All Forum Posts by: Michael Wooldridge

Quote from @Greg R.:

Quote from @Michael Wooldridge:

Quote from @Greg R.:

Quote from @Carlos Ptriawan:

haha all of you I realized never work in tech company and not part of dotcom bust in 2001.

I was the victim during that period 3x. This time, true there's wide layoffs in new tech area. But for old tech even if thre's layoff the number are still insignificant. We only care if the layoff impacted 30% of engineering team.

You're not the only one here who's been working in tech since early 2000s. You are comparing apples to oranges. The doc com bubble is not what's happening now. Crazy that you would imply that what happened back then would have any relevance right now. 

You think that only engineers are getting laid off? Those are probably the safest people in the company right now. Musk said that Twitter had 10 managerial/ non tech employees to every engineer. That's probably true for a lot of these companies, HR, Marketing, Support, Accounting, Management/ Ops, etc., etc. 

 If you actually believe those numbers then probaly not worth discussing much because now we are getting into hyperbole town. I also don't quite get why you would use Twitter as an example.

Engineers are very safe overall and even those laid off will end up in the many jobs still out there for tech. 

But there haven't been any large scale lay offs outside of twitter and meta. Which are very specific examples. The only other major lay off has been Credit suisse - again unique to them. Where are the 5 to 10 even 15% lay offs we saw in eveyr other recession? 

Elon might have exaggerated that some, but I wouldn't be surprised if it were true. Not sure on the accuracy of the info, but I found a couple online sources that stated that less than 50% of Google employees are engineers. With that, the idea that there are more non-technical people than there are engineers working for tech companies is likely true.

A ton of companies have already announced significant layoffs. Why don't you believe them? You and Carlos are believing the Fed with their predictions a year out, but corporations are announcing large layoffs and your downplaying it. 

There are a lot of companies cutting over 10% of their workforce. 

Meta 13%
Peloton 12%
Snapchat 20%
Soundcloud 20%
Coinbase 18%
Redfin 13%
Lyft 13%
Stripe 13%
Opendoor 18%

Actually I spend my days working with the Fortune 100 - so what I'm referencing is them not the fed. The only large company on that list is Meta. Snapchat let go 1,200 people. We are talking macroeconomics here we need to be talking about multiple large organizations with large lay offs think meta but over at least a dozen a companies. 

A lot of those companies are new tech vs old tech or specifically hit by some element of recession/pandemic. If you want layoffs to impact economy it needs to across the full economy. It's not there. It's why inflation is remaining quite stubborn because of the job market. 

Quote from @Greg R.:

Quote from @Carlos Ptriawan:

haha all of you I realized never work in tech company and not part of dotcom bust in 2001.

I was the victim during that period 3x. This time, true there's wide layoffs in new tech area. But for old tech even if thre's layoff the number are still insignificant. We only care if the layoff impacted 30% of engineering team.

You're not the only one here who's been working in tech since early 2000s. You are comparing apples to oranges. The doc com bubble is not what's happening now. Crazy that you would imply that what happened back then would have any relevance right now. 

You think that only engineers are getting laid off? Those are probably the safest people in the company right now. Musk said that Twitter had 10 managerial/ non tech employees to every engineer. That's probably true for a lot of these companies, HR, Marketing, Support, Accounting, Management/ Ops, etc., etc. 

 If you actually believe those numbers then probaly not worth discussing much because now we are getting into hyperbole town. I also don't quite get why you would use Twitter as an example.

Engineers are very safe overall and even those laid off will end up in the many jobs still out there for tech. 

But there haven't been any large scale lay offs outside of twitter and meta. Which are very specific examples. The only other major lay off has been Credit suisse - again unique to them. Where are the 5 to 10 even 15% lay offs we saw in eveyr other recession? 

Quote from @Greg R.:

Quote from @Michael Wooldridge:

Quote from @Greg R.:

Quote from @Michael Wooldridge:

Quote from @Greg R.:

Quote from @Carlos Ptriawan:

Quote from @Greg R.:

Quote from @James Hamling:

Quote from @Michael Wooldridge:

Quote from @Greg R.:

2nd: the ridiculous notion that persons will start selling there homes, in mass, at huge discounts, just to get rid of them. This is such a bizarre statement that I have to ask anyone saying such just what med's are they on and why have they stopped taking them. The vast majority of home owners today are in a sub 4% mortgage. There is 0 motive to sell and TONS of motive to sit. Nobody and I do mean NOBODY preaching this ridiculous narrative has given one ounce of sensible reasoning for why these persons are going to just dump there homes, at big loss, to then live where? Carboard or tent city? There is not 1 metric supporting such argument and dozens upon dozens supporting these homeowners motive and ability to just sit. 

