Tech layoffs climb as spate of companies batten down the hatches
“Seismic changes” are coming to the workforce, “eliminating many professions and requiring a societal rethink of how people spend their time”. So say tech chiefs and investors, the Wall Street Journal has reported. Within a decade, artificial intelligence will be able to “do 80% of all jobs that we know of today,” said venture capitalist Vinod Khosla, who made his giant cash pile as co-founder of the late, lamented Sun Microsystems.
Who wants to wait though? In today’s world of Internet-enabled instant gratification, we want things now, now, now. And the tech industry isn’t about to let us down, announcing another round of investor-tickling layoffs without the need for job-thieving algorithms.
Chip outfit Qualcomm and business social network LinkedIn at the latest companies to announce plans to shed staff. In a blog post announcing “talent changes”, an impressively ugly euphemism for issuing P45s, LinkedIn said “approximately 668” jobs would go. Two things: firstly, the euphemistic language is presumably meant to soften the blow but in reality just twists the knife. Secondly, as figures go, 668 does not sound much like an approximation.
Over at Qualcomm, meanwhile, 1,258 people are to receive their walking papers in order to allow the company to expand its “investments in key growth and diversification opportunities”. Overall staff numbers will be down 12%.
Qualcomm and LinkedIn are far from alone, though: over 240,000 tech staff have been laid off globally since the beginning of the year.
Google, for its part, has said it will axe around 45 staff from its Google News team. Not massive numbers, it’s true, but unfortunate timing given growing concerns about online disinformation in the context of conflict in the Middle East and Ukraine.
Indeed, Thierry Breton, the EU’s Commissioner for the Internal Market, recently wrote letters to tech bosses including to Google chief executive Sundar Pichai stressing the bloc’s content moderation regulations.
Meanwhile, in a move no journalist could be shocked by, music platform Bandcamp, now owned by Songtradr, has cut 50% of its staff including gutting the editorial department.
Most dramatic of all, though, was the news from Finnish telecoms gear manufacturer Nokia. Yesterday the company announced it would cut up to 14,000 jobs in the coming two years, reducing staff numbers to 72,000 globally. The decision follows weak earnings off the back of a 20% drop in sales.
Unlike the American firms, Nokia was refreshingly clear both about its reasoning and what it was actually doing. It will come as little comfort to employees being shown the door, but at least chief executive Pekka Lundmark was able to say he believed the company needed to “act quickly” and cut costs by €400 million in 2024 and €300 million in 2025. As a result of “uncertain timing of the [networking] market recovery, we are now taking decisive action,” he said.
It should be remembered that these grim tidings follow spate after spate of layoffs throughout 2023, including at Accenture, Meta, Dell, Amazon, Google and Microsoft. Conducted partly in response to over-hiring during the pandemic, but mostly, let’s be honest, because cuts drive up share prices, the tech sector has rarely been as layoff happy as it is right now. And with the layoffs coming this thick and fast, who needs AI?
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