不要将科技裁员误认为是经济衰退

如果就业人数如此强劲，埃隆·马斯克为何要削减 Twitter 的员工人数？

Despite strong job numbers, Twitter is reportedly planning layoffs. Here's why that doesn't signal a recession.

尽管就业数据强劲，但据报道推特仍在计划裁员。这就是为什么这并不预示着经济衰退。

Two pieces of news landed Friday morning that seemed designed to confuse and mildly upset people in their own special way.

周五早上发布的两条新闻似乎旨在以自己特殊的方式让人们感到困惑和轻微不安。

On the one hand, we got news that Twitter, now owned by a visibly flailing Elon Musk, has threatened a round of layoffs that could cut as much as 50% of the social platform's staff.

一方面，我们得到消息称，现在由明显陷入困境的埃隆·马斯克 (Elon Musk) 拥有的 Twitter 已威胁要进行一轮裁员，可能会裁减该社交平台多达 50% 的员工。

On the other, we got a jobs report that dramatically outperformed Wall Street projections. Economists surveyed by the Wall Street Journal predicted that an average of 205,000 jobs would be added this quarter. Instead we got 261,000 new jobs, blowing out expectations even as unemployment rose by a hair to 3.7%.

另一方面，我们得到的就业报告大大超出了华尔街的预测。接受《华尔街日报》调查的经济学家预测，本季度平均将增加20.5万个就业岗位。相反，我们创造了 261,000 个新就业岗位，超出了预期，尽管失业率上升了一点点至 3.7%。

The pair of items are a reminder of the deep disconnection between the tech sector and the rest of the economy. The Musk/Twitter situation is very unique and hilarious. But it’s also a typically Muskian exaggeration of the wider forces driving tech, at least for the moment, in the opposite direction of the rest of the U.S. economy.

这两个项目提醒人们科技行业与其他经济领域之间的深度脱节。马斯克/推特的情况非常独特且搞笑。但这也是典型的马斯克式对推动科技发展的更广泛力量的夸大，至少目前是这样，与美国经济其他领域的发展方向相反。

Elon Musk is laying off half of Twitter staff because he bumbled into trapping himself buying a pig in a poke. In April he made an unsolicited offer of $44.20 per share for the company. That looked vaguely like a good deal at the time because Twitter, along with every other “tech” or “stay at home” stock, saw an absurd and clearly unsustainable run-up in equity prices during the COVID-19 pandemic, because (never forget) equity investors as a whole are a bunch of lemmings.

埃隆·马斯克(Elon Musk)正在解雇一半的推特员工，因为他无意中陷入了买猪的困境。 4 月份，他主动提出收购该公司每股 44.20 美元的要约。当时这看起来似乎是一笔划算的交易，因为 Twitter 与所有其他“科技”或“居家”股票一样，在 COVID-19 大流行期间看到了股价荒谬且明显不可持续的上涨，因为（从来没有忘记了）股票投资者作为一个整体是一群旅鼠。

See also: Reading Elon’s Tea Leaves / Opinion

另请参阅：阅读埃隆的茶叶/意见

Musk is apparently not any smarter than those lemmings, or at least not any better at controlling his emotions. That $44 billion is 20%-25% above the market cap Twitter had pre-pandemic, and Musk now has to finance a $13 billion mountain of debt that may well outpace Twitter’s own inconsistent and mediocre profit stream. This is, with little exaggeration, the equivalent of buying Peloton for $44 billion in the fourth quarter of 2020 because you thought people would continue buying overpriced stationary bikes forever.

马斯克显然并不比那些旅鼠聪明，或者至少不擅长控制自己的情绪。这 440 亿美元比 Twitter 在大流行前的市值高出 20%-25%，而马斯克现在必须为 130 亿美元的巨额债务融资，这很可能超过 Twitter 自身不稳定且平庸的利润流。毫不夸张地说，这相当于在 2020 年第四季度斥资 440 亿美元收购 Peloton，因为你认为人们会永远继续购买价格过高的固定自行车。

That’s why Musk’s both throwing crew off the Twitter ship at a pace likely to destabilize operations, and floating revenue-focused ideas, like charging for verification, that seem to reflect a profound misunderstanding of how the platform works. Personally, things are already so unhinged I’m ready to predict that Twitter under Musk crashes and burns, forcing a fire sale and/or a fresh public offering that leaves Musk personally in the hole for billions of dollars.

