Is it fair to work at companies like Meta, Google and Amazon, with the risk of being laid off in "years of efficiency"?

Risk and return go hand in hand - at least this is true for the stock market. Is the same true for the work environment and the company we choose?

Is it fair to work at companies like Meta, Google and Amazon, with the risk of being laid off in "years of efficiency," as Mark Zuckerberg declared in 2023... and preferably by bosses who work remotely - in other words, completely impersonally?

I say NO!

Why don't automakers like Volkswagen adhere to this principle? The reason is that the best teams in the world will perform the best. And strong teams stick together. It's about creating a corporate culture. The company where I currently work, Volkswagen Commercial Vehicles, has had many of these times, because our business is quite volatile. In good times and bad, we stand together and stick together. And that creates a unique spirit. Of course, all companies need to make sales, but years of efficiency gains are also an opportunity to find synergies across the company's entire value chain, which welds employees even closer together.

Meta has made two rounds of layoffs in the last six months, with two more to come; cutting more than 21,000 jobs in the process. Zuckerberg is also closing 5,000 open positions, or 30 percent of his company's workforce. And where were the executives who decided this? They were working remotely in cities such as Tel Aviv or London.

The layoffs and the absence of the executives, along with fears that Mr. Zuckerberg was making a bad bet on the future, have destroyed employee morale.

In my opinion, it is inhumane to act this way, i.e., lay off employees who work in remote locations, lay off employees to gain efficiencies in the easiest way possible - in the long run, you will lose more money due to poor morale and work ethic.