More from The tech industry’s layoffs and hiring freezes: all of the news
A group of former Meta employees say they’re only receiving eight weeks of base pay and three months of COBRA as severance — half of what CEO Mark Zuckerberg promised when the mass-layoffs were announced, according to CNBC.
The full-time, non-contract workers, who were in a Meta apprenticeship program, say the company hasn’t responded to their questions with an answer on whether the discrepancy is intentional.
Axios reports GameStop has begun another round of layoffs. The scale of the layoff is unclear, but Axios says the blockchain team was “heavily impacted.” In an email to employees obtained by Kotaku, CEO Matt Furlong said the decision to lay off staff was due in part to high inflation and “weakened consumer confidence.”
The company, which gained a lot of notoriety as a meme stock, laid off staff and fired its CFO in July.
[Axios]
HP, one of the world’s largest PC vendors, according to data from Gartner, announced in an earnings report that it’ll lay off 4,000 to 6,000 employees by the end of 2025. According to numbers cited by CNBC, that’s between seven and 11 percent of its workforce.
This is just the latest in a series of large tech layoffs, not to mention that the PC market has also had an especially rough year following a pandemic boom.
Internal documents obtained by Insider indicate that Amazon’s Alexa division made up the “vast majority” of the over $3 billion that the company lost across its “Worldwide Digital” department, which includes Alexa, Echo devices, Prime Video, and other products.
Amazon confirmed layoffs affecting thousands of employees on its hardware and services teams last week, and the company’s CEO says to expect even more job cuts next year.
[Business Insider]
Were you expecting Amazon to simply announce its expected 10,000 layoffs? Recode writes that the company’s swinging the ax quietly instead — quietly enough that many don’t know what’s going on. Meanwhile, “large swaths of the company’s HR division” are receiving voluntary buyout offers.
More at Recode:
After reports that Amazon plans to lay off 10,000 workers this week, CNBC and The Washington Post are reporting that some workers there are being informed they will need to find another job with the company soon or accept a severance payment. Neither outlet mentioned how many people were affected today, and so far there haven’t been any companywide notifications.
From the Post:
Amazon employees were called into meetings with their managers across the country Tuesday, and many were told they had two months to find another job internally or accept severance payment.
[Washington Post]
A nervous Twitter employee, whose boss and coworkers are now gone, has written to the popular work advice column Ask A Manager, asking how the heck they should handle their company’s whole...situation.
Columnist Alison Green’s advice: Stick it out, if you can. “Staying at least gives you the option of severance down the road...and gives you an ongoing income and health insurance,” Green wrote. She added, “I’m sorry something you helped build is being needlessly destroyed.”
[Ask a Manager]
The mass layoffs at Twitter, Meta, and soon possibly Amazon are just the tip of the iceberg.
Tech job marketplace TrueUp.io has been keeping track — and it says over 183,000 people have already been hit by tech layoffs so far in 2022. You can see the details in the company’s interactive tracker here.
In an interview with CBS Mornings, Apple CEO Tim Cook confirms the company is now being very “deliberate” in its hiring and that it’s only bringing new staff members on board in certain departments.
We believe strongly in investing for the long term and we don’t believe you can save your way to prosperity. We think you invest your way to it.
In July, Bloomberg reported Apple planned to slow hiring in 2023 and that not-quite-a-freeze may be setting in early, while other Big Tech companies like Amazon, Google, Meta, and Microsoft undergo their own hiring freezes and layoffs.
Elon Musk’s mass layoffs at Twitter included severance payment for some workers, and Musk himself said in a tweet that “Everyone exited was offered 3 months of severance, which is 50% more than legally required.”
However, CNN reports termination letters sent to staff at Twitter’s only office in Africa didn’t include their names or mention any next steps or severance, only saying they will be paid until December 4th.
“Many thousands of employees” are set to be laid off, The Wall Street Journal reported, especially on the recruiting and business teams. Mark Zuckerberg is blaming overstaffing based on inflated growth plans, and has said he’s “accountable” for the mistakes. (Safe to assume he will not be getting laid off, though.)
Those who lose their job should be finding out tomorrow morning, and will reportedly get at least four months’ severance.
About half of Twitter’s 7,500 employees are now gone, with teams focused on trust and safety issues hit the hardest.
The hits keep coming, and this time it’s Amazon, confirming a New York Times report from last month with a public announcement of a “pause on new incremental hires in our corporate workforce.”
The notes about the economy echo other decisions about layoffs or hiring freezes, but as Chris Welch points out, it also oddly refers to Prime Video and Alexa a “newer initiatives” for some reason.
We still intend to hire a meaningful number of people in 2023, and remain excited about our significant investments in our larger businesses, as well as newer initiatives like Prime Video, Alexa, Grocery, Kuiper, Zoox, and Healthcare.
[US About Amazon]
