survival8: Layoffs

Showing posts with label Layoffs. Show all posts

Sunday, February 18, 2024

Index of Management Lessons

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1: Identifying Personalities in Different Domains

2: Negotiation

3: Behavioral Science

4: Layoffs

5: Elon Musk

6: Xerox (A Case Study)

The fast and incredible rise of Xerox and the subsequent fall in Oct 1966
Xerox, Lisa and Graphical User Interfaces (Dec 1979)
Xerox - The stock that didn't survive the decade of personal computing in 1970s, the dot-com bubble burst of 2000 and the 2020 global pandemic

7: Misc

Mark Zuckerberg Explains Why Tech Layoffs Are Happening (Feb 2024)

Its been barely 50 days since new year 2024 began, and the tech industry has already suffered more than 30,000 layoffs. And with layoffs showing no signs of slowdown, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg has come forward with a theory to explain why tech layoffs are happening.

The billionaire says that companies are realizing that, while (layoffs are) painful, there are benefits to being "leaner." In an interview recently, the Meta CEO said companies are still adjusting to the post-pandemic era, as per Business Insider report.

E-commerce sales skyrocketed during the pandemic, leading to significant increases in online advertising revenue. However, sales growth slowed and ad rates returned to normal as consumers went back to the stores and the economy stabilized. Numerous businesses realized they had overhired and needed to make significant cuts, including Meta. That was the first wave of layoffs.

"In terms of the layoffs and stuff like that, I actually think that was more due to companies trying to navigate Covid," Zuckerberg said when asked if tech layoffs had to do with the AI boom.

What He Said About Meta's Layoffs

"It was obviously really tough, we parted with a lot of talented people we cared about," Zuckerberg said in the interview, speaking specifically about Meta's past layoffs. "But in some ways actually becoming leaner kind of makes the company more effective."

Following Zuckerberg's "year of efficiency," when Meta laid off tens of thousands of employees, the company has been steadily recovering.

As per Zuckerberg, businesses are still considering efficiency in their operations today. Many are thinking about changing the company's structure, reducing the number of management positions, and adopting a leaner business model.

More Than 30,000 Layoffs Have Happened In 2024

From Google, Amazon, to Microsoft, a lot of big companies have already announced the beginning of layoffs in 2024. Here's a list of companies that have laid off employees till date this year:

Instacart
Mozilla
Grammarly
Getaround
Amazon
DocuSign
Snap
Polygon Labs
Okta
Thinx
Proofpoint
Wattpad
Block
PayPal
Salesforce
Flexport
Microsoft
Swiggy
Aurora
eBay
SAP
Brex
TikTok
Vroom
Wayfair
YouTube
Pixar
Audible
Discord
Google
Amazon
Twitch
Treasure Financial
Duolingo
Rent the Runway
Unity
Pitch
BenchSci
Flexe
NuScale
Trigo
InVision
VideoAmp
Orca Security
Frontdesk

How Apple Has So Far Avoided Mass Job Cuts Despite The Tech Layoff Wave (Feb 2024)

Microsoft, Amazon, Twitter, Meta, HP and Google are some of the big names among the long-expanding list of companies that have announced mass layoffs.

No Mass Layoffs At Apple Yet

One tech giant that has been an exception to date is Apple. Apple employees have so far been able to avoid mass layoffs at the world's first company to hit the $3 trillion market value.

It's not that the economic slowdown and rising recession fearless haven't impacted Apple. While Apple shares are currently up 16% this year till date, the tech giant did see its shares bleed last year, just like other tech giants. According to the Wall Street Journal, Apple is expected next month to report its first quarterly sales decline in over three years.

So how has Apple not announced mass layoffs till now? Well, there are three key reasons that can be attributed to Apple being an exception amid the mass layoffs at tech giants.

First, Apple not aggressively hiring during the pandemic.

The second reason is that Apple doesn't offer perks such as free lunches to its staff at the campus.

And third, its CEO Tim Cook himself took a voluntary pay cut of 50% for this year 2023, which can possibly help in trimming costs amid uncertain economic headwinds.

Tim Cook's Voluntary Pay Cut

Apple will be cutting its CEO Tim Cook's compensation by 50% to $49 million in 2023, citing investor guidance and a request from Cook himself to adjust his pay.

