Big Tech continues to be immersed in a major crisis. According to the web portal Layoffs.fyi, technology companies have been laying off an average of 1,600 workers each day since the start of the year. This figure already equals 15% of the total number of employees laid off by some 1,000 technology companies in all of 2022 (154,256). In total, since Jan. 1, 2023, the number of people let go from just 101 technology companies is already 25,436.
Breitbart also notes that, between November 2022 and January 2023, Amazon, Meta and Salesforce will have laid off approximately 18,000, 11,000 and 8,000 staff members, respectively. Bussiness Insider reported that at Amazon, the job losses mainly affected corporate roles, including those working in the company's Devices and Books departments, as well as some human resources workers. Meta laid off staff in all departments, including some who worked in Reality Labs, the department that oversees the Metaverse. Salesforce mostly laid off off personnel working in the Slack and MuleSoft divisions.
The layoffs come as a result of the excessive hiring and expansion that Big Tech experienced during the pandemic. However, the tech bubble has burst, and these companies started having to let many workers go last year.
Big Tech, first in a long list of affected industries
The technology industry is not alone in having to lay off a significant portion of its workforce. The recession predicted by several economic experts led other companies such as Goldman Sachs and BlackRock to also announce staff cuts. Financial giant Goldman Sachs announced last week that it would let go a total of 3,000 employees worldwide, while the world's largest asset management firm, BlackRock, announced that for the first time in four years it would have to lay off 500 people.
Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff tried to justify his company’s downsizing in a letter he sent to his workers assuring that "as our revenue accelerated through the pandemic, we hired too many people leading into this economic downturn we’re now facing, and I take responsibility for that."
