The trend of downsizing has continued in the tech industry, with big players like Google and Microsoft laying off thousands of staff in addition to the tens of thousands of employees let go last year.
According to the website “Layoffs.fyi,” since the beginning of 2024, 103 tech companies have reported staff cuts, resulting in a total of 28,963 employees being laid off.
Just a month into the new year, PayPal has joined Google, Amazon, Microsoft, and other big tech companies in the trend of downsizing, with Silicon Valley as a whole losing over 28,000 employees in January.
On Jan. 30, PayPal announced plans to cut 2,500 jobs in 2024 through a combination of layoffs and removing vacant positions, as stated by CEO Alex Chriss in a memo to employees.
The cut represents about 9 percent of jobs at the multinational payment platform.
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“We are doing this to right-size our business, allowing us to move with the speed needed to deliver for our customers and drive profitable growth. At the same time, we will continue to invest in areas of the business we believe will create and accelerate growth,” Chriss wrote. Affected employees could expect to be notified by the end of the week, he added.
Layoffs at Google and Amazon
Google laid off 12,000 employees last year, incurring $2.1 billion in severance fees and other related expenses. Less than two weeks after the new year, Google announced yet another round of layoffs, which will incur another $700 million in severance fees.
The departments most affected include hardware, advertising, development engineering, voice assistants, YouTube, and X Lab.
Sundar Pichai, CEO of Alphabet (Google’s parent company) and Google, also revealed during a financial conference that there might be multiple rounds of layoffs throughout the year to come.
Google on Jan. 10 announced layoffs for hundreds of employees, including members of the Google Assistant development department, the hardware team responsible for the Pixel smartphone, Nest, and Fitbit, as well as members of the augmented reality (AR) team.
On Jan. 16, a second wave of layoffs was announced, affecting scores of employees in the advertising sales department and another hundred employees in YouTube.
The tech giant has promised to assist affected employees in finding other positions within the group.
Following the layoff of 27,000 employees last year, Amazon is reducing job opportunities in its live streaming platform Twitch, Prime Video, and MGM Studios department, affecting over 500 employees. Twitch CEO Dan Clancy remarked that the scale of the company’s organization far exceeded what was needed for its business.
Thousands of other Silicon Valley employees at other firms, such as Duolingo, Unity, and Xerox have been laid off or are expected to lose their jobs.