这就是为什么马斯克既以可能破坏运营稳定的速度将员工从 Twitter 上解雇，又提出了以收入为中心的想法，比如对验证收费，这似乎反映出对该平台运作方式的深刻误解。就我个人而言，事情已经如此混乱，我已经准备好预测马斯克领导下的推特将崩溃并烧毁，迫使其进行减价出售和/或重新公开募股，这将使马斯克个人陷入数十亿美元的困境。

But as much as this is peak Elon Musk clownish nonsense, it is also the story, in microcosm, of the larger tech sector. For roughly a decade, “tech” (formal definition: any company that can convince a venture capitalist that it is “tech”) has run substantially on debt. Financial debt, yes, eased by a zero interest rate era that is now coming to a violent close.

尽管这是埃隆·马斯克最滑稽的胡言乱语，但这也是更大科技行业的缩影。大约十年来，“科技”（正式定义：任何能够让风险投资家相信自己是“科技”的公司）一直在负债累累。是的，金融债务因零利率时代而有所缓解，而零利率时代现在即将结束。

See also: Time to Decide: Are You an Investor or a Gambler? | Opinion

另请参阅：是时候做出决定了：您是投资者还是赌徒？ |观点

But tech has also run on a more conceptual sort of debt, underwritten by forward-looking promises priced into the equity even of profitable operations like Amazon, Google, and Facebook/Meta. Meta in particular, with its stock down an aneurysm-inducing 70% since January, is showing what happens when the future becomes the present and you haven’t risen to meet it.

但科技公司也依靠一种更加概念性的债务运行，这些债务是由前瞻性承诺承保的，这些承诺甚至包括亚马逊、谷歌和 Facebook/Meta 等盈利业务的股权。尤其是 Meta，自 1 月份以来，其股价已下跌了 70%，令人心碎，它正在向人们展示，当未来变成现在，而你还没有站起来迎接它时，会发生什么。

Yet, it’s all happening at the same time as workers and companies in the rest of the economy are, if not entirely thriving, certainly healthy. Inflation is a serious looming worry – but it’s also deeply tied to this meta-economic rotation. The influx of cash that helped so many Americans during the pandemic is at least one factor in both current inflation and jobs strength. That cash plus the ensuing inflation is also likely driving a shift of wealth from the types of people who invest in venture-backed startups to the type of people who “invest” in food, cars, sneakers, gasoline and health care – categories among the top equity gainers right now.

然而，这一切发生的同时，其他经济领域的工人和公司即使不是完全繁荣，也肯定是健康的。通货膨胀是一个迫在眉睫的严重担忧，但它也与这种元经济轮换密切相关。在大流行期间帮助了如此多美国人的现金涌入至少是当前通胀和就业强劲的因素之一。这些现金加上随之而来的通货膨胀也可能推动财富从投资风险投资支持的初创公司的人转向“投资”食品、汽车、运动鞋、汽油和医疗保健的人——这些类别属于目前股市涨幅最大的股票。

The past decade in tech has given rise to not just holy fools like Elon Musk but to outright swindlers like Elizabeth Holmes and Adam Neumann (who both, notably, pitched their non-tech companies under tech banners). Maybe a little harsh discipline isn’t such a bad thing – especially if the trade-off is more jobs for the rest of us.

过去十年，科技领域不仅诞生了埃隆·马斯克（Elon Musk）这样的傻瓜，还诞生了伊丽莎白·霍姆斯（Elizabeth Holmes）和亚当·诺伊曼（Adam Neumann）这样的彻头彻尾的骗子（值得注意的是，他们都打着科技旗号推销自己的非科技公司）。也许一点严厉的纪律并不是一件坏事——特别是如果代价是为我们其他人提供更多的就业机会的话。

Disclosure

披露

Please note that our privacy policy, terms of use, cookies, and do not sell my personal information pivots CoinDesk is an independent operating subsidiary of Digital Currency Group, which also

请注意我们的隐私政策、使用条款、cookies 以及不出售我的个人信息的枢轴 CoinDesk 是数字货币集团的独立运营子公司，该集团还

David Z. Morris was CoinDesk's Chief Insights Columnist. He holds Bitcoin, Ethereum, and small amounts

David Z. Morris 是 CoinDesk 的首席见解专栏作家。他持有比特币、以太坊和少量资金