alt Hacker NewsThere are a lot of cyclical businesses that make money every year. It requires careful management. Factories can produce less than full capacity - but you better design for that. you can make money in the worst years without laying anyone off even - but it requires careful attention to details and not over hiring in good times as if they will never end.
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Last year ai folks are all over wallstreet and articles, decrying how hardware folks are a roadblock to new frontiers in AI. They just couldn't print and pack the new chips faster.
the normal way to do that is by hiring/firing to meet demand, but in the fab business, you have 10s of billions of dollars of capex with relatively little opex. if you're running at <90% capacity, you're losing money.
Factories working at (significantly) less than full capacity gets a bit harder when you've got one of the most expensive machines on earth working in them, and production lines that'll be out of date in a couple of years