Major layoffs

Those just concluded have been difficult weeks for the tech giants. The so-called “tech winter” had been underway for several months, as stock market valuations of industry stocks plummeted and new funding for startups dried up. The last few weeks, however, have been even more significant in showing how serious the slowdown in the technology sector is. The difficult macroeconomic environment also led to drastic decisions for Big Tech, which in turn announced flurries of layoffs or hiring freezes(The Post).

Maxi cuts

Amazon has let it be known that it will cut 10,000 jobs in the United States. Now there is a wait and see on whether a wave of layoffs will also affect workers based in Italy. Then it was the turn of Meta, owner of social networking sites Facebook, Instagram and Whatsapp, which will lay off 11,000 of its 87,000 employees worldwide. A drastic cut that also affected Facebook’s Italian headquarters, where 22 employees out of the total 127 will be left at home. These were joined by such an extreme case as Twitter. Elon Musk laid off half of the company’s workers. Then he changed his mind, telling some that he had made a mistake and asking those left behind to choose between “hardcore” work rhythms or dismissal with severance equal to three months’ salary. Many preferred to leave(Courier).

Two factors

But what is going on? In the course of the pandemic, our lives moved online, and because of this, the activities of the tech giants exploded. In fact, at that time Meta had hired more than 15,000 people, Amazon had hired 3,000 permanent employees only in 2021. Today the managers who announced the cuts explained that they had miscalculated and acted too optimistically during the harshest phase of the pandemic. Added to this factor today is the issue of online ads, which are the main source of revenue for many Big Techs. The problem is that companies in recent months have faced increasing opposition in intrusive advertising practices and, with galloping inflation, many of them have been forced to cut their online advertising budgets(The Atlantic).

• News of the death of Big Tech is (for now) greatly exaggerated(Linkiesta).
• Layoffs in Big Tech are a boon for climate change companies(Washington Post).