The year 2022 was brutal for the tech industry as the major players in the industry did layoffs and hiring freezes to cut costs amidst economic downturn. Meta, Amazon, Microsoft, Twitter, Netflix and many other global players laid off employees. The number of total layoffs in 2022 so far according to data from Layoffs.fyi is over 2 Lakh.

This has surpassed the Great Recession that world went through in 2008-2009 which began with the Lehman Brothers collapse.

According to Challenger, Gray & Christmas, a global outplacement and career transitioning firm, approximately 65,000 tech workers were laid off in 2008 and about the same number in 2009.

So far in 2022, 1004 tech companies have laid off 152421 employees globally, surpassing the Great Recession levels of 2008-2009.

Here is a roundup of major tech layoffs

Meta

Facebook’s parent company tops the list with laying off 11,000 employees or 13 percent of its workforce.

Also read: Meta layoffs: Indian fired days after relocating to Canada, woman on maternity leave axed and other stories

"I’ve decided to reduce the size of our team by about 13 percent and let more than 11,000 of our talented employees go. We are also taking a number of additional steps to become a leaner and more efficient company by cutting discretionary spending and extending our hiring freeze through Q1," CEO Mark Zuckerberg told Meta employees.

Amazon

Amazon layoffs started in November and while the company hasn’t released an official number but reports have suggested that Amazon has laid off 10,000 employees. The company also plans to layoff more employees in 2023. Amazon has also gone on a hiring freeze.

Also read: 'Some roles are no longer required', says Amazon as it begins mass layoffs

“After a deep set of reviews, we recently decided to consolidate some teams and programs. One of the consequences of these decisions is that some roles will no longer be required. It pains me to have to deliver this news as we know we will lose talented Amazonians from the Devices & Services org as a result. I am incredibly proud of the team we have built and to see even one valued team member leave is never an outcome any of us want,” David Limp - Senior Vice President of Devices and Services said while announcing the layoffs in a blog post in November.

People from within the company earlier told CNBC-TV18.com that the devices segment was hit the worst and there are rumours of layoffs in the tech department to happen next year.

Cisco

Although there is no official figure on Cisco layoffs, the company reportedly has started with its layoffs. According to a report by IANS Cisco layoffs have reportedly hit as many as 4,000 employees in this recent round of tech layoffs.

Twitter

As per reports since Tesla CEO Elon Musk became ‘Chief Twit’ the company has laid off almost 75 percent of its workforce. The twitter layoff number stands at 3700.

“Regarding Twitter’s reduction in force, unfortunately there is no choice when the company is losing over $4M/day. Everyone exited was offered 3 months of severance, which is 50% more than legally required,” Musk said in a tweet.

The layoffs at Twitter haven’t ceased yet as recently an employee in the policy team tweeted that half of the remaining public policy team has been laid off in December.

Byjus’s

The next in the list stands India’s Edtech major Byju’s. In order to achieve overall profitability, edtech major BYJU'S on Wednesday, October 12, said the company has laid off 2,500 employees or around 5 percent of the 50,000-strong workforce across product, content, media, and technology teams in a phased manner.

In an internal mail, the company's founder Byju Raveendran has asked for forgiveness from the employees who are in the process of getting fired. He also explained the rationale behind the decision. He said that it's been done “to protect the health of the larger organisation and pay heed to the constraints imposed by external macroeconomic conditions.”

Microsoft

Microsoft Corporation cut some jobs in July this year, as it realigned business groups and roles after the close of its fiscal year on June 30. It said it plans to keep hiring for other roles and finish the current fiscal year with increased headcount, according to a report by Bloomberg.

The layoffs, accounted for 1,800 employees or less than 1 percent of the 180,000-person workforce, spanned a variety of groups including consulting and customer and partner solutions and were dispersed across geographies, the Redmond, Washington-based company said.

Unacademy

Unacademy announced its third round of layoff this year citing “unprecedented times” in an internal mail to its employees as reported by Inc42. The Edtech major so far in 2022 has laid off 1500 employees.

Meanwhile the company’s co founder and CEO Gaurav Munjal posted a tweet last month saying that “2023 will be worse than 2022 for tech,”\

Also read: ‘Worst of startup layoffs yet to come’

Vedantu

Edtech unicorn Vedantu laid off 11.6 percent of its workforce or 385 employees in December taking the total count of laid off employees this year by the company to 1,100.

After this third round of layoffs this year, Vedantu currently employs about 3,300 people. Various departments have experienced layoffs, but verticals like human resources, learning, and content have been worst hit.

Apart from these big numbers other tech giants have also had layoffs this year. On a global level, chip maker Intel has reportedly fired over 200 employees, Netflix has laid off over 300 employees, Adobe has laid off over 100 employees meanwhile PC maker HP announced to reduce its headcount between 4000 to 6,000 employees or 12 percent of its global workforce over the next three years.

Back home more than 18,000 employees have been laid off by Indian startups in 2022 as per data by Inc42.

Further the unrest in tech sector is supposed to last in 2023 as well. As many companies including Amazon, Alphabet owned Google and HP are expected to let go of more employees in 2023.

Meanwhile brokerage firm Nomura said in its latest report that while tech adoption continues to rise across industries a slowdown is expected in the next 12 months compared to the past two years of strong spends.

“Our FY24F revenue estimates are lower than consensus numbers,” said brokerage firm Nomura.

Also read: Big tech bleeds in 2022 — All eyes on what 2023 holds for IT giants amid recession worries

(Edited by : CH Unnikrishnan)

First Published:Dec 27, 2022 1:45 PM IST