Job Cuts

David Goldsmith

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Gap eliminating about 500 corporate jobs as sales fall​

Key Points
  • Gap Inc. is cutting about 500 corporate positions, it confirmed Tuesday.
  • The job cuts come as the apparel retailer cuts back on spending amid declining sales and the ending of its partnership with Kanye West’s Yeezy brand.
Gap Inc. is cutting about 500 corporate jobs as the clothing retailer struggles with declining sales.
The job cuts, which include open positions, will be primarily at Gap’s offices in San Francisco, New York and Asia and hit various departments, a representative for the retailer confirmed Tuesday. The moves were first reported by The Wall Street Journal.

The San Francisco-based company has experienced a slew of setbacks, including issues with the product assortment at its Old Navy brand, which accounted for more than half the company’s sales in its fiscal 2021.
And last week, Kanye West, who goes by Ye, said he was ending his company Yeezy’s partnership with Gap after the rapper accused the retailer of breaching terms of their agreement. Ye said Gap failed to distribute Yeezy products at its stores by the second half of 2021 and did not create dedicated Yeezy Gap stores as promised.
Ye told CNBC he was dissatisfied with progress on launching physical Yeezy stores in partnership with the retailer. Gap later confirmed the break, but said it still plans to work through its Yeezy product pipeline.

As it struggles to get sales back on track, Gap is also still looking for a new leader after CEO Sonia Syngal abruptly stepped down in July after about two years on the job. Last month, the company withdrew its 2022 financial outlook, citing execution challenges and uncertain macroeconomic conditions.
 

David Goldsmith

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Compass conducts layoffs
Real estate giant has more than 100 offices in California

Compass has joined the growing list of American employers reducing headcount ahead of an anticipated recession.

The real estate giant is undergoing layoffs Tuesday as part of its plan to “significantly” reduce costs by the end 2022, VICE reported. The company’s technology team will be heavily impacted, according to the report. The firm, which has more than 100 offices in California, didn’t disclose the size of the layoffs.
“These reductions are difficult, but ultimately necessary to ensure we can confidently navigate the current market,” CEO Robert Reffkin wrote in an email to staff. Reffkin added that the layoffs wouldn’t affect regional operations employees.

Compass’ layoffs come on the heels of Lucidworks, a San Francisco-based tech firm, laying off 10% of its staff. Additionally, Lucidworks CEO Will Hayes is stepping down from his role this week with a replacement to be named shortly.
Ahead of an anticipated recession, three out of four (78%) American workers are fearful they will lose their jobs, according to a survey from Insight Global, a national staffing services company. Meanwhile, 56% of American workers say they don't feel financially prepared for a recession or they don't know how they would prepare for a recession. More than half (54%) would be willing to take a pay cut, even with inflation at a 40-year high, to avoid being laid off if there were a recession.
“It's unfortunate we're already seeing some companies turn to mass layoffs because I believe layoffs should be the absolute last resort,” said Bert Bean, CEO of Insight Global. “Instead, I encourage leaders to consider other solutions, such as building a plan that avoids layoffs and helps you grow through a recession. Get your employee base executing on that, because when you bounce back from a recession, you'll need your people more than ever.”
Of course, HR leaders who experienced the global recession of 2008-2009 are better positioned to weather this potential storm. They’ve learned what works and business leaders will be turning to them to take the helm. As for HR professionals who are about to enter uncharted territory, this will be trial by fire.

“You never know how long these scenarios will last,” Jaemi Taylor, managing director in the HR practice of Allegis Partners, told HRD. Before joining the New York City-based executive search firm, Taylor spent nearly 20 years recruiting HR leaders, having worked for Robert Half, Beacon Hill and ChapmanCG.
“I’ve worked with HR leaders during COVID who asked the CEO or the board for more time, whether that’s a quarter or a month, before making drastic cuts,” Taylor says. “You want to review critical hiring, determine critical business initiatives and most importantly, avoid knee-jerk reactions.”
 

