Several companies have announced job cuts in the last three months in an effort to control costs as there is growing concern about a recession storm that may hit soon as a result of Ukraine's invasion and high inflation. According to a detailed report published by Crunchbase, over 32,000 employees in Silicon Valley had been fired as of July 2022. Hundreds of employees have been laid off by major technology companies such as Netflix, Shopify, Coinbase, and others.
We've been hearing about mass layoffs almost every week, implying that no job is currently as stable, and 2022 is shaping up to be another bad year for many people who are losing jobs for no apparent reason. While some tech companies have already frozen the hiring process, many are immediately laying off some of their employees to weather the economic uncertainty. In July, 64 prominent US technology companies announced job cuts, totaling more than 32,000 thousands employees in layoffs.
Shopify
According to Crunchbase data, Shopify, a popular e-commerce platform, laid off over 1,000 employees last month. Job cuts have occurred in the recruiting, support, and sales departments. Tobi Lutke, the company CEO, claims the platform is simply reducing "over-specialized" and duplicate roles. This appears to be a cost-cutting measure, as he claims that the company has recently hired more employees to meet expected growth, with the expectation that the e-commerce industry will continue to grow after the coronavirus pandemic.
Twitter also fired 30 percent of its talent acquisition team, according to a report in the Wall Street Journal. The quoted source says that the micro-blogging site was facing "increasing business pressure" and it is restructuring its talent acquisition team due to revised business requirements. Microsoft also laid off 1 percent of its 1,80,000 employees as it plans to make some structural adjustments and meet business needs.
TikTok
According to a recent Wired report, TikTok has begun laying off employees in the name of company-wide restructuring and plans to fire less than 100 employees. Other start-ups, such as Whoop, a fitness wearable company, laid off 15% of their workforce. Vimeo, a video-sharing platform, is said to have fired 72 employees. Outbrain, Niantic, Gemini, and other tech companies are among those that have laid off a large number of employees.
Netflix
Netflix laid off 450 employees and many contractors in just two months, following a drop in subscriber growth and revenue. The layoffs were done, according to the company, to control expenses and ensure that costs are in line with their "slower revenue growth."
Coinbase
The cryptocurrency industry has also been impacted, with popular platforms like Coinbase laying off over 1,100 employees, or roughly 18% of its workforce. The layoff was blamed on "economic conditions," according to Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong, who also stated that Coinbase "over-hired" because crypto was gaining traction on a weekly basis.
Meanwhile, other popular tech companies such as Spotify, Apple, Meta, and Google have announced plans to either freeze or slow down the hiring process, while a few have simply reduced their hiring target for this year and stated that they will continue to hire.