2. Hiring boom of 2021 and early 2022.
Sales of our products and services skyrocketed during the pandemic just like it did for the industry as a whole.
Org leaders and finance departments were making rosy projections for growth. It quickly turned into a monkey see monkey do business in entire software industry. Everyone was making rosy projections for growth. Insane numbers like 30%-40% growth for certain businesses and orgs for years to come.
This was a critical moment. There were some leaders who had the foresight to see these growth numbers are not sustainable. There was also a slow but steadily growing belief that the demand was only brought forward and will quickly revert on the other end of the curve. Sadly the voices expressing skepticism were few and drowned out in the loud noise of empire building org leaders and SLT members drooling over the implications for their stock awards.
Everyone in the industry (except apple) was doing it so nobody wanted to go against the wisdom of the collective. Raising debt to finance things was really cheap (especially for Microsoft given our bond rating) so everyone in the industry began hiring and collecting employees like Pokémon cards.
SLT and the board did discuss the possibility of these forecasts not coming true. The overwhelming consensus was that there is a lot to be lost if it did come true and we were not prepared and resourced well to capture the opportunity. They thought the demand will last much longer and the tapering will be gradual. Similar discussions were taking place in corporate board rooms across large tech.
The scene was set. The dream castles of rosy projections for revenues were built on faulty assumptions. The dissenting voices were lost in the collective chorus of greedy leaders dreaming about lofty future stock valuations.