Tech Companies Could Learn Something From Toilet Paper

[dasari4kntr]

This week, two of the world’s biggest and most widely emulated technology companies, Amazon.com Inc. and Salesforce Inc., announced layoffs. In Amazon’s case, the cuts, which will eliminate 18,000 jobs, were the largest in the industry.

Big tech is shrinking. In November, Meta Platforms Inc., the parent of Facebook and Instagram, said it was cutting 13% of its workforce. Snap Inc. is laying off 20%. This year is already bringing more of the same. Employees at Alphabet Inc., Google’s parent, are bracing for possible cuts. So are workers throughout the sector.

Part of the problem, as the companies are quick to point out, is a slowing economy. But so far, tech has been particularly hard hit. It’s the inverse of what happened at the height of the Covid-19 pandemic, when those same companies raked in money and grew while much of the rest of the economy struggled.

To be fair, the pandemic has tested everyone’s sense of the future. But some got it right. Remember the toilet paper shortages?

Early in the pandemic, when people began hoarding it, toilet paper manufacturers such as Kimberly-Clark Corp. and Georgia-Pacific LLC declined to radically ramp up production to meet the new demand. They looked at the world and did not see a future where people would need steadily increasing amounts of toilet paper.

Instead, they figured that everyone had simply gone a little nuts and would soon realize they didn’t want a six-month supply of Charmin sitting in their closets. The companies instituted measures that could later be reversed, like increasing shifts at their plants, but they didn’t go out and hire tens of thousands of new workers or build new plants.

Compare that to the pandemic’s biggest tech Icarus. Peloton Interactive Inc., maker of connected exercise machines and the content that goes on them, went from being a niche product to a phenomenon, and its stock price briefly octupled. Its co-founder, a tech veteran and fitness buff named John Foley, predicted that Peloton would soon be a trillion-dollar company.

The hydration obsessed Foley spent money like, well, water — on new hires and stores and expensive ads and content partnerships. He made the argument that the pandemic was, rather than an anomalous global event forcing people into patterns of behavior they found unpleasant and unnatural, an accelerant to a future of high-margin virtual activity, in this case physical activity.

That argument has not aged well. Peloton has been scrambling to reinvent itself — and to survive — for over a year. Zoom Video Communications Inc., whose leadership was always a bit more ambivalent about its pandemic stardom, has seen its stock price return to exactly where it was in early 2020.

But tech companies whose success long predated the pandemic got caught out in similar ways. Salesforce, which saw demand for its software boom during the pandemic’s enforced remote work, went on a hiring spree that grew it to 80,000 employees, from 48,000, and expanded into the world of business media content.

There are, of course, very real differences between toilet paper and software. One is that toilet paper is cheap and bulky; software is pretty much the opposite.

 

But that, according to Willy Shih, a supply chain expert at Harvard Business School, imposes a certain kind of discipline on people who make TP. Among other things, they are reluctant to do things like break ground on factories they may not really need. And they do not decide to spend billions of dollars trying to architect a virtual universe that will interpenetrate in magical and lucrative but as-yet-undefined ways with our own.

Toilet paper companies have to live in the world as it is. Sometimes the people purporting to build the future have to do that, too.

 

[dasari4kntr]

matter in one line అనే వాళ్ళకోసం…

supply chain and over hiring గురించి tech and tissue paper companies ని compare చేసి చెప్పాడు…

[Netflixmovieguz]

1 minute ago, dasari4kntr said:

matter in one line అనే వాళ్ళకోసం…

supply chain and over hiring గురించి tech and tissue paper companies ని compare చేసి చెప్పాడు…

Tech is going to see a disaster equal to 1999 if not worse

[Pokiriraj]

Mana db ki toilet paper  @Swatkat aka @reallty_langa lantodu ani @sarfaroshi antunde

[ramudu]

they already treating employees as tissue papers kadha bro , use and throw 

[dasari4kntr]

2 minutes ago, Netflixmovieguz said:

Tech is going to see a disaster equal to 1999 if not worse

yup…i guess…

[Thokkalee]

4 minutes ago, Netflixmovieguz said:

Tech is going to see a disaster equal to 1999 if not worse

Many big tech companies are sitting on hordes of cash… they can cut costs by laying off people (cut the fat) and reduce their expenses and still manage the economy slow down… their biggest worry and expense  is the inflated salaries paid to the new staff recruited in the last 2 years.. 

[Barney_Stinson]

all those dollar vaults in ireland 

[dasari4kntr]

11 minutes ago, Barney_Stinson said:

all those dollar vaults in ireland 

whats that ireland vaults story..?

[ramudu]

2 minutes ago, dasari4kntr said:

whats that ireland vaults story..?

ireland is tax heaven for big comapnies 

[Vaampire]

25 minutes ago, ramudu said:

they already treating employees as tissue papers kadha bro , use and throw 

Its vice versa too. Better oppurtunity vasthey employees kooda jump the ship ey kada

[Netflixmovieguz]

23 minutes ago, dasari4kntr said:

whats that ireland vaults story..?

Corporate companies keep  cash in Ireland 

[perugu_vada]

So very true .. over hiring .. stock price kuda maree ekuva ga raise aindi during pandemic 

[Vaampire]

1 hour ago, perugu_vada said:

So very true .. over hiring .. stock price kuda maree ekuva ga raise aindi during pandemic 

Lot of companies took revenue increase during covid for granted. They assumed its permanent & over hired. Now facing the music

[Netflixmovieguz]

1 minute ago, Vaampire said:

Lot of companies took revenue increase during covid for granted. They assumed its permanent & over hired. Now facing the music

Appl and msft to pre covid levels will kick off the depression imo