Twitter to Meta: Tech giants layoff thousands of employees

Meta, the parent company of Facebook and Instagram run by Mark Zuckerberg, is planning to begin large-scale layoffs this week. According to a report published by The Wall Street Journal, this could be the largest occurrence of mass layoffs within the industry and could impact thousands of employees.

Meta witnessed revenue decline in the first two quarters of this year, and the net revenue of the third water was $4.4 billion, 52 per cent lower than last year’s figures. 

Meta’s announcement came a week after Twitter let go of around 3,700 employees globally – under the brand new ownership of Elon Musk who is currently introducing a series of drastic changes to the bird app. Musk attributed the sudden layoffs to the company's daily loss of around $4 million.

Other tech giants such as Apple, Microsoft, Snapchat, Intel, as well many Indian startups like BYJU’s, Chargebee, Cars24, LEAD, Ola, Meesho, MPL have either begun large-scale staff reductions or have frozen hiring.

According to a report published by tech and startup news website Inc42, over 16,000 employees from said startups have been laid-off in India. 

Similarly, Apple laid off over 100 employees in August and has since frozen hiring. The company is experiencing a record low in sales of the newly launched iPhones 14s.

Microsoft is known to have laid off thousands of employees all through this year citing “structural adjustment” and “realignment”.

Snapchat let go of over 1,200 employees in September. “Unfortunately, given our current lower rate of revenue growth, it has become clear that we must reduce our cost structure to avoid incurring significant ongoing losses," wrote Snap CEO Evan Spiegel in a letter to his employees.

Reportedly, Intel is planning to cut down 20 percent of its workforce by the end of this year. Intel CEO Pat Gelsinger recently stated that the company must reduce its annual spending and focus on revenue generation even though it might incur some “people cost”. “It’s just hard to see any points of good news on the horizon,” said Gelsinger.

In another stint of mass hiring and firing, Indian ed-tech company BYJU’s has recently faced immense flak for signing Lionel Messi as its brand ambassador, the world’s highest paid footballer, a few days after laying off over 2,500 employees.

Critics questioned as to how this company which still touts itself as a ‘start-up’ could afford to sign Messi while sacking employees. Co-founder Divya Gokulnath responded to the massive criticism by saying that this was the “toughest” decision; however, it had to be taken keeping in mind the “larger business perspective”.

In an interview with The Economic Times, Gokulnath said: “We did it because this would help us move towards our path to profitability by the fourth quarter of this year. Certain steps had to be taken and they were taken.”

Most of these companies which saw an enormous boom owing to increased online spending and a global shift to digital platforms during the early days of the pandemic – are now faced with high inflation, rising interest rates, currency headwinds and overall economic slowdown.

“Tech companies went on mass hiring sprees during the pandemic and are now reversing that decision after being faced with a different reality. This is the only way they can cut down expenditure and not bleed out profits. Both the US and Indian IT & tech industry are under the same threat at the moment,” said Texas-based Aishwarya Keshari who works as a Business Analyst at Amazon. 

Meanwhile, on Friday, several of the laid off Twitter employees were requested to come back. Authorities claimed that 'dozens' of them were laid-off 'by mistake' and are required back within the team.

Netizens have been quick to point out that Musk is now seemingly regretting his perfunctory decision of mass layoffs and is realising the deficit in manpower. 

“I started working at Twitter in April 2021 as a Global Business and Consumer Marketing Associate and it has been a wonderful journey ever since. However, the last couple of months have been tense. Although Twitter India is not completely intertwined with top level changes, we were all quite apprehensive of Musk’s takeover. There are rapid changes being discussed ever since, we aren't sure as to when they will be implemented but massive structural changes are expected,” a Twitter India employee told National Herald.

“We were all cautioned that layoffs are going to occur and I personally witnessed a lot of new joiners being laid off, particularly the developers,” she said upon being asked about the mass layoffs. 

On the other hand, Yash Agarwal (25), who worked as a Public Policy Associate at Twitter India posted a rather appreciative and positive tweet after being laid off:

According to Crunchbase, more than 45,000 employees have been laid off in the US tech-industry in all of October. At present, Meta constitutes of around 87,000 employees and sources have confirmed that this job cut could be the largest head-count reduction in the United States tech industry after Twitter.