We are seeing news of lay-offs from many companies- in India as well as RoW; Being at the receiving end of it is utterly painful. But who is to blame?
Hindsight is always 20/20; So in the current moment, we can go about and blame the management for overhiring and now firing.
But since a lot us would get into similar shoes over time, would love to know how others would have done it differently.
When the market was kind and capital was cheap, companies/functions/leaders wanted to experiment with every or more ideas having some potential. They wanted to test every market (in terms of geo expansion) and if they wouldn’t competitors would. Definitely some experiments become successful while some fail. There would have been a pressure from Investors which would have translated to internal pressures.
Even most of us were just shifting jobs for money without even having conviction in business models of companies we were joining.
Who to blame? Investors for seeking growth or CEOs to not have enough hindsight or experience to know such times will come or functional leaders to comply to wishes of their management? Or us to fall into unsustainable greed trap?
But now it is about survival. Cutting off vestigial or infected organs vs letting the whole org die. What would you have done differently in the shoes of these CEOs?
Cheap capital feeds good bad and ugly ideas.
Cheap capital makes it easier to ring fence top talent
This correction is needed to have money flowing in the right direction. Some firms such as CRED still don’t have a moat, where as some like Unacademy, Meesho have a moat but hard to make it profitable.
The good thing is the talent behind these startups is good and just like capital will flow towards better ideas (demand side - as these firms will continue to hire and supply side: as people would aim for these firms)
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