David Goldsmith

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Goldman Sachs to kick off Wall Street layoff season with hundreds of job cuts this month
  • Goldman Sachs is planning on cutting several hundred jobs this month, making it the first major Wall Street firm to rein in expenses amid a collapse in deals volume.
  • The bank is reinstating a tradition of annual employee culls, which have historically targeted between 1% and 5% of lower performers, in positions across the firm, according to a person with direct knowledge of the situation.
  • At the lower end of that range, which is the size of the expected cull, that means several hundred job cuts at the New York-based investment bank with 47,000 employees at midyear.

Wall Street layoffs will be selective but broad-based, according to sources, says Hugh Son

Goldman Sachs is planning on cutting several hundred jobs this month, making it the first major Wall Street firm to take steps to rein in expenses amid a collapse in deals volume.
The bank is reinstating a tradition of annual employee culls, which have historically targeted between 1% and 5% of lower performers, in positions across the firm, according to a person with direct knowledge of the situation.

At the lower end of that range, which is the size of the expected cull, that means several hundred job cuts at the New York-based firm, which had 47,000 employees at midyear.

People enter the Goldman Sachs headquarters building in New York, U.S., on Monday, June 14, 2021.
Michael Nagle | Bloomberg | Getty Images
Goldman isn’t likely to be the only bank to cut workers. Before the pandemic, Wall Street firms typically laid off their bottom performers in the months after Labor Day and before bonuses are paid out. The practice was put on pause during the last few years amid a hiring boom.
Goldman declined to comment on the record about its plans. The timing of the cuts was reported earlier by the New York Times.
In July, CNBC was first to report that the bank was looking at a return to the annual tradition of year-end job cuts.
Steep declines in investment banking activities, especially IPOs and junk debt issuance, created the conditions for the first significant layoffs on Wall Street since the pandemic began in 2020, CNBC reported in June.

 

David Goldsmith

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The cost of taming inflation could be 3 million lost jobs
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Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell has warned that getting inflation under control will involve “some pain to households and businesses.” What kind of pain is he talking about?
So far, the pain has been plunging stock values and higher borrowing costs for homes, cars, credit-card purchases and business investments. But the toll could also include a surge in unemployment, and all the strains that go along with it—which typically harms lower-income workers most of all.
Powell won’t explicitly say the Fed is trying to put people out of work, but that’s one implied goal of its newly aggressive rate-hiking blitz. The Fed has raised short-term interest rates by 3 percentage points so far this year, and economists think it will push them up another point or two during coming months. Higher borrowing costs typically depress spending, with softer demand bringing inflation down.

The Fed thinks a flurry of rate hikes will tame inflation without choking off growth so much that it causes a recession. That would be a “soft landing.” But the Fed could be wrong. “This soft landing doesn’t add up to us,” investing giant BlackRock advised in a Sept. 26 market analysis. “We think quashing inflation that quickly … would take a recession.”
BlackRock thinks GDP would have to contract by about 2 percentage points to cut inflation as quickly as the Fed is aiming to do. That would put about 3 million Americans out of work, in BlackRock’s estimate. The unemployment rate would rise from 3.7% now to around 5.5%. That would be a moderate downturn, as recessions go. But should the Fed really throw people out of work in order to lower inflation?
U.S. Federal Reserve Board Chairman Jerome Powell delivers opening remarks to the

U.S. Federal Reserve Board Chairman Jerome Powell delivers opening remarks to the "Fed Listens: Transitioning to the Post-pandemic Economy" listening session in Washington, U.S., September 23, 2022.

The Fed has a so-called dual mandate: to maximize employment and keep prices stable. The Fed defines stable prices as an inflation rate of around 2%. With inflation currently at 8.3%, the Fed clearly has some work to do. Employment, on the other hand, is so strong that many companies still can’t find enough workers. Nobody at the Fed will come out and say it, but on its current path, the Fed is sending the message that getting prices down is more important than protecting jobs.

