2022 has seen a considerable increase in layoffs within the tech industry, with two of its major players, Amazon and Meta, recently announcing slashes to their workforces.
The New York Times reported yesterday that Amazon is set to axe up to 10,000 of its staff which despite only being 1% of the ecommerce giant’s overall workforce, represents another significant example of the pressures tech firms have faced this year.
The NYT report noted that the Amazon cuts are mainly due to the company’s heightened focus on its technology and devices division, such as Alexa-based products, with aims to renew time and focus on its human resources and retail units too.
“We’re as optimistic about Alexa’s future today as we’ve ever been, and it remains an important business and area of investment for Amazon,” said Amazon CEO Andy Jassy.
Meta also cut its workforce down to bolster its social media platforms into ecommerce “super apps”, and to continue to develop its metaverse projects.
Mark Zuckerberg, Meta CEO, announced last week that the tech giant cut 11,000 members of its staff following disappointing Q3 results. One Meta investor even highlighted Meta’s ‘bloated workforce’ as a cause of the company’s recent decline this year, noting that there is “too many people, too many ideas, too little urgency”.
However, Meta and Amazon are not the only major firms to have made major cutbacks on staff in recent weeks. After his $44bn Twitter purchase, Elon Musk axed almost 50% of its staff citing financial difficulties upon arriving as its new CEO.
Within the fintech sector, most notably Klarna and Shopify, made slashes to its workforce as Klarna CEO, Sebastian Siemiatkowski, highlighted “macro and geopolitical factors” as a cause to axing 10% of his staff.
Current economic difficulties have played a significant role in the difficulties tech companies have endured this year, which has impacted funding within the fintech sector too.
Tech research base site TrueUp reveals that November is already the highest number of staff layoffs this year (35,903), with two more weeks to follow.
