Layoffs always happen, but I imagine it is like a wave. Sometimes you have very few, other times you have a lot.
"nowhere else to go" isn't really a thing right now - but "the mood is right" is probably more of what is happening. Employees are at least a little on edge (which significantly impacts performance, for what it is worth) right now.
Most companies that are laying off people do not need to lay them off. Their survival is not at stake.
Doordash, for example, is making something like 4billion $ of gross profit a year.
That's enough to pay all of these 1200 employees $3m a year, with some left over.
Like most growth-phase startups from SV, Doordash are not profitable at the moment and have no profit to speak of with an EPS of _negative_ $2.41. Please correct your "$700m in gross profit a quarter" to "$1.7b in revenue a quarter" or "$296m in net loss a quarter" [1].
"Gross profit" as seen on financial sheet doesn't work the way you might think it does, particularly for services companies. A positive gross profit doesn't imply a positive net income (i.e. that the company as a whole is making money instead of losing it). E.g. if you look at page 10 of that document you can see their total costs far exceed their total revenue it's just not all those costs are associated with making the revenue. https://www.investopedia.com/ask/answers/101314/what-are-dif...
So while the 700M statement is true in financial speak it's not true in the way you're impyling it i.e. it's not profit leftover they could be paying out instead it's just a certain financial measure in a company that overall is losing money pretty hard. Likely feeding into this reduction of corporate headcount to be honest.
What do you base that on? As others have pointed out, DoorDash is losing money every quarter. These companies have experienced hyper growth in employee count while the economy is good. But they are still losing a lot of money every quarter. When the economy turns, that high burn rate quickly becomes a threat to their continued existence. I think most of these layoffs are essential and may still prove inadequate. DoorDash for instance is selling a non-essential service. When the economy tightens up, people stop spending on things like DoorDash.
"nowhere else to go" isn't really a thing right now - but "the mood is right" is probably more of what is happening. Employees are at least a little on edge (which significantly impacts performance, for what it is worth) right now.
Most companies that are laying off people do not need to lay them off. Their survival is not at stake.
Doordash, for example, is making something like 4billion $ of gross profit a year.
That's enough to pay all of these 1200 employees $3m a year, with some left over.