Can you list all the tech company layoffs from 2022? I certainly can't. So let's take a walk down memory lane, shall we?
Netflix (~3% of workforce, June 2022)
Robinhood (~23% of workforce, August 2022)
Stripe (~14% of workforce, November 2022)
Facebook (~13% of workforce, November 2022)
DoorDash (~6% of workforce, November 2022)
CircleCI (~17% of workforce, December 2022)
And don't forget the most boisterous and probably worst one of all – Twitter (~50% of workforce, November 2022) under the new Elon Musk.
But was Twitter really the worst? Because the LinkedIn CEO posted a cringeworthy selfie of himself crying after announcing layoffs back in August.
Unfortunately, it turns out that layoffs aren't just old 2022 news. We're only three weeks into the new year, and already, 2023 isn't looking much better for staying employed. Just today, Google announced the layoff of 12k employees (~6% of their workforce). This follows closely after Microsoft, WeWork, and Coinbase announced their own layoffs earlier this week. And these fresh wounds almost made me forget about the Amazon layoffs announced just a few weeks ago!
It gets worse. I thought I was familiar with all the big layoffs recently, but then I learned about layoffs.fyi, a site that's been aggregating data about them for years. The numbers are horrifying:
Layoffs.fyi
And I hadn't realized how many companies were actually on their second or even third round of layoffs. Oof.
Depressing news aside, it's been oddly fascinating to read the announcements and severance packages shared by many companies. Early on, the trend among CEOs was to one-up each other with heartfelt stories and more weeks of continued pay or healthcare coverage after employee termination, but as of late, those stories and numbers have stagnated. Don't get me wrong – 16 weeks of pay after termination can make for quite the luxury vacation, but it doesn't exactly take the sting away from losing your job.
I imagine employee morale is quickly dropping in the tech world as software developers fear for their careers. But as scary as it may be, I also continue to see many developers posting about their overemployment adventures, working two or three tech jobs simultaneously to pad their take-home paychecks. A year ago, salary wars were fierce as employees pushed for better benefits from their workplaces during the COVID pandemic. And at the time, it was great! But now, are these layoffs the aggressive response pushing back on those demands?