The Fed is hiking rates at the fastest pace since the early 1980s, because inflation is at the highest levels since then. In the spring of 1980, inflation hit 14.6%, the highest level in modern history. The Fed, under chairman Paul Volcker, raised rates by about 10 percentage points during a 12-month period from 1980 to 1981. A recession followed, with the economy losing 2.8 million jobs. Since the economy was smaller then, those lost jobs pushed the unemployment rate to 10.8%, far higher than anybody thinks the jobless rate will go if today’s Fed triggers another recession.

But that doesn’t mean a Fed-induced recession would be fine and dandy. Wharton professor Jeremy Siegel has blasted the Fed for worrying too much about inflation and not enough about how a recession could hurt ordinary workers. Tesla CEO Elon Musk, who thinks a recession is coming, tweeted that “Siegel is obviously correct.” Democratic Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts has warned that the Fed will “slow demand by getting a lot of people fired and making families poorer.”
Powell, for his part, argues that the risk of a recession is worth tolerating because persistent inflation would cause “greater pain later on.” He’s not wrong about the nasty effects of prolonged inflation, which go way beyond the high gasoline prices that unnerved drivers during the summer. The worst may be the decline in living standards that comes as wages fail to keep up with rising prices, especially the cost of essentials. When the Fed began hiking rates in 1980, real wages, adjusted for inflation, were falling 6% year-over-year.
That’s a problem now, too. Average wages are growing 4.4%, but with inflation at 8.3%, real wages are declining by 3.9%. That’s unsustainable. What the Fed should do about that, however, gets to the whole question of what is causing inflation in the first place.

'We're never going to say there are too many people working'​

BlackRock argues that two main factors are driving prices up: a worker shortage, and a surge in demand for goods during the COVID pandemic, which still hasn’t abated. Other factors, such as the unprecedented fiscal and monetary stimulus of the last two years, are probably lesser factors. The problem, BlackRock says, is that the Fed can’t address either of those two core problems through rate hikes, or any other tool at its disposal. That leaves a recession as the de facto fix for inflation, since a recession, by definition, destroys jobs, lowers incomes and reduces demand for goods — bringing prices down.
Unemployment, obviously, can be a pernicious problem for those experiencing it. In addition to lost income, joblessness disconnects workers from the labor market, which can make it harder to find work even when the recession is over. Some jobs disappear completely during a recession, as employers take advantage of layoffs to replace workers with technology. Unemployment insurance and other types of aid help cushion the blow, but the United States has a weak safety net for jobless workers, compared with other advanced economies.
Inflation and unemployment both hit lower-income workers harder than those who are better off. Lower-income workers simply lack the cushion to absorb higher prices or comfortably ride out a bout of unemployment. Inflation hurts little-by-little over a long period of time. Unemployment hurts a lot right away, and for as long as it lasts. Choosing one form of pain over the other is a Hobson’s choice.
Even Powell has begun to hint it may take a recession, and millions of lost jobs, to lower inflation to acceptable levels. The Fed’s own prediction is for the unemployment rate rising to 4.4% during the next 12 months, which would equate with about 1.3 million lost jobs.
“We think we need to have softer labor market conditions,” Powell said, euphemistically, after the Fed’s last meeting, on Sept. 22. “We’re never going to say there are too many people working, but … people are really suffering from inflation.” And soon, from unemployment.
 

