Way late to last week’s notable stories.
What I missed during my Friday off: Hubspot turning layoffs into content and how 517k jobs may have killed the Phillips curve.
A 2 for 1 sh*tposting today.**
Unless you were living under a rock, you saw the news about Hubspot laying off 7% last week. Like over and over, in your LinkedIn feed. (Examples here and here.)
What stuck out about it was the highly positive tone: people were applauding the severance, benefits period, keeping of laptops, etc. With the phrase I saw a dozen times “treating employees like people.”
Obviously there was a bit of backlash. There’s always a group of folks who believe any reduction should have been foreseeable and avoided. You’re an a$$hole for not predicting the future and you know, running a business.
I’ll be clear on my take here: I don’t care about either side of this discussion.
👉I find it absolutely fascinating how Hubspot was able to turn a layoff into content.
Current and former execs, other industry influencers, employees, even some people let go. The full spread. I say this with no sarcasm whatsoever: it was impressive and I can’t wait to read the case study. Things like this don’t just happen all by themselves.
Never miss a good photo op. That’s PR 101.
It really was a great severance package. Maybe everyone affected truly is happy. But I think we need to admit they treated their employees like people…until they didn’t.
Hot take: the ‘best’ layoffs are the ones you never hear about.
(Side note: I actually love Hubpsot’s product. Please don’t charge me more for this post…)
Moving on…
That 517k jobs number from last week. So this is what the lowest unemployment rate since 1969 feels like?
We can argue back and forth about job participation rates, if we have enough ‘high paying’ jobs in sectors like tech & finance, etc.
But the interesting takeaway is that we may be seeing the (short term) death of the Phillips curve. Which states that inflation and unemployment have an inverse relationship.
Job growth = bad, because inflation will go up and we need to curb it before it’s out of control.
But what people forget: not all correlations are fixed or permanent. There’s a variety of factors that affect them. The real time market conditions surrounding them are different than what happened previously (which correlations are based on.)
Inflation has been going down, which flies in the face of his 517k number. It’s too early to say if the Phillips curve is (short term) dead, but CPI comes out next week and PCE the week after. At which point we’ll know if we can stop worrying about what the Fed will do with rates based upon the employment numbers.
All caught up. Can’t wait to see what nonsense the world has in store for us this week.
**Side note: It was pointed out to me that “sh*tposting” is an anagram for “top insights” so I’m leaning into that…
Partner at Hirewell. #3 Ranked Sarcastic Commenter on LinkedIn.