So what's going to happen to the tens of thousands of people (rapidly growing) who are being laid off, who purchased homes within the last year or so with a maxed out LTV? Or even ones who have a manageable mortgage but lose their job.

How about the 650k divorces every year, many of which include a home that has to be sold? 

How about the millions of people that die every year? Many own a home that gets sold when they pass. 

But I guess in the brilliant mind of James, these life events don't exist. Everyone is super stable, life doesn't happen, and no one ever has to sell - everyone who owns a home is able to hold on to it indefinitely. 

 dude all these doesn't matter if the number of house for sell is extremely low. in our market we only have 12-15 home to sell :-) LOL in hawaii a condo I'm waiting only appear every 3 months.

Look dude there's no impact of layoff yet to employment, data in BLS showing we have new record of people going to work lol

It's liquidity that rulez.

I also think you're significantly downplaying the layoffs and job market. It's just starting but layoffs are ramping up quickly. This is going to be a big problem. https://www.forbes.com/sites/b... 

 When 100s of people is the headline when you have 200k+ Employees it’s a non event. The reason why the job market is being downplayed is because there is no room to do cuts the way 08 has from a thinning the org perspective. Middle management will take a big hit this time around (not that there as much to cut there either now) but it’s going to take massive business misses i.e. MEta level mistakes for the big cuts. There’s not a lot of that out there in the marketplace these days. 

Who cares what the title of the article is. Meta 11k, Twitter 3,500, Redfin 862, Salesforce 1,000, Stripe 1,100, Coinbase 1,100, Shopify 1,000. That's about 20,000 jobs right there. Not to mention, this is just tip of the spear. Many more companies have announced significant layoffs that they're planning. 

 I was referencing the count. Twitter and Meta are unique scenarios. The rest are meaningless. Even the companies doing more painful jobs cuts have been relatively small compared to historic. And I've got a very good idea of what are coming for job cuts for quite a big portion of those companies. So far nothing is a big surprise other than Meta being lighter.

but they are all tiny cuts, inconsequential. 

Easy for you to say that these layoffs are meaningless. To the tens of thousands of people losing jobs, this is devastating. Other companies planning mass-layoffs: Intel, DocuSign, Shopify, Robinhood, etc., etc. 

This could easily balloon WAY beyond where we're at now. 

So now you are talking about two different things. Are we talking about the personal side of it or the macroeconomics? Me saying it's nothing has everything to do with the macro impact on the economy. 

Understand something 150k lay offs is still small potatoes. For many of the companies you are talking about I'm well aware of the restructuring and impact it's going to have.

I've also posted in this very thread the lay off counts will be much smaller than what we've seen historically and short of the two odd ball ones (meta and twitter which have little to do with the current economy) the lay offs have been far smaller than we've seen in the past.  Even MS has laid off less than 1%. I made those comments months back. 

It sucks for people but you have to look at the macro scenario. Ford, everyone was talking about their big lay offs and how the recession is coming now (August I think it was). At the same time they did the lay offs they added thousands of software engineers. Full picture matters and it's not even close to scary yet on labor side. Which is what is frustrating the fed right now. 

Quote from @Greg R.:

Quote from @Michael Wooldridge:

Quote from @Greg R.:

Quote from @Carlos Ptriawan:

Quote from @Greg R.:

Quote from @James Hamling:

Quote from @Michael Wooldridge:

Quote from @Greg R.:

2nd: the ridiculous notion that persons will start selling there homes, in mass, at huge discounts, just to get rid of them. This is such a bizarre statement that I have to ask anyone saying such just what med's are they on and why have they stopped taking them. The vast majority of home owners today are in a sub 4% mortgage. There is 0 motive to sell and TONS of motive to sit. Nobody and I do mean NOBODY preaching this ridiculous narrative has given one ounce of sensible reasoning for why these persons are going to just dump there homes, at big loss, to then live where? Carboard or tent city? There is not 1 metric supporting such argument and dozens upon dozens supporting these homeowners motive and ability to just sit. 

So what's going to happen to the tens of thousands of people (rapidly growing) who are being laid off, who purchased homes within the last year or so with a maxed out LTV? Or even ones who have a manageable mortgage but lose their job.

How about the 650k divorces every year, many of which include a home that has to be sold? 

How about the millions of people that die every year? Many own a home that gets sold when they pass. 

But I guess in the brilliant mind of James, these life events don't exist. Everyone is super stable, life doesn't happen, and no one ever has to sell - everyone who owns a home is able to hold on to it indefinitely. 

 dude all these doesn't matter if the number of house for sell is extremely low. in our market we only have 12-15 home to sell :-) LOL in hawaii a condo I'm waiting only appear every 3 months.

