Big Tech Layoffs: Which Corporate Giants Have Recently Announced Job Cuts & Hiring Freeze
Many large organizations have laid off employees in recent months as inflation keeps on rising and fears of a recession loom ahead
Over the past few weeks, many major companies across the world have laid off large portions of their global workforce in a bid to save costs and be prepared for the possible recession that economists are predicting is coming. Major companies like Meta, Amazon, Twitter, Byjus, etc, have laid off a large number of employees and stopped/slowed down hiring recently. During Covid-19, many of these companies had seen record growth as most people had to depend on online services to fulfil their needs, so companies hired a large number of employees to deal with this demand.
As the pandemic subsided and people started going out again, the demand fell and many of these employees' jobs became redundant. Moreover, rising levels of inflation, fears of a recession and an overall unstable economy made the general public more cautious with their spending habits, which directly led to the profits of these major corporations going down. As a result, many of these companies decided to lay off employees and freeze hiring to save costs and possibly make more profits.
List of Companies That Have Implemented A Hiring Freeze/Hiring Slowdown
Let’s take a look at the major companies in India and across the world that have put a hiring freeze into effect:
Meta: As announced by Mark Zuckerberg, Meta has reportedly laid-off around 11,000 staff from their global workforce and the company has also made plans to freeze hiring across many major departments in the company. As per Bloomberg, Meta plans to shrink budgets and implement hiring freezes in departments that they had been recently investing in, which was mainly the VR metaverse and Reels to compete with TikTok.
Amazon: As per recent reports, one of the world’s largest tech giants, Amazon is reportedly planning to cut down their global staff by around 10,000 in an effort to save on costs and reduce inefficient spending. As per New York Times, these job cuts will affect multiple departments, such as the people working on AI voice assistant Alexa, the retail division and the human resource department. Along with this, Amazon has also reportedly implemented a hiring freeze across multiple departments globally.
LinkedIn: The CEO of LinkedIn revealed to CNBC-TV18 that while the company did not have any plans of laying off employees, there would hiring freezes implemented in various departments of the company, after considering the global economic conditions.
Apple: The CEO of Apple, Tim Cook confirmed in an interview with CBS Mornings that Apple is looking to slow down hiring in the coming year and be more prudent about costs considering the unstable economic conditions worldwide.
Twitter: After Elon Musk took over the social media giant, he reportedly fired around 50%-70% of the company’s staff in order to cut down costs. Since Elon Musk did a leveraged buyout of Twitter, the company now needs to pay around $1.2 billion dollars in debt and interest repayments per year. As the company wasn’t profitable at the moment, Elon Musk had to implement a hiring freeze and lay off around half of the total global staff.
Byjus: As per reports that came out in October, Byjus, one of the largest Indian ed-tech companies also reportedly plans to lay off around 2500 employees, which is around 5% of its total workforce. Moreover, in a bid to cut costs and become profitable Byjus is also reportedly slowing down the hiring process in certain departments.
Related read: Byju's To Cut 2,500 Jobs As It Targets To Turn Profitable By March
Zoho Corp: Another major Indian tech company, Zoho Corp recently announced that while they are going to keep investing in their research and development departments (R&D), the hiring process in the company is going to slow down keeping the current economic conditions in mind. The slowdown in hiring could also be attributed to the fact that the company’s growth has slowed down in 2022 compared to 2021.