David Goldsmith

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Facebook 'looks to quietly cull 12,000 underperforming workers' - 15% of its staff - in WEEKS: Mark Zuckerberg freezes hiring and shuts NYC office​

  • Mark Zuckerberg and other leaders at Facebook asked managers last week to review workers and notify if any 'need support', reports say
  • Meta, the parent company to Facebook, will be giving up its New York office at 225 Park Avenue South, a spokesperson confirmed
  • Plans to expand office space at 770 Broadway have been halted
  • Facebook CEO hosted a Q&A session with employees last week indicating that a hiring freeze which has been in place since May will remain
Mark Zuckerberg is planning to lay off up to 12,000 underperforming Facebook workers after initiating a review process last week in which managers were asked to label workers that 'need support', reports say.
This comes after Zuckerberg announced a freeze to hiring and warned of plans to 'steadily reduce headcount growth' for the first time in the history of the company.
The Facebook CEO said during a Q&A with employees last week that the company would extend a hiring freeze that has been in place since May. During that meeting he said that steps would be taken to reduce costs.

A Facebook spokesperson denied the claims that 12,000 employees faced being sacked, describing the Insider report that brought them as 'inaccurate'.
In response they pointed to Zuckerberg's previous comments from an earnings call two months ago in which he said: 'Many teams are going to shrink so we can shift energy to other areas.'
Zuckerberg has suffered significant losses to his personal fortune which has dropped by almost a third in a year.

Mark Zuckerberg is planning to lay off up to 12,000 underperforming Facebook workers after initiating a review process last week in which managers were asked to label workers that 'need support', reports say

Meta will end its lease of the 200,000 square foot office space at 225 Park Avenue South in the Flatiron district of Manhattan, anonymous sources told Bloomberg
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The 225 Park Avenue South office served as a 'great bridge' to a new space in Hudson Yards which was planned to open soon


The 225 Park Avenue South office served as a 'great bridge' to a new space in Hudson Yards which was planned to open soon
Meta will also be closing one of its New York offices as part of a plan to reduce growth and cut costs by at least 10 percent in the coming months.

The company will end its lease of the 200,000 square foot office space at 225 Park Avenue South in the Flatiron district of Manhattan.

'Two twenty-five Park Avenue South has served as a great bridge space to get us to our new offices at Hudson Yards and Farley,' said Meta Spokesperson Jamila Reeves in an email statement, confirming the company's plans to give up the space.
A 300,000 square foot expansion of the company's 770 Broadway office was planned earlier this year but those plans were abandoned in the summer, Bloomberg reported


A 300,000 square foot expansion of the company's 770 Broadway office was planned earlier this year but those plans were abandoned in the summer, Bloomberg reported
Facebook agreed to lease 730,000 square feet in the historic Farley Building opposite Pennsylvania Station

'Two twenty-five Park Avenue South has served as a great bridge space to get us to our new offices at Hudson Yards and Farley,' said  Meta Spokesperson Jamila Reeves in an email statement


Facebook agreed to lease 730,000 square feet in the historic Farley Building opposite Pennsylvania Station


The closure comes as Meta have been combining New York office spaces and in advance of plans for its enormous 1.5 million square foot Hudson Yards office.
It is part of a shift in the company's approach to office space in New York and is the latest in a series of changes that signal intentions to scale down and decelerate growth in the city.
In the summer it backed out of its plans to expand 770 Broadway offices by 300,000, reported Bloomberg.
Meta currently has four offices in New York City at 770 Broadway, 225 Park Avenue, the Farley Building and Hudson Yards.
With expansion of the office at 770 Broadway paused and departure from 225 Park Avenue to take place soon the company will be focusing on Hudson Yards and the Farley Building.
New York City has faced devastating financial consequences of remote work as people have continued working from home even as the pandemic began to subside.
A recent study from the National Bureau of Economic Research found that the value of office buildings dropped by nearly 45 percent in 2020 and is expected to remain around 39 percent below pre-pandemic levels.
The study suggests that New York will be responsible for 10 percent of almost $456billion of value lost in office spaces across the US.
 

David Goldsmith

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Amazon Freezes Corporate Hiring in Its Retail Business​

It is the latest tech company to pump the brakes on hiring amid growing economic concerns.

Amazon hired at a fast clip throughout the pandemic.