Tim Cook yielded to resistance over his lush compensation package, as advisory firm Institutional Shareholder Services expressed to Apple shareholders “significant concerns regarding the design and magnitude,” Reuters reported. Despite the fact that stockholders ended up approving his pay package—64.4% voting in support—the billionaire CEO agreed that it should be scaled back, as per Forbes.

In comparison to Cook, although Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai and Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg did take public accountability for their purported missteps that led to their respective layoffs, neither volunteered to slash their compensation to correct their wrongs. Instead, their employees bore the brunt of job losses when they aren't responsible for the executive decisions of the company.

Apple's Judicious Approach When Hiring

Compared to the other big tech companies, Apple scaled its workforce at a relatively slow pace and has generally followed the same hiring rate since 2016, as per the Forbes report.

While there was a hiring surge in Silicon Valley during the pandemic, Apple added less than 7,000 jobs in 2020. In September 2022, it was reported that the company employed 164,000 full-time workers, in both its corporate and retail divisions.

Rampant Hiring By Other Big Techs

Mostly, the tech companies undergoing mass layoffs currently are the ones who in all likelihood hired fervently during their pandemic—and even before.

Alphabet has consecutively expanded its workforce by at least 10% annually since 2013, according to CNBC. The company grew its headcount by over 20% in 2018 and 2019. The growth continued, adding over 16,000 new hires in 2020 and 21,000 employees in 2021, the report mentioned.

Since 2012, Meta has expanded its workforce by thousands each year. In 2020, Zuckerberg increased headcount by 30%—13,000 workers. The following year, the social media platform added another 13,000 employees to its payroll. Those two years marked the biggest growth in the company's history.

Amazon has already initiated its plan to lay off 18,000 employees in the process which is expected to continue in 2023 after being announced in late 2022.

In 2021, Amazon had reportedly hired an estimated 500,000 employees, according to GeekWire, becoming the second-largest employer in the United States after Walmart. A year later, the company expanded its workforce by 310,000. Prior to its layoff announcement, it was reported that Amazon employed 1.5 million workers, including corporate and warehouse staff.

Overall, it does seem that it has been so far so good for Apple employees, with no mass layoffs announced yet amid the job cut wave weeping over the tech sector. But it remains to be seen whether the Tim Cook-led tech giant is able to sustain this and totally avoid mass layoffs despite rising global recession fears, inflationary concerns and rising interest rates.

Monday, February 6, 2023

Infosys allegedly fires 600 employees after they fail internal test (Feb 2023)

Indian IT giant Infosys has sacked hundreds of fresher employees after they failed to clear the internal fresher assessment (FA) test, Business Today has learnt.

A fresher who was onboarded at the company in August 2022 told Business Today, “I started working at Infosys in August last year and I was given training for SAP ABAP stream. Out of 150 in my team, only 60 people passed the FA exam. Rest all of us were terminated two weeks ago. From the previous batch (freshers who were onboarded in July 2022 ), nearly 85 freshers were terminated out of 150 after failing the test.”

Sources claim that 600 employees have been terminated after failing the internal test. “Two weeks ago, 208 freshers were fired after failing the FA test. In total, around 600 freshers have been fired after failing the FA test in the past few months.”

Business Today reached out to Infosys for a confirmation on the number of employees that have been terminated but the company declined to disclose the same.

The fired employees claim that failing the internal test did not result in termination for freshers who joined before July, 2022. A company representative claims that failing the internal test had always resulted in sackings.

This development comes on the backdrop of hundreds of freshers awaiting onboarding at the company for over 8 months after receiving an offer letter.

A techie awaiting onboarding told Business Today, "Even though I have a job offer from India's top IT company Infosys, I am still staring at a grim future. I already have a gap in my resume because of all the waiting and no income from past several months. On top of that Infosys has not given any clarity on timeline of onboarding. And now some of my friends who got onboarded are fired, that makes me feel scared about my prospects as it was always thought that IT sector is mass recruiter and there are always opportunities, but it is changing."

Two weeks ago, Business Today reported that IT services Wipro had laid off hundreds of employees after they failed the company's internal test. Sources allege that 800 freshers were sacked from Wipro while the company claimed that the terminations were limited to 452 people.

Monday, January 30, 2023

Chris Williams (former HR exec at Microsoft) shares 3 types of employees at most risk during layoffs

Here are 3 types of employees at most risk during layoffs. And, two categories of employees who are at least risk of being laid off.
By: Chris Williams (former HR exec at Microsoft)

Following Microsoft's announcement on January 18 to lay off 10,000 employees, accounting for almost 5 percent of its global workforce, a former vice-president of the human resources at the company shared three categories of employees who are at most risk of being fired and two of the safest categories.

