Google 12,000
Microsoft 10,000
Facebook 11.0000

They must know something.

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/g...habet-tech-industry/

They know the economy is not good and is getting worse.

The snowball has been started. Dot-com crash 2.0. The tech sector was not prepared for such a sudden increase in interest rates. Would not want to be in the tech industry right now.

I heard an analysis that I agree with, having been in technology business as a management consultant for over 30 years.

It’s not the economy.

This was all started by Facebook doing some really bad hiring over the last couple of years (40,000 added in 24 months); it gave all the other tech companies an excuse to do what they should’ve been doing during the fat, dumb and happy years, which is managing their staff.

I’ve been saying for a long time that the 10% cuts are normal in business and we haven’t seen any for a long time.

That’s all this is, business as usual/normal.

What they know is that they over hired. I suspect they (the FANG) could do another layoff of the same amount of folks and probably not impact their profits.

quote:

Originally posted by 2PAK:
What they know is that they over hired. I suspect they (the FANG) could do another layoff of the same amount of folks and probably not impact their profits.

Yep. My son is a senior software engineer and he just got a recruitment email from a company that has announced that they are laying off 10,000 employees. Obviously just too much dead weight that they didn’t care about when things were uncontrollably going up.

We do a ton of business in California and everything is massively over staffed compared to the rest of the country. I wouldn’t have thought the high tech industry was the same.

quote:

Originally posted by SIGnified:
This was all started by Facebook doing some really bad hiring over the last couple of years (40,000 added in 24 months); ...

If what we've been reading about Twitter since Musk took over, it wasn't just Meta.

One suspects all these big tech companies over-hired. Now the economy's tightening and they're saddled with bloated, inefficient staffs--much of which have probably contributed little, if anything, to the bottom line.

I'm reminded of the employer from which I retired. The President and CEO, a real hardcore, old-school businessman, once told everybody at a staff meeting something like "Everybody needs to be thinking in terms of what they're bringing to the party. If they don't know, then the answer is probably nothing."

This, IIRC, was shortly before the 2008 recession.

Having worked for a tech company that went from 330 in late 1990 when I joined to 12,000 in mid ‘97 when I left, it was very clear that there was “not enough time to hire carefully and not enough time to deal with the problem hires.” The tech bubble burst of 2000 could have been a great opportunity for housecleaning and some good was done, but they weren’t as discerning as they could have been. I’d be surprised if the story wasn’t the same elsewhere.

Any company that has grown as rapidly as some of these companies has is absolutely going to have deadwood that needs pruning.

A lot of companies are laying off a lot of people. There are many on LinkedIn writing how they can't get a job after hunting for 4 to 8 months now, some I know personally, something that wasn't common a year ago. Between the recession, inflation, and the question now is whether this is another 2008 or something very different.

Not hard to imagine the work place environment Elon walked into at Twitter isn’t very different from other tech companies.

High Techies need to learn to

my brother is one let go from Google

Google is giving a very generous severance package. the others not so much. Im not going to disclose but hes taken care of for a while

hes intensely intelligent (MBA's from both Columbia and Haas) we had a lengthy conversation last night, no doubt he will land on his feet again. Within hours of updating his LinkedIn page he already had offers

its theorized the mandatory 15% corporate tax is part of this, wall street has been warning them for years they over staffed

Not at Apple.

How Apple Has So Far Avoided Layoffs: Lean Hiring, No Free Lunches

Layoffs have hit the tech industry hard—except at Apple Inc. AAPL 1.92%increase; green up pointing triangle

The world’s largest company has so far avoided the job cuts rippling through peers including Microsoft Corp., Google, Meta Platforms Inc. and Amazon.com Inc.

No company is certain to avoid significant cutbacks in an economic environment as volatile as the current one, and Apple isn’t immune to the business challenges that have hit other tech giants. It is expected next month to report its first quarterly sales decline in more than three years. Apple has also slowed hiring in some areas.

But the iPhone maker has been better positioned than many rivals to date in part because it added employees at a much slower clip than those companies during the pandemic. It also tends to run lean, with limited employee perks and businesses focused on hardware products and sales that have so far largely dodged the economic downturn, investors say.

An Apple spokesman declined to comment.



From its fiscal year-end in September 2019 to September 2022, Apple’s workforce grew by about 20% to approximately 164,000 full-time employees. Meanwhile, over roughly the same period, the employee count at Amazon doubled, Microsoft’s rose 53%, Google parent Alphabet Inc.’s increased 57% and Facebook owner Meta’s ballooned 94%.

Apple has about 65,000 retail employees working in more than 500 stores who make up roughly 40% of the company’s total workforce.

On Friday, Alphabet became the latest tech company to announce widespread layoffs, with a plan to eliminate roughly 12,000 jobs, the company’s largest-ever round of job cuts.

Alphabet’s cut follows a wave of large layoffs at Amazon, Microsoft and Meta. The tech industry has seen more than 200,000 layoffs since the start of 2022, according to Layoffs.fyi, a website that tracks cuts in the sector as they surface in media reports and company releases.

The last big round of layoffs at Apple happened way back in 1997, when co-founder Steve Jobs returned to the company, which then cut costs by firing 4,100 employees.

