since the start By 2023, more than 150,000 people, large and small, will be laid off at tech companies. That’s a staggering number of people who have lost their jobs.
Considering how Meta, Amazon, and Salesforce handled these layoffs, things get even grimer.
Salesforce announced in January that it would lay off 10% of its approximately 80,000 employees. Since then, it’s been letting people go little by little. Amazon also announced in January that he would lay off 18,000 employees, and this week he will lay off another 9,000. Meta said he laid off 11,000 in November and another 10,000 in the second round this week. In addition, the company closed another 5,000 open records.
Some say this cruel, rolling approach to layoffs leaves employees feeling anxious and uncertain about their position while mourning the loss of valued colleagues who have been laid off.
Investors, on the other hand, seem to prefer layoffs as a way to make companies more efficient. CEOs are usually less concerned with employee well-being in order to keep investors happy.
Of course, the argument goes that these companies overhired during the recent tech boom. Now is the time to scale to better fit the changing market. The argument becomes more important if the company in question is not profitable. But America’s tech giants are all too often profitable and incredibly wealthy, even as their market caps plummet from record highs.
While there is some truth to the idea that companies have grown too fast in recent years and need a reset, layoffs feel like the worst short-term thinking. Sacrificing employees to please investors. Are companies at least getting what investors want out of this devilish deal?
Investor reaction
If a company is trying to impress investors with cost-cutting measures, you can gauge how effective the layoffs are by how investors respond to them.
