Tech companies finished 2022 on a gloomy note following the pandemic boom of a couple of years. To rein in the over-hiring during the Covid period and prepare for what analysts refer to as a period of "slower industry growth", thousands of jobs were slashed across the sector.
After a bumpy start to the pandemic in 2020, tech companies benefited from a boom in e-commerce spending and remote work, triggering a hiring spree. Now, things look different. In recent earnings reports, Alphabet Inc., Meta Platforms Inc., Microsoft Corp. and others missed estimates, sending shares plunging. For Amazon.com Inc. and Salesforce Inc., the outlook seems to be worsening as they pursue deeper layoffs at the start of 2023. Other companies are reckoning with volatile cryptocurrency markets or a sudden slump in demand.
Meta, the parent company of Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp cut its employment by 13 per cent in November and continued a recruiting moratorium through the first quarter of 2023.
10,000 jobs were supposedly cut by Amazon. The company claimed to have 1.54 million staff members worldwide, including both full- and part-timers but excluding independent contractors and temporary workers.
Alibaba, the Chinese digital behemoth, laid off roughly 10,000 employees in an effort to reduce costs in the face of weak sales and a weakening economy.
Also Read: UK retail giant Tesco to axe over 2,000 jobs
Before Elon Musk took over, Twitter had close to 7,500 people; today, it has roughly 2,700, the recent layoff being on the evening before Thanksgiving.Layoffs in India
As global layoffs deepen, Indian startups are not far behind and have sacked thousands of employees in the past 3-4 months, with many more to be given pink slips in the coming months amid deepening funding winter.
In India, more than 21,000 employees have been laid off by more than 70 startups to date, including unicorns like BYJU'S, Ola, MPL, Innovaccer, Unacademy, Vedantu, Cars24, OYO, Meesho, Udaan and many more.
The edtech sector has laid off the most employees, with 16 edtech startups laying off more than 8,000 employees to date. Byju's stated in October that it would lay off 5 per cent (or 2,500) of its staff over the following six months, with the company hoping to start making a profit by March this year.
With the onset of January, more and more Indian companies are slashing jobs across the spectrum. The new year has already seen more than 16 homegrown startups sack employees in the country.
Social media company ShareChat (Mohalla Tech Pvt Ltd) has laid off 20 per cent of its workforce due to uncertain market conditions.
Backed by Twitter, Google, Snap and Tiger Global, ShareChat has about 2,300 employees, and the layoff impacted about 500 people at the company.
Online food delivery platform Swiggy confirmed that the company is laying off 380 employees as food delivery growth slows.
Even IT giant Wipro has laid off more than 400 fresher employees for poor performance in internal assessment tests.
Online marketplace OLX Group confirmed slashing 15 per cent of its workforce, or more than 1,500 employees, globally including in India as part of restructuring amid the global meltdown and recession fears.
Quick-grocery delivery provider Dunzo has laid off 3 per cent of its workforce amid cost-cutting measures.
Cyber-security company Sophos laid off about 450 people globally including in India -- which is 10 per cent of its workforce -- to achieve "the optimal balance of growth and profitability".
'Demand for non-tech jobs grew during December 2022 in India'
Amid reports on layoffs by multinational technology companies, a recent report has revealed that there has been an increase in demand for talent in non-tech sectors in India, including healthcare, food services, construction and education in December 2022.
Global job site Indeed's monthly jobs insights showed that healthcare-allied fields such as dental and nursing have the highest job postings on its platform at 30.8 per cent in December 2022.
This was followed by food services (8.8 per cent), construction (8.3 per cent), architecture (7.2 per cent), education (7.1 per cent), therapy 6.3 per cent, and marketing (6.1), among others, the report added.
The report further revealed that Bengaluru tops the list of cities in job postings, occupying 16.5 per cent of the total share.
Bengaluru is closely followed by Mumbai at 8.23 per cent, Pune at 6.33 per cent and Chennai at 6.1 per cent, it stated.
Layoffs in 2023 and what more to come
The year 2023 began on a bad note for tech workers globally and 91 companies have laid off more than 24,000 tech employees in the first 15 days this month, signaling worse days ahead.
About 24,151 tech workers lost their jobs, dominated by companies like Amazon, Salesforce, Coinbase, and others, according to Layoffs.fyi. Crypto lending exchange Crypto.com last week announced that the company will reduce its global workforce by approximately 20 per cent amid ongoing economic headwinds and unforeseeable industry events.
In January, music streaming giant Spotify announced plans to lay off 600 employees as it sought to control its operating expenditure that grew at twice the speed of its revenue last year.
Google's parent company Alphabet announced in January it will cut about 12,000 jobs globally, citing a changing economic reality as it became the latest US tech giant to enact large-scale restructuring.
"Over the past two years we've seen periods of dramatic growth," Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai said in an email to employees.
"To match and fuel that growth, we hired for a different economic reality than the one we face today."
Chip-maker Intel joined the bandwagon, starting to lay off nearly 340 employees at one of its campuses in the US. In total, the chip giant plans to cut 500 jobs in California.
Embattled Dutch medical tech maker Philips said Monday that it would slash 6,000 more jobs worldwide in a bid to restore profitability after a massive recall of faulty sleep respirators.
The Amsterdam-based firm revealed the "difficult but necessary" job cuts as it announced a loss of 1.6 billion euros for 2022, largely on the back of the safety issue.
The layoffs come just months after Philips announced it was cutting 4,000 jobs out of a total workforce of just under 80,000 employees around the globe.
German software giant SAP confirmed plans to cut 3,000 jobs, or 2.5 per cent of its global workforce in a bid to cut costs, agencies reported that New York-based computing giant IBM would reduce some 3,900 jobs, slightly more than one per cent of its staff.
(With Agency, DHNS inputs)