Amazon hired at a fast clip throughout the pandemic.Credit...Jenny Riffle for The New York Times

Amazon hired at a fast clip throughout the pandemic.


Amazon is freezing corporate hiring in its retail business for the rest of the year, according to an internal announcement obtained by The New York Times, making it the latest company to pull back amid the economic uncertainty.
The announcement, in an email to recruiters, said the company was halting global hiring for all corporate roles, including technology positions, in its stores business, which covers Amazon’s physical and online retail business and its logistics operations. More than 10,000 openings were posted in that division, which accounts for the bulk of Amazon’s sales, as of Monday evening.
The broad freeze won’t affect the company’s more profitable cloud computing division. Some roles, such as student hiring and field positions, were exempt from the pause, the email said.
“Amazon continues to have a significant number of open roles available across the company,” Brad Glasser, an Amazon spokesman, said in a statement. He said some parts of the business were more mature than others, “and we expect to keep adjusting our hiring strategies in each of these businesses at various junctures.”



The freeze at the nation’s second-largest private employer is part of a wider cooling in the job market, or at least another sign that it is no longer at a raging boil.
On Tuesday, the Labor Department released data showing that while many parts of the job market remained strong, employers were slowing the numbers of roles they were looking to fill. About 10.1 million positions were open in August, down from 11.2 million in July. Federal Reserve officials have hoped that rising interest rates could lower inflation by reducing hiring — and with it the pressure on wages — without requiring widespread layoffs.

After a frenzied era of hiring bonuses, raises and shortages, employers are finding it somewhat less competitive to attract and retain workers. Layoffs rose slightly to 1.5 million in August, the new Labor Department data reported, but they remained below their historical average.


Layoffs and hiring slowdowns have hit a wide swath of the tech industry in recent months. That includes start-ups as well as publicly traded companies like Peloton and Shopify, which announced in late July that it would lay off 10 percent of its work force after incorrectly predicting how much e-commerce would boom as the pandemic receded.
Large companies have not been immune, either. Meta, the parent company of Facebook, told employees last week that it was freezing hiring for most positions.

For retailers, the economy is shifting at a critical time as they march toward the all-important holiday shopping season. Many, including Amazon, are hoping to get the season started early as customers hunt for deals and have announced October sales days. Amazon’s new Prime Early Access Sale is next week.
Many have signaled a painful period ahead, with rising costs and inventory as consumers cut back on discretionary spending amid high inflation.
Walmart, the country’s largest private employer, has said it will hire fewer hourly workers for the holiday shopping season this year. FedEx, which competes with Amazon for delivering packages to customers, said last month that it was freezing hiring, closing stores and parking planes as demand fell short of its forecasts.
Amazon told recruiters to tell job candidates that it was not in a hiring freeze, though it went on to say all open job requisitions should be closed in the coming days. It said new openings will be available early next year.
Candidates with interviews scheduled before Oct. 15 could still receive offers, but they would not start at Amazon until next year. The email recommended that phone calls to screen candidates and other early recruiting activities should be canceled.

Amazon’s chief executive, Andy Jassy, recently told investors that the company had focused on controlling costs and efficiency in its warehouse and logistics operations.

Amazon’s chief executive, Andy Jassy, recently told investors that the company had focused on controlling costs and efficiency in its warehouse and logistics operations.Credit...Hiroko Masuike/The New York Times

Amazon’s chief executive, Andy Jassy, recently told investors that the company had focused on controlling costs and efficiency in its warehouse and logistics operations.

Amazon’s listings show it is still hiring warehouse workers, whom it regularly needs because of high turnover. It recently said it was raising wages at its warehouses by an average of about $1 per hour and has not yet announced whether it will hire seasonal associates for the holiday peak season.

