Become smarter in just 5 minutes
Morning Brew delivers fast, insightful updates about the business world, from Wall Street to Silicon Valley, every day.
Tech companies have apparently made slimming down their new year’s resolution, as a shocking number of layoff announcements made tech company employees feel like Bill Murray in the first two weeks of 2024 It seems so. marmot day After significant layoffs in 2023.
Numbers: Fourteen days into the new year, 46 technology companies have laid off about 7,500 employees, according to layoffs tracker Layoffs.fyi. Some notable announcements:
- Google Last Wednesday, the company announced it would lay off about 1,000 employees from Google Assistant, core engineering, and hardware teams responsible for Pixel, Nest, and Fitbit.
- Amazon The company cut hundreds of jobs at Audible, Twitch, MGM Studios and Prime Video.
- discord, of The messaging app, which is aiming for an IPO, has cut its staff by 17%.
- apple, The company will close its 121-person team working on AI in San Diego, avoiding large-scale layoffs at rivals in 2023, Bloomberg reported.
It’s not just about technology. In the financial sector, Citigroup announced that it will reduce its global workforce by 10% (20,000 employees) over the next two years, and BlackRock plans to lay off 600 people, or about 3% of its workforce.
Still, this probably doesn’t mean 2023 will start again
Last year, the tech company cut about 263,000 jobs, acknowledging that the rapid growth it experienced during the pandemic was largely due to the coronavirus and the low interest rate anomaly. And tech employees whose teams have just been wiped out are probably wondering if the math isn’t done yet.
Despite the wave of layoffs continuing into 2024, experts told Wired that the current round of layoffs is very different from those of past years and isn’t all that ominous. Told.
Many of the layoffs in early 2024 reflect relatively healthy tech companies shuffling their priorities as generative AI craze continues to grow, rather than fundamental cost-cutting efforts. This may not be reassuring for anxious employees, but this is what we have experienced in the past. Data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics shows that layoffs have historically spiked near the end of the fiscal year in December and January. Meanwhile, employment across the U.S. economy remains strong, with the unemployment rate dropping to 3.7% in December.NF
Source link
