The wave of layoffs swept the tech industry
US A series of large technology companies laid off or frozen recruitment, as well as no longer spending as aggressively as before.
The WSJ said that Meta started laying off thousands of employees from today . The reason is that Mark Zuckerberg has been overly optimistic about the company's growth, leading to overstaffing. Last weekend, Elon Musk decided to halve the number of 7,500 Twitter employees. Many employees said they were surprised by the company's treatment when they were removed from the chat group, unable to access their internal system accounts before even receiving the resignation email.
In early November, three sources told Business Insider that many departments at Apple had received notices that they would not be accepting new employees for the next few months. The majority were asked to stop hiring until the end of the company's next financial year, September 2023.
The wave of layoffs is casting a shadow over the tech industry. Photo: Marketwatch
From the middle of this year, Microsoft said it will remove some positions to reorganize the system. An estimated 1% of employees lost their jobs. Amazon is also looking to optimize resources after a period of hot growth during Covid-19. Andy Jassy, Amazon's CEO, admits massive hiring during the pandemic has left them with too many employees and warehouses.
Jo-Ellen Pozner, an associate professor at Santa Clara University, says a recession is like a tide that washes away tech companies' boats. They have to cut back and streamline projects. "This is something that hasn't happened in over a decade," he said.
According to Bloomberg , in October, the whole industry cut 9,587 jobs, the highest since November 2020. This number is confirmed by companies in the telecommunications, electronics, hardware manufacturing and software development industries. Roger Lee, CEO of Layoffs.fyi, which tracks job cuts at startups, said: "When the pandemic started in the second quarter of 2020, the tech industry went through a short dark period in layoffs. However, this year things are even worse."
The financial situation of major technology companies such as Alphabet, Amazon, Meta, and Microsoft all went down, causing stock prices to drop. Typically, Meta has lost more than 71% of its market capitalization this year due to investor dissatisfaction with Mark Zuckerberg's metaverse ambitions. Many experts also warn startups to prepare for a worse scenario when high interest rates hinder the ability to raise capital, leading to the need to adjust personnel.
The scale of the layoffs, however, still falls short of those seen after the collapse of the dotcom bubble at the turn of the century. According to Challenger, in 2001, the technology industry lost 168,395 jobs, followed by 131,294 in 2002. Since then, many of the companies that have survived have grown into major technology corporations.