Up to 30,000 people are facing job losses after Twitter Inc (NYSE:TWTR), Meta Platforms Inc (NASDAQ:FB) and Amazon.com Inc (NASDAQ:AMZN) all announced mass cuts recently.
Twitter has seen 3,700 full-time staff fired, alongside 4,400 contractors more recently on Monday.
Meta, which owns Facebook and Instagram, will see 11,000 staff offloaded, whilst Amazon is also reportedly set to make 10,000 redundancies this week, according to the New York Times.
While each company has its own specific reasons for job cuts, the unifying factor seems to be the offloading of loss-making parts of their businesses.
This year has been massive job cuts at other tech companies, including the likes of Microsoft and Netflix, with layoffs in the sector reaching 120,000 so far in 2022, according to website layoffs.fyi.
Ultimately, each company has highlighted a need to streamline and focus on specific areas of growth, highlighting the first signs of panic amid the long-anticipated global economic downturn.
Meta
Meta boss, Mark Zuckerberg outlined it would shift to “high priority growth areas,” including AI discovery, advertising and its metaverse project, after suggesting things were much worse than expected post-pandemic.
Meta’s redundancies are the first in its 18-year history, suggesting the situation must be very serious after Zuckerberg outlined he had been completely wrong with predictions that online activity would continue its increase seen during Covid.
Hinting at poor investments made at the beginning of the pandemic, Zuckerberg said: “I got this wrong, and I take responsibility for that,” something that will lead to 13% of Meta’s workforce being offloaded.
For Twitter, new CEO Elon Musk has argued that job cuts are a necessity, with the company facing losses of US$4mln a day.
Musk seems to have embarked on a great struggle to turn the troubled social media platform around after he brought it for US$44bn, something he suggested has led to him having “too much on his plate”.
He even outlined that bankruptcy was an option for the company, having warned the remaining staff of an “arduous” road ahead as he outlined revenue from subscriptions and verification charges needed boosting.
Amazon
Amazon’s reported job cuts seem to come as a surprise as ex-CEO Jeff Bezos confirmed he wanted to give away his money, but failed to mention economic woes within the company he continues to chair.
With cuts set to remove 3% of Amazon’s corporate workforce, Bezos tweeted last month that companies would need to “batten down the hatches” in light of the global economic situation.
Speaking to CNN, he advised businesses and people alike to “take some risk off the table,” a move his company seems to be doing by cutting its devices unit, responsible for its Alexa gadgets, as well as its retail and human resources divisions.