Under Andy Jassy, who took over as chief executive a little over a year ago, Amazon has been pulling back on spending as it looks to trim costs amid its weakest growth in two decades.
Mr. Jassy recently told investors that the company had focused on controlling costs and efficiency in its warehouse and logistics operations. Amazon’s footprint grew fast in recent years, and during the pandemic the company went on a hiring spree unrivaled in the history of corporate America. This year it has slowed its once-rapid warehouse expansion, closing facilities, backing out of leases and mothballing some new buildings.
The company employed 1.52 million people in the second quarter, almost 100,000 fewer than at the end of March primarily because of reductions in its hourly work force.
The corporate hiring freeze is the latest sign that cost-controlling measures are hitting Amazon’s core retail and technology teams as well. After announcing plans to acquire One Medical, a chain of primary care clinics, it shuttered its own primary care business, telling officials in Washington State, where Amazon is based, that the move could result in 159 layoffs.
In recent years, Amazon hosted a Career Day in September, when it recruited for tens of thousands of salaried positions. Last year, it received more than a million job applications. But it did not host the event this year.
And last month, on the company’s annual devices day, when it debuts consumer products, the offerings were notably more restrained than in the past. The event focused largely on updates to existing product lines, such as the Fire TV and Kindle.
In the past, the event included a number of oddball products with limited obvious consumer potential, like a printer for Post-it notes, an Alexa-enabled ring and an indoor home-security camera drone.
 

David Goldsmith

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Peloton slashing 500 more jobs as it races to return to growth​

KEY POINTS
  • Peloton has to prove that its recent spate of strategy changes can help the company grow, CEO Barry McCarthy told CNBC.
  • The fitness equipment maker is cutting another 500 jobs after multiple layoff rounds this year.
  • “The restructuring is done with today’s announcement,” McCarthy said. “Now we’re focused on growth.”

Peloton to cut 500 jobs in last bid turnaround

Peloton is cutting another 500 jobs in a move that CEO Barry McCarthy said should position the struggling fitness equipment maker to return to growth.
The cuts, which amount to about 12% of Peloton’s workforce, mark a pivot point for the company, McCarthy told CNBC on Thursday. Peloton already has had multiple rounds of layoffs this year.

“The restructuring is done with today’s announcement,” he said. “Now we’re focused on growth.”
McCarthy said the company now has to prove its recent spate of strategy changes, including equipment rentals and partnerships with Amazon and Hilton, can help it grow.
Shares of Peloton were up 4% in morning trading. The stock is down about 76% so far this year.
McCarthy took over as CEO of Peloton earlier this year from co-founder John Foley, and has overseen drastic changes to its business model as the company struggled after a sales boom earlier in the Covid pandemic. A former Spotify and Netflix executive, he has pushed the company’s business further into subscriptions while broadening the availability of its products beyond Peloton’s direct-to-consumer roots.

Earlier this week, the company said it would put its bikes in every Hilton-branded hotel in the United States. It recently announced partnerships to sell equipment in Dick’s Sporting Goods stores and on Amazon.

