The bill has come due for many of America's fastest-growing tech companies.
Google's parent company Alphabet says it plans to cut around 12,000 jobs in 2023, The Wall Street Journal reports.
This comes on the heels of layoffs within several tech contemporaries at the cool kids' table: Meta (aka Facebook), Amazon, Microsoft, Salesforce among them.
From Silicon Valley to Manhattan, tech companies that experienced rapid growth during the pandemic are tightening belts in anticipation of zero economic growth and possible recession in the United States. And likely regretting the "eagle flies on Fridays" approach that seemed to serve them well for a couple of years.
Alphabet's CEO recently posted a message to employees in which he apologized for the decisions that led the company to trim fat.
"Over the past two years we've seen periods of dramatic growth. To match and fuel that growth, we hired for a different economic reality than the one we face today," he wrote.
Other execs, including Mark Zuckerberg, have posted similar mea culpas.
Policy wonks at the American Bankers Association forecast more layoffs, shrinking wages and an unemployment rate approaching 5 percent in the short term. But ABA economists believe the wheels are in motion for a "moderation in inflation to play out."
Before that can happen, there are bills to pay. Amazon, with distribution centers in Arkansas, has announced layoffs of more than 18,000 employees, mostly in the corporate sector. (That iconic Amazon smile is no doubt leveling out.)
Consumers were going to return to brick-and-mortar at some point, and that time is now.
Alphabet announced layoffs for 6 percent of its overall workforce, mostly outside its core businesses. (Googlers appear safe for now.) That's 12,000 employees and the largest round of layoffs ever for the company.
Microsoft is parting ways with 10,000 employees, roughly 5 percent of its workforce. Salesforce is dropping 10 percent of its staff, and Vimeo 11 percent.
When demand for housing rose during the pandemic, real-estate tech firm Redfin, for one, went all in.
Its CEO admitted to The Journal, "On some emotional level, I think we all knew the music was going to stop. I think a lot of CEOs at tech companies felt uncomfortable, at least in part, with what was going on, even though we kept pushing our chips out to the middle of the table."
There's something about that Silicon Valley high. As the best of us continue to learn, it always comes with a bill at the end. Now then, we wonder if those running the federal government understand as much.