• Thursday, March 28, 2024
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Microsoft, Amazon announce job cuts as tech layoff persists

Microsoft to empower 10m SMEs with digital tools

The layoff heat in the tech space which recorded an all-time high in 2022 is not slowing as tech giants like Microsoft, Amazon, and others announced a job cut of over 30, 0000 employees.

Layoff.fyi, a tech lay-off tracking platform shows that about over 38,515 employees have been laid off since January 2023 affecting over 131 companies globally.

Microsoft announced it will cut 10,000 jobs this year, about 5 percent of its workforce, resulting in a $1.2 billion charge in the fiscal second quarter.

Satya Nadella, CEO of Microsoft in a blog post, said the company will continue to hire in key strategic areas.

Also speaking at the World Economic Forum held in Switzerland, the CEO stated that the tech industry needs to adjust to the broader economic slowdown.

“During the pandemic, there was rapid acceleration. I think we are going to go through a phase today where there is some amount of normalisation in demand. We will have to do more with less. We will have to show productivity gains with our technology,” he said,

Amazon

In the case of Amazon, Andy Jassy, chief executive officer of the e-commerce company on January 4, said it is laying off 18,000 of its workers. The lay-offs which began last year were expected to affect only 10, 000 jobs.

Read also: What to expect from Nigeria’s $179m digital advertising landscape

The company has however announced a layoff of 8000 more employees.

According to Jassy, “Amazon has weathered uncertain and difficult economies in the past and will continue to do so.”

He noted that these changes will help the company in pursuit of its long opportunities with a stronger cost structure.

Salesforce

Similarly, Salesforce, an American cloud-based software company, also laid off 8000 of its workers, a 10 percent reduction of its workforce.

Marc Benioff, co-CEO of Salesforce in a letter to the employees said customers have been more measured in their purchasing decisions given the challenging macroeconomic environment which led Salesforce to make the difficult decision to let some workers go.

The company, according to reports, employed over 79,000 workers as of December.

According to the data, the rate of layoff in the sector is getting nearer to the early days of the covid-19 pandemic.

In November 2022, when the global data was lastly updated, the tech sector announced 52,771 job cuts for a total of 80,978 over the year, according to Challenger, Gray, and Christmas, a consulting firm. The firm noted that this was the highest monthly all high for the industry since 2000 when it started keeping data.

Meanwhile, in 2023, over 1600 tech employees are being laid off globally in a day amidst the economic meltdown and recession fears, according to the report.