Google, Microsoft, Facebook – the giants slow down a lot. Not only them. This is the effect of new, worse times

Alphabet (Google), Amazon, Microsoft and Meta (Facebook) are just some of the tech giants that shed employees this year. And not hundreds, but thousands of people. These four of the world’s five largest tech companies alone have laid off tens of thousands of people. And that’s only this year.

200 thousand people lost their jobs. In less than half a year

It was impossible not to hear about layoffs in large technology companies from Silicon Valley recently. Staff cuts, announced in more and more corporations, most often involve up to several thousand people at the same time and are extremely loud about them in the media. For example, a tech site a few days ago a website with a “kill counter” in the tech industry. It shows that only from January to May this year. Over 190,000 people lost their jobs. people. The most in January (almost 85 thousand), and the least in May (13.3 thousand). According to the counter, the number of layoffs in tech companies since the beginning of the year has already exceeded 202,000. employees (203.8 thousand people from 754 companies).

The most powerful corporations in the tech world with Amazon, Meta, Microsoft and Alphabet are responsible for such numbers. For example, in January alone, the first of these companies got rid of 18,000 jobs. of employees, the owner of Google said goodbye to 12 thousand. people, and the company responsible for Windows had to say goodbye to 10,000. employees. Layoffs, although on a smaller scale, are also visible in smaller technology companies – for example in Yahoo, Twitter, Dell, PayPal, Lyft, Disney and Dropbox. As she wrote a few days ago, referring to the words of an expert, we are still not dealing with a wave of redundancies, but only a “wrinkle”. These numbers – although they seem huge – are not very significant in the case of the largest technology companies. According to experts, they do not yet mean a crisis in the industry, but are the result of earlier decisions.

Where does the wave of layoffs in the tech industry come from?

We hear about them so often because they concern the most well-known employers, which is why they are extremely popular in the media and often completely unexpected. Even during the pandemic, the same companies hired new employees en masse, despite the fact that the general trend in other industries was completely opposite. station some time ago, only during the pandemic Amazon doubled its staff, employing almost 800,000. new people. It was then that this and many other companies were hiring people to power, experiencing a large demand for technology.

Now, however, we are seeing the effect of entering more difficult times, after a period of development favorable for the industry in the pandemic. The economic environment is difficult, and companies naturally look for ways to cut costs. In addition to reducing jobs, the giants of the tech world are trying to save on other expenses. Suffice it to say that Google, which has been at the forefront of the absolute best employers for years,