According to the article, I think a more appropriate analogy would be claiming “I’m going to sell four apples!”, followed by actually selling three apples. Then claiming you spent a fortune to get out of an existing contract saying you would rent an apple-basket for x years, as well as having to pay the apples you sold because you sold them earlier than you told them you would. And then buying two apples from the person selling apples next-door that picks their apples from the same tree you picked yours from.
At the end of the day you’ve only lowered your apple count by one while you simultaneously:
Manufactured a tax write-off for the expenses you incurred by prematurely selling three apples
Manufactured a tax write-off for the expenses you incurred by prematurely terminating the agreement to rent an apple-basket
Manufactured a tax write-off for the expenses you incurred by buying two apples from a rival apple merchant
Sewed seeds of doubt among all fruits, vegetables, and other produce regarding their chances of finding a merchant
Got investors to at least temporarily value your business higher because they thought you had five too many apples and were excited at the prospect of you selling four of them
Keep in mind that in this analogy you had teams of experts that calculated all of this for you well in advance of you even making an announcement, and that the rival apple merchant also took very similar, if not identical steps.
Edit: Oh, and don’t forget that selling apples isn’t actually the business you and your rival apple merchant are in. You’re both actually in the juice business and apples are just a means to an end for you.
Sure hate how this article talks about employees wanted raises as being pompous and cocky and then spins it like we should feel bad for tech companies and their need to cut costs. Which is their fault for rapidly expanding without much planning for the future and then “cutting costs” when they realize it’s not sustainable
I especially love the part where they say that X/Twitter not hiring after their layoffs has left many people wondering what those employees were doing in the first place. As someone who has never been very “into” Twitter, even I can see that the site has gone way downhill since Musk and his layoffs. I don’t have to wonder what the laid off employees were doing because I know by a quick glance that whatever they were doing, they were doing it better than it’s being done now.