The pink slips are continuing to flow out of the tech sector. Microsoft has laid off 10,000 employees.
There’s a persistent myth that the tech sector is growing to infinity and beyond and is basically a massive money storage device as they hoard up everything from every other sector. Those illusionary images have been burning up faster than money in the hands of Elon Musk over the last few months. Earlier this month, Amazon announced that they are slashing 18,000 jobs. In November, Meta announced that they were laying off 11,000 employees, or 13% of its global workforce. Thanks largely to Musk burning the whole platform to the ground, Twitter laid off half of its work force and the layoffs are simply continuing to this day.
While Twitter is an exception where Musk is pushing advertisers to the exits while chewing on the wires until something breaks, the layoffs so far all have one thing in common – citing an economic slowdown coming later this year, instigating a major slowdown in advertising among other things. While one hopes that the bad news would finally be easing, there appears to be no such luck today.
We are learning that Microsoft has joined the ranks of large tech companies sending out the pink slips to its own employees. In all, 10,000 people have lost their jobs. From CNN:
Microsoft plans to lay off 10,000 employees as part of broader cost-cutting measures, the company said in a securities filing on Wednesday, making it the latest tech company to reduce staff because of growing economic uncertainty.
Speaking before the layoff announcement at the World Economic Forum (WEF) in Davos, Switzerland, on Wednesday, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella said that the company was not immune to a weaker global economy.
“No one can defy gravity and gravity here is inflation-adjusted economic growth,” he told WEF founder Klaus Schwab in a livestreamed discussion.
In a memo to staffers Wednesday, Nadella also cited changing demand years for digital services years into the pandemic as well as looming recession fears.
“We’re living through times of significant change, and as I meet with customers and partners, a few things are clear,” he wrote. “First, as we saw customers accelerate their digital spend during the pandemic, we’re now seeing them optimize their digital spend to do more with less.”
Anyone running a website with advertising being part of the model will no doubt say that revenue has been noticeably lower than normal. We are, of course, no exception to that thanks to the Christmas advertising being far lower than expected (shameless plug, our Patreon page is still open). Overall, these stories as of late have really been giving the impression that the purse strings are tightening as the tech sector tries to find ways of waiting out the forecasted recession. The hope is also for a fast return to normal afterwards as well. Whether that happens or not remains to be seen. Still, the pain is definitely being felt today across the board.
Drew Wilson on Twitter: @icecube85 and Facebook.
