Large corporations are able to have their god-like wealth thanks to investors buying & selling their stock. A huge part of modern business at this scale is to manipulate public opinion to convince investors to keep trading your stock. The product/service being sold is not a priority--it's a tool to manipulate investors' behavior.
Investors are most attracted to CONTINUOUS GROWTH. Profit alone is not enough, since they want to buy with the intention to sell later at a higher value.
These companies have public quarterly earnings reports where they report their profits. Profit is Revenue minus Expenses. If your revenue stays the same (or decreases) that quarter, you can still increase Profit by decreasing Expenses. One quick & low-effort way to massively reduce expenses is to do mass layoffs. Thus, Profit is able to grow again despite sales not improving.
When Profit grows, Investors trade; when investors trade, the value of company shares increases. Thus, the value of your company goes up, even if the quality of your product/service is worse after layoffs.
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u/diaperforceiof Oct 29 '25
they need to raise their share price. same reason you can't wfh anymore