Amazon plans to lay off 10,000 of its company and technology employees, New York Times second report.
Michel Springer / AP
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Michel Springer / AP
Amazon plans to lay off 10,000 of its company and technology employees, New York Times second report.
Michel Springer / AP
For more than two decades, the US tech industry has been a reliable source for a boom in stocks and high-paying jobs. Over a period of several weeks, its light dimmed and the ax fell.
This month, more than 24,000 tech workers were laid off at 72 companies, under layoff.fyi, which tracks job cuts in the tech industry. It’s safe to say a calculation is underway, even if each company is grappling with its own challenges. (See: Twitter.)
Many companies that make public statements cite at least one of two main reasons:
First, they hired a lot of staff during the pandemic, when everyone was extremely online. Now that the boom of the Internet has died down, offline life is back on, and those new hires seem too expensive.
Second, the broader economic woes have made brands more hesitant to spend on digital advertising – a source of revenue for many tech companies. High interest rates have ended the era of cheap venture capital.
Here are some of the companies that have announced the biggest job cuts.
Amazon: 10,000 jobs reported
The online retail and cloud computing giant plans to lay off about 10,000 employees in corporate and technology jobs, New York Times Be the first to report in Monday. Amazon did not respond to an NPR request to confirm the report.
As of this fall, Amazon employed more than 1.5 million full-time and part-time workers around the world, many in warehouses. 10,000 expected layoffs will include about 3% of Amazon’s corporate employees, according to Timesand a significantly smaller share of its total workforce.
The cuts are expected to focus on Amazon’s devices division, which includes Alexa, the company’s virtual assistant technology, as well as its human resources and retail divisions.
Earlier this month, the company Notice of the recruitment freeze about the company’s affairs. “We were facing an unusual macroeconomic environment and wanted to strike a balance between hiring and investing with thinking hard,” writes Beth Galetti, Amazon’s Senior Vice President of Experience and Technology. about this economy.
Meta: 11,000 jobs
The parent company of Facebook and Instagram, Meta, laid off 11,000 people last week – about 13% of employees.
CEO Mark Zuckerberg attributed the cuts to over-recruitment during the pandemic. In a letter to the employee posted on the company’s websitehe cites a slowdown in e-commerce, a broader economic downturn, increased competition and a drop in ad sales – the main way the company makes money.
“I got it wrong and I take responsibility for it,” he wrote.
The layoffs come as the company has invested billions of dollars in the so-called metaverse, billed as a virtual reality future in which people will work, mingle, exercise and go to concerts. But that’s an unproven bet on the future, and not everyone believes it should be the focus of the social media company.
Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg has made a big investment in the “metaverse,” which he showed off at a virtual event last year. Last week, Zuckerberg announced the company would lay off 13% of its employees.
Eric Risberg / AP
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Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg has made a big investment in the “metaverse,” which he showed off at a virtual event last year. Last week, Zuckerberg announced the company would lay off 13% of its employees.
Eric Risberg / AP
Zuckerberg said workforce cuts will affect the entire organization, with employee hiring being marginally impacted as fewer employees are expected next year. The hiring freeze until the end of the first quarter of 2023 will continue.
Twitter: about 3,700 jobs
Billionaire Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk bought the social media platform in late October and wasted no time cutting his workforce. He immediately overthrown the company’s board of directors, including the CEO, CFO and top attorney. Mass layoffs announced on November 4, with a cut of about 50% of staff.
“Regarding the reduction of Twitter’s workforce, unfortunately there is no other choice when the company is losing more than 4 million dollars / day,” Musk tweeted.
Co-founder and former CEO Jack Dorsey tweeted that he accepted the blame for hiring too many workers in recent years.
“I hold myself accountable for why everyone is in this situation: I scaled the company too quickly. I apologize for that,” he wrote.
Musk’s $44 billion acquisition of Twitter — which he’s been trying to get out of for several months — has left the company with $13 billion worth of new debt.
His brief tenure at the top of Twitter was marked by hasty changes that were quickly halted, including his plans for an improved Twitter Blue verification service that charges $8. dollars a month to get a blue check mark on one’s account. Accounts impersonating celebrities, major corporations, and Musk himself grew instantly, prompting Twitter to stop signing up for Twitter Blue twice in a week.
Key executives were not fired, including Twitter’s head of content safety and moderation on the platform, and the company’s chief privacy officer and chief compliance officer, resigned last week.
Stripe: about 1,000 jobs
Payment Processing Platform Stripe announced on November 3 that they have cut 14% of their workforce.
Stripe CEO Patrick Collison wrote in an email to employees that the pandemic has driven the world towards e-commerce, fueling the company’s growth.
The CEO said he and his brother and co-founder John Collison made “two very serious mistakes”: being too optimistic about the short-term growth of the internet economy and increasing their operating costs. Stripe is too fast.
“We are facing stubborn inflation, energy shocks, higher interest rates, reduced investment budgets and increasingly sparse funding for startups. … [M]any part of the developed world seems to be on the verge of a recession. We think 2022 represents the beginning of a different economic environment,” Collison wrote.
Sales force: hundreds of jobs
Salesforce, the company that makes cloud-based business software, laid off some of its employees last week, CNBC reported.
Salesforce said in a statement to NPR: “Our sales processes promote accountability. Unfortunately, that can lead to some people leaving the business and we support it. them through the transition”.
A source familiar with the cuts said they affected hundreds of employees in the sales organization.
Microsoft: less than 1,000 jobs
The software company cut its divisions last month, Axios reported. Less than 1,000 jobs have been cut, one source told Axios.
Requests for confirmation of dismissal were not immediately returned.
Zillow, Snap and Robinhood
Zillow, the online real estate marketplace, laid off 300 employees at the end of last month, TechCrunch report. Company lay off 25% of the workforce a year before it closed its instant buy service.
Snap, the company behind Snapchat, said in late August that cut 20% of the workforce. The layoffs affected about 1,200 employees, with the company’s full-time workforce of about 6,400 as of June.
Robinhood, the brokerage app company, lay off 23% of the workforce in August. That number goes up to 780 employees, according to Bloomberg. The company cut staff by 9% in April. “This hasn’t gone far enough,” Robinhood CEO Vlad Tenev wrote.
NPR’s Alina Selyukh contributed to this story.
