It would seem 2022 is the year of workforce downsizing in the tech world. Several tech companies in the world have gone through several degrees of job cuts, and this includes the tech giants. Indeed, it is a trying time for techies, especially those in active employment with these companies.
This has added a big number of professionals to the pool of techies without jobs, further saturating the already saturated job market. The reason for these incessant layoffs is not uniform as these companies give varied reasons for going ahead with the layoffs. However, two reasons tend to keep rearing its head: some companies claim that the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic are starting to bite into their finances, while some companies admitted that during their period of growth, they had hired more workforce than they should have, creating a workforce size they could not manage.
Here’s a list of 10 companies that have laid off some of their workers recently:
Meta
Starting with the most recent layoff. Facebook’s parent company – Meta – recently fired 11,000 workers. This comes after the company recorded dwindling revenue accompanied by the Q4 financial performance that wiped out a quarter of the company’s market cap. The company’s loss is not unconnected from the CEO’s optimistic investments in Metaverse. The company has promised to provide some soft-landing for the laid-off workers.
Billionaire and new Twitter “landlord” came in with a bang. Barely a week after completing the acquisition of Twitter, Elon Musk, announced that there will be job cuts in the company, and this was followed by about 3,700 job losses in the company. Musk said the layoff was imminent, especially as the company is said to be losing $4 million daily.
Snap
In August, Snap laid off 20% of more than 6,400 of its workforce. The job cut affected the team working on Zenly, which is a social messaging app the company bought in 2017. The job cut also affected some members of its hardware department. The company had employed massively during the COVID-19 pandemic, increasing its workforce strength by 38%. Apparently, the number became unsustainable, especially due to the poor post-pandemic performance, and the trouble it experienced with Apple’s crackdown on ad tracking on IOS devices.
Salesforce
Customer relationship management platform, Salesforce, also laid off hundreds of its workforce last week. Although the job cut is expected to reach 2,500, reports have it that so far, less than 1000 workers have been fired. Earlier this year, Salesforce has over 70,000 workers, and further increased the number by 36% in August. Salesforce claimed the reason for reducing its workforce is connected to its revenue that performed lower than expected, and it affected stocks. The company said sales went down in Europe and North America, and the backlash caused revenue to slow down.
Netflix
Streaming service provider, Netflix, was also hit with reasons to reduce its workforce, and it cut about 300 jobs in June of this year. The company said the decision was necessary to balance its running costs with its slow revenue growth.
Zendesk
Another Customer Relationship Management company, Zendesk, has also announced plans to layoff 5% of its overall workforce. This is expected to send about 350 of Zendesk’s workforce back to the unemployment pool. Zendesk has been going through financial storms since last year. In February, the company got an acquisition offer worth over $17 billion, but the offer was rejected. The company was later bought by an investment firm for $10.2 billion in June.
Stripe
Online payment platform, Stripe, also laid off about 14% of its workforce, which amounts to about 1,100 job losses. The company’s CEO, Patrick Collison said the layoff was necessary due to the rising inflation, and fears of a looming recession, tighter investment budget, and sparse funding. Collison noted that the leadership of the company made two mistakes: misjudging how much the internet economy would grow, and increasing operational costs too quickly.
Robinhood
The US-based retail brokerage company cited the 40-year high inflation and the crash of the crypto market as the reason for the layoff that affected, first, 9% of its workforce in April, followed by 23% in August.
Lyft
Ride-hailing company, Lyft, also reduced its workforce by 13% or about 700. The company’s reason for the job cut is similar to that of Stripe: fear of a looming recession and inflation. The company said, “We’re facing a probable recession sometime in the next year and rideshare insurance costs are going up.”
Coinbase
In a shocking turn of events, Coinbase announced it has lost over 8-% of its value this year as cryptocurrencies face near apocalypse. The company announced the job cut that affected over 1,000 of its workers.
The conditions that caused the job losses are still pretty much around. Should more layoffs be expected?