McCarthy talked to CNBC after The Wall Street Journal reported on remarks he made about where the company could stand in six months.
“We need to grow to get the business to a sustainable level,” McCarthy told the Journal, which first reported on the layoffs.
Later Thursday, McCarthy released a memo to employees regarding his remarks to the media about the company’s turnaround plan. (Read the memo at the bottom of this article.)
“That’s on me and I apologize,” he said, referring to the impression created by the six-month timeframe mentioned in the Journal article.
McCarthy told CNBC that Peloton, which has slowed the rate of its cash burn, would still be “extremely well capitalized” and “highly liquid.” And it’s still on track to meet its cash flow goals for the fiscal year.
“I’m feeling about as optimistic as I’ve ever felt,” he said, reflecting on the changes the company made over the past several months.
Read Thursday afternoon’s memo from McCarthy:
Team,
I’m sure you all have seen or heard about today’s Wall Street Journal story. We were expecting a story about redemption and the successful turnaround of Peloton, which is why we invested time on background briefing them on the state of our turnaround. The headline should have been that recent strong execution and today’s restructuring have positioned us to meet our fiscal year-end goal of break-even cash flow, with a renewed focus on accelerating our growth, which is why I’ve never felt more optimistic about our future. Would I say this if it weren’t true? Not a chance……
Instead, the article creates the impression we have six months to live, which is at odds with the story we told and the state of the business. That’s on me and I apologize.
I was asked the question: “How much time do you think you have to show success?” My response was 12 months from the time I joined Peloton, knowing that we’re already showing significant progress and in record time. Seemed like a no-brainer at the time.
In the past you’ve heard me say we’re all held accountable for our performance. Me included. But to be unequivocally clear, there is no ticking clock on our performance and even if there was, the business is performing well and making steady progress toward our year-end goal of break-even cash flow. Our immediate focus is on ensuring that our most important stakeholders – beginning with you – understand this to be the case.
Most importantly, I don’t want this news cycle to overshadow the difficult reality that 500 of our colleagues have been impacted today, or the gratitude I have for all they and you have done for the company.
-Barry


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David Goldsmith

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“A lot of firms hired, hired, hired just to keep up with that marketplace,” Cohn said. “There’s going to be a new normal and the real estate brokerage and mortgage industry as well are going to have to right-size again.”
 

David Goldsmith

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David Goldsmith

All Powerful Moderator
Staff member
LLayoffs hit Intel, Microsoft, Oracle and more

Microsoft has quietly laid off 1000 employees across multiple divisions of the company, including Xbox, Xbox Cloud, Microsoft Strategic Missions and Technology organization, Azure, and Microsoft government. First reported by The Insider, the scale of the job cuts are not known.
The company announced in July that it plans to lay off less than one per cent of its 180,000-person workforce, and has slowed hiring since May.
“Like all companies, we evaluate our business priorities on a regular basis, and make structural adjustments accordingly,” Microsoft said in a statement to Axios. “We will continue to invest in our business and hire in key growth areas in the year ahead.”
Facing a decline in the personal computer (PC) sales, Intel is also planning job cuts that would potentially impact up to 20 per cent of its workforce, notably in its sales and marketing departments, Bloomberg reported.
Covid-19 restrictions China and the Ukraine conflict seem to be the key reasons behind the slump in PC sales, in addition to the tensions in the chipset market.
Bloomberg reports that the job cuts are set to save the company between 10 and 15 per cent in fixed costs.
Texas-based Oracle is yet another computer technology company expediting cost-cutting plans after it laid off 200 workers in August at its former headquarters in California. The job cuts, first reported by The Information, are said to encompass data scientists, application developers, marketing specialists, and software developers.
Earlier this year, Date Center Dynamics (DCD) reported that further job cuts at Oracle are likely to happen in Europe, India, and Canada.
UK-based chip designer Arm also signaled redundancies in its workforce as it announced, earlier this year, plans to lay off 12-15 per cent of its staff, putting 1000 jobs at risk. The layoffs come after Nvidia’s proposed US$40 billion acquisition of the company fell through.
The news was first reported in UK’s Daily Telegraph.
Salesforce, Amazon, Twitter, Meta, Tesla, Shopify, and Netflix are among the many companies that also announced job cuts/hiring slumps earlier this year.p
 

David Goldsmith

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Wells Fargo mortgage staff brace for layoffs as U.S. loan volumes collapse

Mortgage volumes at Wells Fargo slowed further in recent weeks, leaving some workers idle and sparking concerns that the lender will need to cut more employees as the U.S. housing slump deepens.
The bank had about 18,000 loans in its retail origination pipeline in the early weeks of the fourth quarter, according to people with knowledge of the company's figures. That is down as much as 90% from a year earlier, when the Covid pandemic-fueled housing boom was in full swing, said the people.
Employees are on edge after the bank began cutting workers in April and internal projections point to more departures.

