A CNBC article written in mid-January revealed that tech companies have laid off more than 70,000 employees in the last year — Google announced it would lay off 12,000, Microsoft is cutting 10,000 workers through March 31, and Amazon is planning to cut more than 18,000 employees. This article by Crunchbase states that more than 140,000 jobs were cut in 2022.
More than a few people on Reddit have pointed out that these numbers do not tell the whole story. If you write that thousands of tech workers were laid off, it leads to two natural questions:
- What constitutes a tech company?
- What constitutes a tech worker?
Before I continue, I am going to put up a critical comment I received on one of my blogs.
For the umpteenth time, this will be a blog post that basically just lists a bunch of articles and then comments on/rambles about them.
Why Is This Happening?
Clement has a pretty good explanation linked below. The factors include inflation, high interest rates (which were raised in response to inflation), and over-hiring. Meta, which hired 20,000 people in 2022 before cutting 11,000 (at least according to Orosz, in this ChangeLog podcast episode), is a good example of why this should be taken into consideration.