Editorial
In this editorial, I argue that big tech companies are making the right decision by making sweeping job cuts, despite being hard to do and hard on the people whose lives are affected as a result.
Lyft is preparing to lay off more than 1,000 employees in a mission to cut costs and become profitable. This represents a 30% cut in staff numbers. Employees will hear more next Thursday.
Microsoft has laid off its entire ethics and society team within the AI department, according to a recent report. Despite this, the company says that it remains committed to responsible AI.
Microsoft has further laid off 689 employees from its offices in Redmond, Bellevue, and Issaquah. This brings the total of people Microsoft has laid off to almost 2,200, or 22% of its planned cuts.
Google sent out a memo to some employees, asking them to share their desk space with other workers on days when they are not working in the office. This is being done to cut costs at the company.
Communication and marketing software company Twilio is set to cut a significant portion of its workforce. This comes after the company already laid off more than 800 people back in September.
Two engineers at Google revealed insights on the after-effects of the lay-offs on the existing staff at the company. They shared that losing 12,000 employees has been overwhelming for many.
IBM will lay off about 3,900 of its employees, equivalent to about 1.5% of the company's workforce. The tech firm will spend about $300 million to pay for the severance of eliminated staff.
Following the likes of Google, Microsoft, and Amazon, Spotify has also announced its own round of layoffs. The company will let go of 6% of its workforce as a way to significantly reduce costs.
Spotify is set to let go of some of its staff this week, according to a Bloomberg report. The firm joins the likes of other tech companies who also bade goodbye to a significant number of employees.
Amazon has massively reduced its software development job openings following the laying off of around 18,000 employees. There are still a few hundred openings but this is down around 99%.
E-commerce giant Amazon is planning to lay off around 10,000 employees in corporate and technology jobs as soon as this week. The job cuts will affect people in Amazon's devices org, including Alexa.
Elon Musk is reportedly planning to lay off half of Twitter's workforce as a cost-cutting measure. Twitter's new boss may also give another piece of bad news for those who get to stay in the company.
Elon Musk has e-mailed employees to say the firm is pausing hiring and that it will have to let go of around 10,000 workers. It comes as inflation causes people to reduce their spending on luxuries.
IBM is reportedly laying off 10,000 employees, mostly from the European region. The cuts come as part of a plan to spin off the legacy IT services unit to streamline the company and cut costs.
Microsoft has reportedly cut "hundreds" of jobs in its MSN, Azure, and sales organizations as part of its end of financial year re-evaluations. However, they are not as massive as the previous years.
Last month, the firm opened up 100,000 jobs amidst increased demand. Now the firm has stated that all those positions have been filled up and a further 75,000 people will be hired.
Foxconn has cut 50,000 of its contract jobs since October, months earlier than usual. Normally the contract jobs are cut at the end of the year, however, they started earlier than usual in 2018.
The Chicago-based company has reportedly laid off half of its engineering workforce and canceled the upcoming Moto X5. The company is also be scaling back on Moto mods focusing on the profitable ones.
It seems that Nokia has officially given up on pursuing the consumer market, after announcing that the OZO VR project will be shut down, and 310 jobs will be cut in its Technologies Unit.
After cutting over 40% of its staff, SoundCloud issued a statement that sounded optimistic about its long-term future. In reality, it appears that the firm only has enough funding to make it into Q4.
SoundCloud, a music streaming service based on user-submitted content, is laying off 40% of its employees and consolidating the rest in its London and New York offices in order to reduce costs.
Rumors of massive job losses at Microsoft have been proved accurate, as the company has confirmed that it will cut up to 3,000 staff from its global workforce, as it focuses more heavily on the cloud.
Microsoft is poised to lay off thousands of sales staff this week, amid efforts to reorganize its global sales force and focus on selling cloud services instead of standalone software.
It was a year ago that Twitter announced that it would be laying off some of its staff. This year, the trend could continue, as it is being reported that another round of layoffs is imminent.
Microsoft cut 19,000 jobs in its 2015 fiscal year, and 7,400 in FY2016. Having announced an additional 1,850 lay-offs in May, it now says that a further 2,850 jobs will go over the next twelve months.
Less than one year after Microsoft opened a retail store in São Paulo, the company has now announced it will close off all of its retail points in the country, opting for online-only sales.
Samsung has been facing shrinking profits for quite some time and sources close to the company have now revealed that the Korean conglomerate might be planning job cuts to save costs.
After cutting 18,000 jobs last year, with a further 7,800 layoffs this year related to restructuring of its phone division, Microsoft is now dropping another 1,000 staff from its global workforce.
As its market share declines - and after its profits fell for a seventh consecutive quarter this year - Samsung is reportedly planning to cut around 10% of the 99,000-strong workforce at its HQ.
Qualcomm's 'Strategic Realignment' Plan was unveiled today. The plan will cut jobs and will attempt to save the company from spending $1.4 billion USD.
Microsoft is restructuring its phone hardware business, with the loss of 7,800 jobs. The company will write down a $7.6bn 'impairment charge', and says it will offer a more 'focused phone portfolio'.
In what is said to be the final round of layoffs for Microsoft's largest jobs cut in company history, hundreds of employees were released by the company all around the world.
Microsoft has confirmed that 2100 jobs were cut today as part of the previously announced 18,000 layoffs, with 747 coming from the state of Washington and the rest from other offices.
Employees at Microsoft's Nokia division in China held a protest today, chanting slogans against the company's "hostile takeover and violent layoffs", which will result in 18,000 job cuts worldwide.
Microsoft's decision to cut 18,000 jobs from its workforce, including many former Nokia employees, has prompted Finland's government to call on the company to help those displaced by the layoffs.
Xbox Europe will not be spared from Microsoft's 18,000 employee layoff, after it emerged many job cuts were underway at its Reading location. 75% of employees with EMEA roles will be made redundant.
The rumors were true as Microsoft announced today that thousands of Microsoft employees will be let go from the company as they work to streamline operations and conform to Nadella's new mission.
Now that the Nokia acquisition is complete, Microsoft has grown by over 25,000 employees but that number is likely to contract in the near future as insiders report that job cuts are on the agenda.
The PR firm Waggener Edstrom announced this week that it was cutting 43 employees, or about five percent of its workforce, and put part of the blame on Microsoft's recent reorganization.
_small.jpg)