Look dude there's no impact of layoff yet to employment, data in BLS showing we have new record of people going to work lol

It's liquidity that rulez.

I also think you're significantly downplaying the layoffs and job market. It's just starting but layoffs are ramping up quickly. This is going to be a big problem. https://www.forbes.com/sites/b... 

 When 100s of people is the headline when you have 200k+ Employees it’s a non event. The reason why the job market is being downplayed is because there is no room to do cuts the way 08 has from a thinning the org perspective. Middle management will take a big hit this time around (not that there as much to cut there either now) but it’s going to take massive business misses i.e. MEta level mistakes for the big cuts. There’s not a lot of that out there in the marketplace these days. 

Who cares what the title of the article is. Meta 11k, Twitter 3,500, Redfin 862, Salesforce 1,000, Stripe 1,100, Coinbase 1,100, Shopify 1,000. That's about 20,000 jobs right there. Not to mention, this is just tip of the spear. Many more companies have announced significant layoffs that they're planning. 

 I was referencing the count. Twitter and Meta are unique scenarios. The rest are meaningless. Even the companies doing more painful jobs cuts have been relatively small compared to historic. And I've got a very good idea of what are coming for job cuts for quite a big portion of those companies. So far nothing is a big surprise other than Meta being lighter.

but they are all tiny cuts, inconsequential. 

Quote from @Greg R.:

Quote from @Carlos Ptriawan:

Quote from @Greg R.:

Quote from @James Hamling:

Quote from @Michael Wooldridge:

Quote from @Greg R.:

2nd: the ridiculous notion that persons will start selling there homes, in mass, at huge discounts, just to get rid of them. This is such a bizarre statement that I have to ask anyone saying such just what med's are they on and why have they stopped taking them. The vast majority of home owners today are in a sub 4% mortgage. There is 0 motive to sell and TONS of motive to sit. Nobody and I do mean NOBODY preaching this ridiculous narrative has given one ounce of sensible reasoning for why these persons are going to just dump there homes, at big loss, to then live where? Carboard or tent city? There is not 1 metric supporting such argument and dozens upon dozens supporting these homeowners motive and ability to just sit. 

So what's going to happen to the tens of thousands of people (rapidly growing) who are being laid off, who purchased homes within the last year or so with a maxed out LTV? Or even ones who have a manageable mortgage but lose their job.

How about the 650k divorces every year, many of which include a home that has to be sold? 

How about the millions of people that die every year? Many own a home that gets sold when they pass. 

But I guess in the brilliant mind of James, these life events don't exist. Everyone is super stable, life doesn't happen, and no one ever has to sell - everyone who owns a home is able to hold on to it indefinitely. 

 dude all these doesn't matter if the number of house for sell is extremely low. in our market we only have 12-15 home to sell :-) LOL in hawaii a condo I'm waiting only appear every 3 months.

Look dude there's no impact of layoff yet to employment, data in BLS showing we have new record of people going to work lol

It's liquidity that rulez.

I also think you're significantly downplaying the layoffs and job market. It's just starting but layoffs are ramping up quickly. This is going to be a big problem. https://www.forbes.com/sites/b... 

 When 100s of people is the headline when you have 200k+ Employees it’s a non event. The reason why the job market is being downplayed is because there is no room to do cuts the way 08 has from a thinning the org perspective. Middle management will take a big hit this time around (not that there as much to cut there either now) but it’s going to take massive business misses i.e. MEta level mistakes for the big cuts. There’s not a lot of that out there in the marketplace these days. 

Quote from @Carlos Ptriawan:

Quote from @Michael Wooldridge:

Quote from @Carlos Ptriawan:

New tech area like Metaverse, crypto token, NFT .. is also what I said as a Scam business. Too many new tech is putting money into this BS area.
I am so happy all these companies goes bankrupt, the latest going bankrupt is FTX exchange. If their employee is losing money / house because of crypto, that's good news and time to wake up. This crypto crash impacted a lot of companies in the Investment business. From Sequoia that's losing 150m to Blackrock.  Another area within new tech that's collapsing is Fintech and advertisement.

 But even crypto is a better example of change then Meta. Zuckerberg literally said FU to the market, investors and everybody and essentially was telling the world he was going to Will this to happen and everybody else was wrong. Which is why he is now taking responsibility. The whole market was stupid. He was investing cloud level funding and personnel into what was essentially a start-up tech to your point. people saw this coming with no economic crash. 

