Biggest job cuts announced by technology companies in the past 60 days

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The last few months have been tough on tech employees. Thousands of IT professionals have lost their jobs in the recent months. Since the beginning of the year 2023, Crunchbase estimates that some 91,000 workers in the tech industry have lost their jobs. Many analysts are terming 2023 to be ‘worst-ever year’ for IT employees. The unprecedented job cuts have taken place at both startups and some of the biggest companies. The numbers in Big Tech run into thousands. Here are the biggest technology job cuts of the past two months.

Amazon: 18,000

Amazon, one of the US’ largest employers, began slowly rolling out layoffs impacting 10,000 employees at the end of 2022. Those job cuts started with teams working on the company’s Alexa smart home and Luna cloud gaming segments. By January 2023, this number has swelled up to 18,000 workers spread out across divisions. CEO Andy Jassy announced the layoff news in an email to employees shared online titled, “Update from CEO Andy Jassy on role eliminations.” In the email Jassy said that he decided to make the additional cuts after meeting with leaders in the company to discuss ways to reduce costs amid a shaky economy and prioritize, “what matters most to customers and the long-term health of our businesses.”

Google: 12,000

Google is cutting 12,000 jobs, CEO Sundar Pichai said in a staff memo. The job losses will affect teams across the company including recruiting and corporate functions, as well as some engineering and products teams. The layoffs are global and will impact US employees immediately. In an email to staff, CEO Sundar Pichai said the company would “sharpen our focus, reengineer our cost base, and direct our talent and capital to our highest priorities. He said that he takes “full responsibility for the decisions that led us here.” “These are important moments to sharpen our focus, reengineer our cost base, and direct our talent and capital to our highest priorities,” Pichai wrote in the email.

Facebook parent Meta: 11,000

Following months of hints, Facebook-parent Meta finally announced that it would lay off 11,000 employees, or around 13% of its workforce, in the first major mass layoff in the company’s history in November 2022. The job cuts are a result of stagnating user growth and what some term over eager pivot to “the metaverse,”. The company’s stock lost over 70% of its value during the year. “Not only has online commerce returned to prior trends, but the macroeconomic downturn, increased competition, and ads signal loss have caused our revenue to be much lower than I’d expected,” CEO Mark Zuckerberg wrote in a blog post.

Intel: 10,000-plus

Chip giant Intel Corp is cutting jobs and slowing spending on new plants in an effort to save $3 billion. The company hopes to save as much as $10 billion by 2025. Reports say that the job cuts may cross 10,000.

Microsoft: 10,000

Microsoft Corp said that it will cut 10,000 jobs by the end of March this year or about 5% of its workforce. This will result in a $1.2 billion charge in the fiscal second quarter. CEO Nadella said in a blog post and internal email to employees that the company will continue to hire in “key strategic areas.”

Salesforce: 8,000

Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff made an official announcement revealing cuts impacting 10% of the company’s staff in a letter to employees earlier this month. As many as 8,000 employees have been affected by the job cuts. The reason given for the cuts is largely the same as of most other tech companies: Salesforce over-hired amid the pandemic-era boom in remote work productivity. At the time of writing, Salesforce staff numbered around 80,000, nearly double the 48,000 workers it had prior to the pandemic. “As our revenue accelerated through the pandemic, we hired too many people leading into this economic downturn we’re now facing, and I take responsibility for that,” Benioff wrote.

HP: 6,000

HP released a statement saying that they would lay off somewhere around 4,000 to 6,000 jobs over the course of the next three years. The announcement came after earnings where HP sales dipped down more than 11% year over year. “The company expects to reduce gross global headcount by approximately 4,000-6,000 employees,” the company said. According to that same document, HP says the layoffs and additional cost cutting efforts will result in annualized gross run rate savings of at least $1.4 billion by the end of 2025.

Seagate: 3,000

The biggest maker of computer hard drives Seagate Technology said that it’s paring about 3,000 jobs. Computer suppliers, including Seagate and Intel, have been hard hit by a slowdown in hardware spending. Customers are sitting on a pile of extra inventory, hurting orders and weighing on Seagate’s financial performance, CEO Dave Mosley said. That necessitated cuts. “We have taken quick and decisive actions to respond to current market conditions and enhance long-term profitability,” he said.