As we reported today, Meta is going through another round of mass layoffs. The tech giant is cutting an additional 10,000 jobs after a series of similar cuts that have been going on since late last year.
And Zuckerberg isn’t the only one. This list of digital industry businesses’ layoffs has details going all the way back to March 9th 2021’s Better.com’s culling of 3,100 staff members (via Zoom), and then another 1,500 the following month.
But it’s clear no company is safe. That list includes tech giant names such as Meta, Google, Amazon, Twitter, Netflix, and Microsoft. Their totals come to 21K, 12K, 28K, 3,900, 450, and 13K respectively. That is a lot of people signing up for job alerts around the world.
So, what’s happening? Why are these mass firings happening? And where do we go from here?
Why is this happening?
The details tend to change from tech giant to tech giant, but some tech companies have a through-line in common. Zuckerberg, for example, saw great growth in his apps’ engagement during the pandemic. Is there anything the pandemic didn’t affect? Netflix, similarly, saw great engagement. So did Twitter. Google saw more use, Amazon saw more sales, etc.
Why? Well because everyone was at home with nothing to do. Unfortunately, these companies’ business strategists didn’t think any further than that. They didn’t think about a time when life would maybe go back to normal and people wouldn’t have the time, energy, or attention span to spend all day in their respective online wonderlands.
Or maybe they did. Maybe they saw layoffs on the horizon and just didn’t care. Capitalism.
An additional issue
But there is an additional problem that these big tech giants are facing: the speed at which tech advances.
Take Zuckerberg, for example. He’s busy trying to be the first person/the monopoly of …something. Last year it was VR, but lately, he’s pulled money from the Metaverse project and seems to have gone quiet. Since the hype around ChatGPT hit boiling point at the start of April, he has since announced he is going to develop his own AI platform rival. So has Twitter’s Elon Musk. Google and Microsoft are already on it.
This sudden switch in priorities makes both Zuckerberg and Musk look like dogs chasing cars. When they realise that they can’t possibly keep up, they slow down for a second, and then another car passes and suddenly they’re off again. Chasing tech trends that they don’t understand.
Is it a problem that the technology is simply advancing too quickly before these giant companies can actually make a dent in the market like VR would suggest, or are they “ideas men” with the wrong ideas?
What does this have to do with layoffs? Well, ideas men need executioners to pull off the crazy advancements they have in their heads. They need developers, engineers, management, etc. So, when they drop a multi-million/billion-dollar project, they’re dropping jobs too. Or, when they find out the project is not viable or the “tech just isn’t there yet”, they’re dropping jobs too.
What does it mean for businesses?
Well, the good news is that the experts seem to be in agreement: there will be no effect on big business nor small business. The big, big, tech giants are too big to fail now, and what are a few eggs getting broken when they have an omelette to make? And small businesses aren’t likely to have a problem so big as hiring teams and swathes of people across the globe that they then need to fire.
So, who does it affect? The little man. The people that are currently looking through Indeed’s digital media category. And somewhere down the line, we’ll see the effects that understaffed tech giants can offer the consumer.
However, it does mean that smaller businesses are in for a perk. Quality digital media skillsets are hard to come by and were hoovered up by the likes of Google and Meta, but if you’ve got a good package and an admirable workplace culture, you should be able to catch some quality tech workers.
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