In the wake of the technology industry’s mass layoffs of more than 200,000 people in the last six weeks — a consequence of the near-zero interest rates loans post-2008 recession — companies adopted the “hire to grow” model. High-growth startups followed suit, assuming scaling up demand would be easy, but getting the right people when demand is scaling would be difficult, so they should hire now to figure out roles when needed. Apple, however, has managed to resist the layoff trend, likely due to its near-death experience in the past.

In my time working at a startup, I noticed that we could have saved a lot of employee pain and time on hiring new employees if we had taken a break to rethink and automate our work processes. This pause would have increased our productivity, allowing us to move people to more profitable areas and automate the less profitable parts.