So far, Apple’s core business has shown itself to be resilient against broader downturns in the market. The other four tech giants have suffered amid slowdowns in digital advertising, e-commerce and PCs. In its September quarter, Apple reported that sales at its most important business—the iPhone—advanced 9.7% from the previous year to $42.6 billion, surpassing analyst estimates.

Tech Layoffs Pile Up as Bosses Reverse Course



Play video: Tech Layoffs Pile Up as Bosses Reverse Course
After a period of aggressive hiring to meet heightened demand for online services during the pandemic, tech companies are now laying off many of those workers. And tech bosses are saying “mea culpa” for the miscalculation. WSJ reporter Dana Mattioli joins host Zoe Thomas to talk through the shift and what it all means for the tech sector going forward.
Apple may face a rougher December quarter, which it is scheduled to report on Feb. 2, as the company encountered manufacturing challenges in China, where strict zero-Covid policies damped much economic activity. Many analysts expect that demand hasn’t subsided for its iPhones and as the company continues to ramp back up manufacturing, demand is anticipated to move to the March quarter.

The company’s business model hasn’t been totally immune to broader slowdowns. Revenue from its services business continued to slow, growing 5% annually to $19.2 billion in the September quarter, shy of the gains posted in recent quarters.

Tom Forte, senior research analyst at investment bank D.A. Davidson & Co., said he expects Apple to reduce head count, but it might do that quietly through employee attrition—by not replacing workers who leave. The company could move in the direction of making other cuts or adjustments to perks that are common in Silicon Valley. Apple doesn’t offer free lunches to employees on its corporate campus, unlike other big tech companies such as Google and Meta.

N


Technology

A weekly digest of tech reviews, headlines, columns and your questions answered by WSJ's Personal Tech gurus.



Some of the tech giants cutting jobs have spent heavily on projects that are unlikely to turn into strong businesses anytime soon, said Daniel Morgan, a senior portfolio manager at Synovus Trust Co., which counts Apple among its largest holdings. “Both Meta and Google are terribly guilty of that,” he said.

Meta has been pouring billions of dollars into its Reality Labs for its new ambitions in the so-called metaverse. Meta Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg has defended the company’s spending on Reality Labs, suggesting that virtual reality will become an important technological platform.

After announcing the layoffs, Alphabet Chief Executive Sundar Pichai said the company had seen dramatic periods of growth during the past two years. “To match and fuel that growth, we hired for a different economic reality than the one we face today,” he wrote in a message to employees on Friday.

Apple also is working on risky future bets, such as an augmented-reality headset due out later this year and a car project whose release date is uncertain, but at a more measured pace.

Write to Aaron Tilley at aaron.tilley@wsj.com


link; https://www.wsj.com/articles/h...185?mod=hp_lead_pos9

The state of the economy isn't helping but, over-staffing (corporate gluttony) is a main driver behind these layoffs. Living amongst and near many of the people being affected, I've got to be honest, the amount of free time these people had, the amount of time away from their work, while envious, was more a result that there was just too many people. Marketing and Human Resource departments were grossly over-staffed, Engineering, Design & Development Departments were largely filled with H-1B visa holders ergo, saving the company money.

The perks were impressive however combined with the heavy-staffing, then things look excessive. In-house dining with various cafeterias was impressive, I certainly enjoyed being a guest on the Apple campus. Retaining high-end chefs for executives, private celebrity performances, grocery stores for employees and offering shuttle buses to offices from various stops in SF, Oak and Peninsula seemed reasonable but, again you look at where expenses are stacking up and such things look absurd. HR Departments were charged with maintaining morale and creating incentives to retain talent, they had an incredible budget to work with.

I worked in a lot of High Tech Silicon Valley companies doing contract jobs of a week or so duration for over 20 years.

I saw some incredible stuff but one of the nicest I saw was Yahoo corporate headquarters in Sunnyvale California. Lots of different foods, a kitchen area that was probably 75 yards long and 50 yards wide. Seating that was around the size of a football food. Almost any and all conceivable foods including cooked to order and all subsidized by Yahoo so you never paid much for lunch.

And if you used Yahoo maps from the net to get you to their headquarters, you ended up 2 blocks away. Took Management a few months to get that changed. The software boys thought it was hilarious, though, as they're the ones who did it.

quote:

Originally posted by mrvmax:
They know the economy is not good and is getting worse.

That and they had to ramp up with the Apocalypse-Wu_Flu causing many to use their services more.
Now that that has subsided a bit, they are adjusting the workforce.

A couple of us from work talked about the layoffs yesterday.

On the one hand, maybe there'll be some talent in the labor pool now -- we've been having trouble finding applicants.

On the other hand, we don't offer free gourmet coffee or napping spaces or bring-your-support-peacock-to-work day.

And you'd darned well better be willing to show up for work.

quote:

Not at Apple.

How Apple Has So Far Avoided Layoffs: Lean Hiring, No Free Lunches

It is not over over with. I know a guy that retired from them after many years. They replace his one position with 3 women. How would that be lean hiring?

quote:

Originally posted by corsair:

Engineering, Design & Development Departments were largely filled with H-1B visa holders

A horribly abused program.

The intent was to help companies find employees if no qualified American workers could be found. Instead, greedy employers are abusing this program to hire off-shore cheap workers, leaving more qualified American workers unemployed.