Currently, the tech sector is having difficulty surviving the recent economic downturn. 2022 was a challenging year due to the effects of the post-pandemic market, slow revenue growth, and potential for a recession. Nearly all the main players, including Amazon, Twitter, Meta, Apple, and Google, sacked people to reduce costs and restructure the teams in order to manage expenses amid the pandemonium. Things were horrible, but it doesn’t appear that anything will change in 2023. The market is still unstable, there are more layoffs, and a recession is on the horizon.
Thousands of Amazon employees have already been announced as being terminated or layoffs globally. To save expenses, even Indian-based businesses like Ola and Dunzo are laying off hundreds of workers. Twitter is still laying off staff in phases. According to data from Layoffs.fyi, a website that analyzes all layoffs at digital startups, 91 tech companies worldwide let go of 24151 people in January 2023.
Here are the biggest IT layoffs scheduled for 2022.
Amazon
Amazon made hundreds of layoffs last year due to the state of the economy, and the practice will continue in 2023. CEO Andy Jassy recently acknowledged in a blog post that Amazon is continuing layoffs and terminating some 18000 workers across international operations. “Over 18,000 roles will be cut, according to our strategy. Several teams are affected, but our Amazon Stores and PXT organizations saw the most role eliminations “Jassy penned the blog entry. The latest layoffs affected Amazon India as well, and the effected staff received 5 months of severance money.
Cisco
In the interim, Cisco laid off about 700 workers in its most recent wave of layoffs. Employees from a variety of disciplines, including software and hardware engineering, program management, product design, marketing, and more, reportedly lost their jobs at the American company. According to a report by SFGATE, 371 of the 700 affected workers came from the company’s headquarters in San Jose, California.
Salesforce
Salesforce, an American provider of cloud-based technology, recently announced that 10% of its workers would be let go. As a cost-cutting effort due to low sales, the corporation recently announced the closure of some of its offices.
According to Reuters, Salesforce would be held liable for expenses related to layoffs between $1.4 billion and $2.1 billion. However, it will only generate between $800 million and $1 billion in income in the final three months. In the formal message to staff, co-CEO of Salesforce Marc Benioff stated that “the climate remains challenging and our clients are taking a more careful approach to their purchasing decisions.”
Coinbase
Brian Armstrong, the chief executive of Coinbase, recently said in an official blog post that the business plans to slash operating costs by around 25%, “which involves letting go of about 950 workers.” The corporation is “fully funded,” according to Armstrong, and “crypto isn’t going anywhere.” But given the persistent economic uncertainty, “I’ve decided to make the challenging choice to cut our operating expense (1) by around 25% Q/Q, which means firing about 950 workers (2). We’ll let everyone on the affected team know by today “He went on to say.
Ola
Ola, a ride-hailing firm based in India, sacked 200 members of its technical and product team in the most recent wave of layoffs. Prior to 2022, the corporation laid off about 1100 workers under the pretext of restructuring. Employees in the Ola Cabs, Ola Electric, and Ola Financial Services sectors were particularly affected by the recent layoffs.
Dunzo
In order to reduce costs, Bengaluru-based startup Dunzo recently announced that it would lay off 3% of its personnel. In a CNBC-TV 18 report Kabeer Biswas, co-founder and CEO of Dunzo, stated that the company is providing “the best assistance” for workers during this trying period. Any choice that affects individuals is difficult and is always our final resort, he said.
ShareChat
ShareChat, an Indian social media platform, also disclosed layoffs earlier on Monday. Announcing layoffs on Monday, the Google-backed social media company SharChat cited “a number of external macro variables that effect the cost and availability of funding.”
According to the source, the most recent round of layoffs is expected to result in the termination of 500 or so employees at ShareChat and its short-form video app Moj. In an official statement, ShareChat was quoted by NDTV as saying, “We’ve had to take some of the most difficult and painful decisions in our history as a company and had to let go of roughly 20% of our tremendously bright staff who have been with us in this start-up journey.”
Crypto.com
Co-founder of cryptocurrency exchange crypto.com Kris Marszalek stated plans to cut the workforce by 20%. The company let go about 250 workers earlier in 2022, blaming the demise of FTX for the drop in sales.
According to Marszalek, the employee performance was unrelated to the layoffs. However, the company’s choice to cut its staff was influenced by a number of additional considerations. In order to prepare the company for long-term success, he stated, “we made the tough but essential choice to make significant reductions as we continue to focus on smart financial management.”
Vodafone
Vodafone, a telecom service provider, recently announced plans to reduce costs to around $1.08 billion by 2026 as a result of declining income and losses. The corporation intends to remove hundreds of staff as part of a cost-cutting measure, primarily from its London headquarters. The Financial Times reports that although the precise number of affected staff is unknown, the planned layoffs will be the organization’s “largest round of employment cuts in five years.”
In a new round of layoffs, Twitter, which is run by Elon Musk, fired workers from its trust and safety team, which mostly manages worldwide content moderation, as well as from the division in charge of hate speech and harassment. The workers were let go from their departments at the Twitter offices in Dublin and Singapore.
Notably, before Musk became CEO in late October, Twitter had more than 7,000 employees. However, the company had to fire more than half of its employees after two consecutive rounds of layoffs.