Chris Williams, who is now a podcaster, consultant and TikTok creator told Business Insider, "Every industry, company, even department has a different risk, but some areas are more vulnerable than others." He then listed the three most unsafe categories.

1) Contract workers

"At the extreme end of the risk spectrum are contract employees. One of the main reasons companies use temporary or contract workers is for this very contingency. They want to remain flexible in case of a downturn," Williams told the publication.

2) Employees associated with new initiatives

When companies decide to explore new avenues during a good phase, they tend to hire employees for these new initiatives. Such employees too are at risk during layoffs if the company decides to play it safe. "Unless the company is making a concerted effort to pivot entirely to these new areas, these kinds of new initiatives are often the first ones cut when times are leaner," Williams told Business Insider.

3) Employees associated with event planning

According to Williams, events and luxury activities are quick to be axed when companies find themselves in a tight spot, making employees who handle events at risk of layoffs. "If you are involved in planning events, for example, those are some of the first things that companies cut when times get tight. People who are part of providing such services are at high risk of being laid off," Williams said.

He then went on to add the two categories of employees who are at least risk.

1) Profit-making employees

"If you're an essential part of building the most profitable product for your company, your layoff risk is low. When retreating to the core business, companies turn to the quality products that make money," Williams told Business Insider. If employees are essential to one of those products, the company would not risk incurring losses if such staff are fired.

2) Human resources staff

"HR is essential in the layoff process, and finance is often relied on as the financial status gets more scrutiny. As such, these areas are rarely the source of major cuts in most layoffs," Williams added.

Layoffs Report (Jan 2023)

Tech Layoffs Since 2022-23

Tech Layoffs Since Covid-19 (Q1 2020)

Breakup by industry since Covid-19 (Q1-2020)

Biggest tech layoffs by Jan 2023

Headlines

1.
Jan/30/2023: Philips cuts 6,000 jobs just months after laying off 4,000 employees.
Dutch health technology company Philips said on Monday it would let go off 6,000 employees globally in order to restore the company’s profitability on the back of a recall of respiratory devices.
The recall, however, took place last year but still has a rippling effect on the company.
This is the second round of layoffs at Philips after a recall. The company cut over 4,000 jobs in October last year.

2.
On Jan. 4, Amazon announced it would lay off 18,000 workers, or 5% of its corporate staff. This is the largest round of layoffs announced since the pandemic started, and it was 8,000 higher than initially expected when the ecommerce giant confirmed back in November that it would be implementing job cuts.

3.
Google's parent company, Alphabet, said it will be laying off 12,000 employees, or around 6% of its workforce, making this the second-largest round of layoffs since the onset of the pandemic. Among the laid-off workers, several of them had been long-tenured or recently promoted, according to CNBC.

4.
On Jan. 18, Microsoft announced it would be cutting 10,000 jobs, or approximately 5% of its workforce. Microsoft also made multiple job cuts last year, with the technology corporation announcing it would lay off less than 1% of its staff on July 12 and also confirming another 1,000 jobs would be cut on Oct. 17, per CNBC and Axios, respectively.

5.
Following Meta's 11,000 cut back in November, Microsoft layoffs is the fourth-largest round of layoffs since the pandemic began.

6.
Also on Jan. 4, Salesforce said it plans to cut 8,000 jobs, or 10% of its staff, in addition to reducing its office space.

7.
IBM announced on Jan. 25 that it plans to cut around 3,900 jobs, or approximately 1.5% of its global workforce, though it expects to continue hiring in "higher growth areas," according to Bloomberg.

8.
Multinational software company SAP said on Jan. 26 that it plans to layoff 3,000 employees, or 2.5% of its global workforce.

9.
On Jan. 20, online furniture retailer Wayfair announced it will be laying off approximately 1,750 workers, or 10% of its staff.

10.
On Jan. 24, vacation rental management company Vacasa announced in company-wide email that it will cut 1,300 jobs, representing 17% of its workforce.

11.
On Jan. 10, Coinbase said it plans to reduce its workforce by 20%, or 950 employees.

12.
Multinational software company Amdocs decided to let go of 3% of its workforce, or 700 people, on Jan. 2, making it the first tech company in 2023 to implement mass job cuts.