That said greg should probably look at how much Meta has grown though and how this is basically just a bit more than a minor adjustment. 

 so I used to work at highest VC funding startup in 2000, everything is rosy at that time,  but I noticed something wrong, the valuation of some companies that only generate a little bit of cent is going to massive valuation, it's the same like all these fintech/cyrpto/NFT/meta BS company today, once the VC realized they made mistake and there's no market for such business, the funding and valuation drys up .... from million dollar investment to zero. So my startup that time, suddenly closed the door although we have funding, it's just like that, closed the door. So stupid LOL, in our case we have product but the product not yet generating revenue, so we are late to the market. What happened in 2021's new tech, that's what I experienced in March 2001.

So Look at FTX Exchange today, so stupid, from 6 billion to zero. I guess those early investors in this crypto scam, has been scammed as well, I'm sometimes happy when these institution investors are losing money, there're just too much money being put into Ponzi scheme.

Funny enough, if they invest their money to Jones Lang Real Estate Fund, their money increased by 10 percent... crazy world

 It’s funny money in some respects. They are just trying to fund enough to see the ones that hit. And then quick dry-up on the rest.

That said you can always tell who are funded by VCs in Silicon vs NYC. Huge difference in expectations for the most part.

Quote from @Greg R.:

Quote from @Michael Wooldridge:

Quote from @Greg R.:

Quote from @Michael Key:

Did people actually say that prices would keep going up, or did they simply say there wouldn't be a 2008-style crash and that we might see prices level out to normalcy? 

Personally think we just stripped all the emotional equity out of the market.

Many on this thread are in denial that there will be any kind of crash or correction. They think that the last two years were normal and the prices are here to stay. 

 Please quote the post from any that have said that. We have all said there will be no massive correction, no mass crash. That's not the same as saying no adjustment. Your prediction is close to 30-40%, and thats higher than 08. So we are pointing out that flaw. Nobody is saying no adjustment/correction. 

Really? lol. Your buddy James has been leading the "no crash/ no correction" train since this thread started. He was recently beaten into submission on certain points since his outlandish stances could sustain themselves. There have probably been close to 100 (if not more) posts from people claiming there will be no crash and no correction. 

 Like I said quote the post. I've never seen somebody say no adjustment. On the more positive side folks have been saying 10%. Which nationally we are still in line with. I've also seen people post certain markets won't hit Jame's market as an example. And the midwest is unlikely to hurt or lose the growth they gained the last few years. 

So since it's been said again and again. Should be easy to quote the post. 

Also some of us have accounted for inflation. We knew we'd inflate are way out of lot of the issues. The numbers some of the crash folks are posting are sizably higher than 08 - when you account for inflation. Suggesting some folks haven't factored inflation at all........

Quote from @Carlos Ptriawan:

New tech area like Metaverse, crypto token, NFT .. is also what I said as a Scam business. Too many new tech is putting money into this BS area.
I am so happy all these companies goes bankrupt, the latest going bankrupt is FTX exchange. If their employee is losing money / house because of crypto, that's good news and time to wake up. This crypto crash impacted a lot of companies in the Investment business. From Sequoia that's losing 150m to Blackrock.  Another area within new tech that's collapsing is Fintech and advertisement.

 But even crypto is a better example of change then Meta. Zuckerberg literally said FU to the market, investors and everybody and essentially was telling the world he was going to Will this to happen and everybody else was wrong. Which is why he is now taking responsibility. The whole market was stupid. He was investing cloud level funding and personnel into what was essentially a start-up tech to your point. people saw this coming with no economic crash. 

That said greg should probably look at how much Meta has grown though and how this is basically just a bit more than a minor adjustment. 

Quote from @Greg R.:

Quote from @Michael Key:

Did people actually say that prices would keep going up, or did they simply say there wouldn't be a 2008-style crash and that we might see prices level out to normalcy? 

Personally think we just stripped all the emotional equity out of the market.

Many on this thread are in denial that there will be any kind of crash or correction. They think that the last two years were normal and the prices are here to stay. 

 Please quote the post from any that have said that. We have all said there will be no massive correction, no mass crash. That's not the same as saying no adjustment. Your prediction is close to 30-40%, and thats higher than 08. So we are pointing out that flaw. Nobody is saying no adjustment/correction. 

Quote from @Victor S.:

"Two things are infinite: the universe and human stupidity; and I'm not sure about the universe."

 Maybe. But when you have to make predictions - business or political - and read the room it includes all people. not just those who agree with them. 

The dems did it in 2016, the GOP did it in 2020 and 2022. What neither party seems to realize is the middle is more important than ever. Which is funny as they both head to either direction.

Ahh well. Midterms were more or less what I expected. now back to business.