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Ask HN: Is the Microsoft buyout just a long overdue correction?

2 points by sky2224 ↗ HN
I was looking at the head counts recently for Microsoft and comparing with past years.

In 2018 their headcount was around 131,000 employees. In 2020, that jumped to 163,000. By 2022, they had exploded to 221,000 employees.

Currently, if we exclude the Activision headcount, they're sitting at around 218,000 people.

Maybe the more business minded people can shed some light on this for me, but even with the stronger economy in 2018, Microsoft had no where near this many employees. It feels like this would have happened whether or not the economy was doing poorly right now.

Thoughts?

16 comments

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anovikov
What do you think might be wrong about the economy? If you don't read social media which is always negative (i do not). Every single metric i could think of, is fantastic, from employment to stock market to GDP growth to consumption of everything to private net worth. Inflation is high-ish sure, but this is what normally happens in a boom.
sky2224
If you're among the top 10% in the US, you're likely doing fine at the moment, but everyone else is struggling.

Gas prices are at an all time high, housing has never been less affordable, Intel stock just plunged a record 29% in its history, the US is now $40 trillion in debt.

gigatexal
This. Consumption is up, savings rates are down. Core inputs into the economy are too expensive like meat and gas.

It’s only rosy in the aggregate and then maybe for areas overlooked and for the wealthy.

It can’t stay like this forever. Something will have to give. The rest of the working class folks and lower will not put up with being lied to all day long, well maybe if they voted Trump it won’t matter. Nvm nothing to see here. No minds ever change.

anovikov
Savings rate is a tough thing to argue about because assets are up. People aren't motivated to save. They feel rich as it is.
gigatexal
Wages aren’t rising, jobs are harder to get it goes on and on.
anovikov
Perhaps because wages are jobs are becoming less relevant to overall success of economy and the society.
jryan49
The success of our economy is increasing becoming disconnected from the success of the average American.
anovikov
Yes that is a fair assessment. What are the downsides of it? More political idiocy, sure, that is a real one, as long as an average American can vote. Any other ones?

It doesn't mean some freemasons are grabbing all cash, or oligarchs. Most of the new wealth goes to "normal" rich and upper middle class. All of the top 10% are raking in big.

jryan49
Pretty sure it's the 1% and 0.1% that are gaining the most new wealth and it just decreases down from there the less wealth you have.
anovikov
Inflation adjusted gas prices are pretty much average over last 25 years or so (and lower than they ever been in 2005-2014 outside of about 9 months' recession).

Inflation adjusted house prices are lower than 25 year average, and about as low as during early covid bottom. And housing affordability is almost best in history, with a few short stretches in late 1990s being better.

US debt load is by far lowest in history (or at least ever since reliable tracking appeared around 1963), for every dollar in debt Americans hold 8 dollars in assets. If you force people to pay all of their debt, at once (which is impossible), it won't cause a domino effect. Government debt? US is not a socialist country. Government can go to hell. And, all branches of government together are only slightly in red vs assets they hold. And debt to GDP is stabe in the last 5 years, last was the covid jump, which by now is about half undone.

This is all just vibes, magnified by social media to stir the crowd.

Sure there is a problem about a segment of population feeling displaced/irrelevant, but this is mostly a public messaging, and to a smaller extent, law enforcement problem.

Since serious crime is also at all-times low, i doubt it can escalate into something serious.

lazide
One key number you don’t mention - inflation adjusted wages, especially for the lower half of the population.

If you hold a lot of assets or are in the upper quartile of wages, then all of this is good.

If you don’t, then you’re fucked. That is their point.

anovikov
That's not the case really. People feel fucked because social media and politicians say them so to keep them engaged. In fact, they are getting slightly better off. At the median. https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/LES1252881600Q#
anovikov
But why aren't they improving their lot A LOT, in line with the general economy? Well i am a coder and probably so are you. Why do you think job market, chances to get hired, and earning potential sucks for coders now? Who is to blame? Trump, Elon Musk, "late stage capitalism"? Who can we possibly protest against and what to demand? Nothing. It's just objective technological change, force of progress.
markus_zhang
I don’t know about metrics, but everything is way more expensive in my city comparing to pre-Covid time. I’m not talking about CPI level inflation but way more than that, which is definitely not normal.

And that boom? Well it’s so hard to find jobs across the board, not just IT, but including trades people too.

knottn
Bonds. If you don’t think bond prices have any relation to the economy you don’t understand basic economics. Gas prices. If you don’t think a hike in oil is a leading indicator, you don’t understand economics. Debt. If you don’t see the fiscal health of the government, including its debt level as part of the economy then you probably don’t understand macro. The economy has not been well for years. Arguably a decade of zero out interest rates that exploded into sustained inflation that continues intentionally to this day.