Since the beginning of 2020, and a bit before that, too, from maybe midway through 2022, to a lesser, less trend-worthy degree.

Headlines have been awash in news about mass layoffs at mostly tech companies and other companies that lean heavily on tech assets,

about startups going under, and about companies large and small consolidating.

The justifications given by those in charge at these companies have been more or less the same across the board.

We are restructuring, we are right-sizing, we got over-ambitious during the pandemic,

and now we're having to call our ranks to make sure we are in a good

financial state moving forward. In some cases, these excuses make a fair bit of overt sense.

Entities like Zoom, for instance, a video conferencing product that took on increased prominence

and had a pretty stellar long-term financial outlook during a period in which much of

the world was avoiding physical contact when we were all doing more online schooling and remote

working and connecting with each other via little video screens on our various devices. That company

can perhaps be excused for thinking and hoping the good times would just keep on going,

whatever the catalyst for those good times.

But even larger companies like Amazon fell into that optimistic rhythm and are now taking

financial hits as a result of that two-year-ish period during which the whole world was upended

and everything changed essentially overnight. The company invested

heavily in new warehouses all over the place, intending to further and very rapidly expand

their next day shipping capabilities as the move from in-person shopping to e-commerce buying

sped up wildly, beginning in the first few months of COVID onward.

Since then, though, Zoom's stock price has tanked, and they've gone through a series of redundancies and scaling down efforts.

Amazon has canceled a lot of its new warehouses alongside other bets, like contactless grocery stores,

and longer-term plays like a massive second

...