble.
After a couple of good years a bad one is bound to happen. And if there is going
to be a recession then profits should be low - don’t turn a bad day for you into
a tragedy for others. Sit it out and don’t be greedy.

If the industry weathers this recession relatively unscathed people will see
tech as an even better investment vehicle which will in turn lead to more
investment, more hype, and the bubble will inflate even more. This seems to be
the outcome that most big companies are banking on since even after the layoffs
most of them still have more employees than they had two years ago, indicating
that they want to use the extra manpower to expand.

I don’t know when or how this bubble will burst, but it will be one hell of a
pop when it does.