Man, you say this like it's normal, even desirable for these situations to occur. No one should be obligated to 'get used to it'.
Having worked in Silicon Valley for 27+ years prior to retirement I can say with conviction that it is not unusual. Boom and bust cycles occur. I spent 7 years in semiconductor capital equipment late 90s into mid 2000s. That industry had an 18-24 month periodic cycle then and layoffs during the downturns were normal.
Later I spent another 7+ years in flat panel display capital equipment which had two bad down turns which resulted in several rounds of layoffs.
Other companies in other industries where I worked also had lean times and layoffs.
It's a conflation of completely separate things to say that people don't deserve job security because life isn't fair. Life isn't fair when your cat gets run over or your mum is diagnosed with cancer. A mega corp firing half its staff in the pursuit of $$$ has absolutely nothing to do with 'life isn't fair'. It's an entirely calculated scenario driven by greed. Whether you think it's ok or not is a separate question, but to try to paint it as something that just happens sometimes and / or can't be helped is patently false.
Your understanding of business is clouded by some blue-sky magic thinking. Yes, there are some greedy people around. Yes, some asshats make bad decisions that result in job losses. But, on the whole, running a successful business is not easy and real choices have to be made that sometimes aren't pleasant. That, simply put, is life. As an adult you should be able to comprehend this fact.
If a business is running in the red and a return to net profitability is not visible for a year (based on orders, contracts, forecasts, macro economic trends, etc) then choices have to be made. If costs aren't cut then even more people may be put out of work when the company finds itself in worse shape down the road. Minimize your personal exposure by putting effort in and doing conscientious work. Slackers and troublemakers are the first to go in a RIF (well, after contractors).
Personally, I appreciated the fact that two places I worked tried to avoid layoffs by implementing temporary pay cuts and/or forced time off. That was a smart way to avoid losing good people during a bad business cycle.
Note that "at will" employment works both ways. If you don't like the work, the management, or the way the business is run you are free to find another job. I did that quite a few times in my career. Only once was the change not my decision. I have no regrets of consequence. I worked, learned, achieved, sometimes failed, kept at it, met a lot of interesting people, and did my best. That's life.
Back on track : it seems to be common knowledge at this point that half the staff were laid off and then a further 1200 quit last week. If 50-70% of staff were fired / resigned from the companies I've worked for in the past, the companies would limp on for a while and then almost certainly grind to a halt. The companies I worked for required 99.99% service uptime with round the clock monitoring and engineering support. When enough people leave, sooner or later something *will* fail catastrophically and the right person will not be available to fix it.
I worked at a couple of places that were very bloated and could easily have survived a 50% cut. One was a startup. It failed in stages with big layoffs after growing way too fast and eventually folded. Had the management focused on their original plan instead of trying to do too many things and finishing none of them (with ever increasing staffing) they might have survived to IPO. The other is a huge corporation that is the most inefficient place I've ever worked. That's all I'll say about it.
As advertisers are leaving in droves, musk is posting a semi pornographic tweet direct to Donald trump trying to entice him back. Wonder how that's going to go down with the biggest advertisers.
The market will decide, no? And Musk will react (or not). Why are you so concerned about it?
These things ^^^ are matters of public record at this point. No mind reading or 'trusted sources' required.
But Musk's plans and goals are not, so you really don't know the whole picture.
Let's reconvene in a week and see how things stand
I thought we'd already done that. I'm just an innocent bystander. Don't have an account and never have. I'm just an observer.