Ref: investopedia

13.
Elon Musk's Twitter announced further job cuts in 2023, saying that it will let go of 3700 more employees.

14.
Swiggy CEO Srihisha Majety in an internal note to employees said that the company will lay off 380 employees.

15.
Byju's has been cutting jobs left and right over the past few months. This year, it would cut - or "rationalize" - about 5% of it's 50,000-strong workforce.

16.
Ridehailing app Ola also joined the bandwagon, announcing that it had sacked 130-200 of its employees in a fresh round of layoffs.

Ref: economictimes

17.
Even IT giant Wipro has laid off more than 400 fresher employees for poor performance in internal assessment tests. Ref: economictimes (17)

18. Spotify (600 job cuts)
"Like many other leaders, I hoped to sustain the strong tailwinds from the pandemic and believed that our broad global business and lower risk to the impact of a slowdown in ads would insulate us.
"In hindsight, I was too ambitious in investing ahead of our revenue growth," says Daniel Ek, Spotify's CEO. Ref: economictimes (18)

19.
Ecommerce firm Dealshare has laid off around 100 employees, or over 6% of its 1,500-strong workforce, according to multiple people aware of the development. Dealshare, backed by Tiger Global and Alpha Wave Global, joins a growing number of startups that have fired employees in the new year to cut costs and rationalise operations.
Ref: economictimes (19)

20.
Apple is one exception. It strongly resisted increasing its head count in recent years and as a result doesn't have to shrink staff numbers (although it hasn't been immune to staff losses due to work-from-home policy changes). Ref: economictimes (20)

References
1. Tracking tech layoffs since COVID-19
2. How much are tech companies paying for talent?

Friday, November 4, 2022

Layoffs and Reduction of Infrastructure Cost at Musk's Twitter (Nov 2022)

Musk Orders Twitter To Reduce Infrastructure Costs By $1 Billion: Sources

Elon Musk has directed Twitter Inc’s teams to find up to $1 billion in annual infrastructure cost savings, according to two sources familiar with the matter and an internal Slack message reviewed by Reuters, raising concerns that Twitter could go down during high-traffic events like the U.S. midterm elections.

The company is aiming to find between $1.5 million and $3 million a day in savings from servers and cloud services, said the Slack message, which referred to the project as “Deep Cuts Plan."

Twitter is currently losing about $3 million a day “with all spending and revenue considered," according to an internal document reviewed by Reuters.

Twitter did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

'If On Way To Office, Return Home': Twitter To All Employees As Layoffs Begin

Elon Musk-owned Twitter is going ahead with a massive firing plan globally. Twitter has literally shut its offices and suspended the badges of all employees until a decision is made as to whether an employee is fired or retained. The scale is so massive that employees who are not fired will get “a notification via their Twitter email”. And those who are fired will get an email on their personal email ID. The decision will be made by Friday and all employees will get an email by “9AM PST on Friday Nov. 4th.”

Elon Musk is said to be working with close colleagues at Tesla and SpaceX to structure the layoff plans. 3,738 Twitter employees could be laid off. Employees at Twitter were notified in an email seen by The New York Times that layoffs would start on Friday and instructed not to come into work on that day. The overall number of layoffs the corporation was contemplating was not mentioned in the email.

Here’s the full letter that was to sent to Twitter employees:

Team,

In an effort to place Twitter on a healthy path, we will go through the difficult process of reducing our global workforce on Friday. We recognize that this will impact a number of individuals who have made valuable contributions to Twitter, but this action is unfortunately necessary to ensure the company’s success moving forward.

Given the nature of our distributed workforce and our desire to inform impacted individuals as quickly as possible, communications for this process will take place via email. By 9AM PST on Friday Nov. 4th, everyone will receive an individual email with the subject line: Your Role at Twitter.

Please check your email, including your spam folder.

If your employment is not impacted, you will receive a notification via your Twitter email. • If your employment is impacted, you will receive a notification with next steps via your personal email. • If you do not receive an email from twitter-hr@ by 5PM PST on Friday Nov. 4th, please email peoplequestions@twitter.com.

To help ensure the safety of each employee as well as Twitter systems and customer data, our offices will be temporarily closed and all badge access will be suspended. If you are in an office or on your way to an office, please return home.

We acknowledge this is an incredibly challenging experience to go through, whether or not you are impacted. Thank you for continuing to adhere to Twitter policies that prohibit you from discussing confidential company information on social media, with the press or elsewhere.

We are grateful for your contributions to Twitter and for your patience as we move through this process.

Thank you.

Twitter