People saying it is deferred PIPs or house cleaning are deluded. At Meta and Amazon I know some senior people who were laid off. People got decent severance so not too much negative comments, but I think it is a blood bath. 10% is not a small number and these are not boot camp employees who will switch out to different careers. It is a bonanza for smaller tech firms, but I think this is going to feel like the dot com bubble :(
I went to grad school during those days and have to say, it really sets you back. It will also depress wages in tech for the next 2-3 years.
I think it will be interesting to see how the layoffs are structured; e.g. how much if from specific product areas vs how much is perhaps performance based [not that we'll ever know that] and how much is SWE vs SRE vs non-eng, etc.
I also remembered the 11k number and just did a search in my browsing history. Turns out there was a rumor saying 11k, with Microsoft said it was not true shortly before they announced the 10k layoff.
Since it all happened in the same week, it is pretty confusing. At least to me.
is it possible that this is all a response to falling stock price.
it seem historically a quick fix for any CEO to bump the stock price is to make layoffs, and it seems to work. and i don't think any of those companies are strapped for cash
I don't think it's the stock price so much as this being good opportunity to fire people who're no longer wanted by the company (at the salary they're collecting), without the reputation loss that usually comes with that.
Soon they will start hiring again, quite possibly finding better candidates at a lower salary.
most good ceos, and definitely ceo's at this level, know not to overreact to stock price which is very macro and short term driven, when they should be playing the 10-20 year game.
Amazon 18,000
Microsoft 10,000
Alphabet/Google 12,000