Making Sense Of Tech Layoffs

A <a href="https://www.cnbc.com/2023/01/18/tech-layoffs-microsoft-amazon-meta-others-have-cut-more-than-60000.html" rel="noopener ugc nofollow" target="_blank">CNBC article written in mid-January</a> 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. <a href="https://news.crunchbase.com/startups/tech-layoffs/" rel="noopener ugc nofollow" target="_blank">This article by Crunchbase</a> states that more than 140,000 jobs were cut in 2022. <a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/Futurology/comments/10s743n/over_85000_tech_workers_have_been_laid_off_since/" rel="noopener ugc nofollow" target="_blank">More than a few people on Reddit have pointed out that these numbers do not tell the whole story</a>. If you write that thousands of tech workers were laid off, it leads to two natural questions: <ul> <li>What constitutes a tech company?</li> <li>What constitutes a tech worker?</li> </ul> Before I continue, I am going to put up a critical comment I received on one of my blogs. <img alt="" src="https://miro.medium.com/v2/resize:fit:473/1*jQwGVzfG6tE8nYOQ4hUo1w.png" style="height:222px; width:473px" /> 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. <h2>Why Is This Happening?</h2> 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. <a href="https://changelog.com/podcast/516" rel="noopener ugc nofollow" target="_blank">Meta, which hired 20,000 people in 2022 before cutting 11,000</a> (at least according to Orosz, in this ChangeLog podcast episode), is a good example of why this should be taken into consideration. <a href="https://evan-soohoo.medium.com/making-sense-of-tech-layoffs-fc244eba05a9">Read More</a>