Mortgage volumes at Wells Fargo slowed further in recent weeks, leaving some workers idle and sparking concerns the lender will need to cut more employees as the U.S. housing slump deepens.

The bank had about 18,000 loans in its retail origination pipeline in the early weeks of the fourth quarter, according to people with knowledge of the company's figures. That is down as much as 90% from a year earlier, when the Covid pandemic-fueled housing boom was in full swing, said the people, who declined to be identified speaking about internal matters.

The U.S. housing market has been on a roller coaster in recent years, taking off in 2020 thanks to easy-money policies and the adoption of remote work, and slowing down this year as the Federal Reserve boosted rates. Homebuyers have been squeezed and the pace of refinancing has plummeted as borrowing costs surged to more than 7% for a 30-year loan from about 3% a year earlier. And rates may climb further as the Fed is expected to boost its benchmark rate again Wednesday.

The situation has pressured the home loan industry, particularly firms like Rocket Mortgage that thrived on loan refinancings, and is expected to lead to consolidation among newer nonbank players that rushed to serve customers after most U.S. banks receded from the market.

Among the six biggest U.S. banks, Wells Fargo has historically been the most reliant on mortgages. But that has begun to change under CEO Charlie Scharf, who has said that the bank is looking to shrink the business and focus primarily on serving existing customers.

Early warning
In October, the bank warned investors that the housing market could slow further after saying that mortgage originations fell nearly 60% in the third quarter.

"We expect it to remain challenging in the near term," CFO Mike Santomassimo told analysts Oct. 14. "It's possible that we have a further decline in mortgage banking revenue in the Q4 when originations are seasonally slower."

Employees are on edge after the bank began cutting workers in April and internal projections point to more departures. Local news outlets have reported when Wells Fargo offices have been required to disclose impending job cuts in a municipality.

The ranks of mortgage loan officers, who mainly earn commissions from closing deals, is expected to drop to under 2,000 from more than 4,000 at the start of the year, according to one of the people. Many salespeople haven't closed a single loan in recent weeks, this person said.

Another person said that most of the exits have been voluntary as bankers sought other opportunities, making departures and staffing levels hard to predict.

"The changes we've recently made are the result of the broader rate environment and consistent with the response of other lenders in the industry," a Wells Fargo spokesman said in a statement. "We regularly review and adjust staffing levels to align with market conditions and the needs of our businesses."

The bank said last month that its total workforce shrank by about 14,000 people in the third quarter, a 6% decline to 239,209 employees.

Wells Fargo shares are down about 2% since the start of the year.
 

David Goldsmith

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Twitter’s mass layoffs have begun


UPDATE: Based on tweets from employees showing that they’ve lost access to their work emails and Slack, layoffs are starting to happen:

All your access suddenly shut off in the middle of the night? Same
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— ariasafaria (@SrinivasanAria) November 4, 2022
Has it already started? Happy layoff eve! pic.twitter.com/0AcaQjGJvm
— Rumman Chowdhury (@ruchowdh) November 4, 2022
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Yep, the team is gone. The team that was researching and pushing for algorithmic transparency and algorithmic choice. The team that was studying algorithmic amplification. The team that was inventing and building ethical AI tooling and methodologies. All that is gone.
— Joan Deitchman (@JoanDeitchman) November 4, 2022
According to an internal memo sent to Twitter employees, the new management under Elon Musk will begin conducting layoffs Friday morning. These layoffs have been rumored since before Musk’s takeover, with the most recent report estimating that half of the 7,500 employees will lose their jobs.

On Thursday evening, all employees received an email stating that they will be informed of their employment status at 9 A.M. PT on Friday. Each email will be sent with the subject line “Your Role at Twitter.” If an employee is keeping their job, they’ll be notified via their work email — if they’re let go, they’ll be notified on a personal address.

“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,” the email reads. “If you are in an office or on your way to an office, please return home.”

The email was impersonally signed “Twitter.”

According to a post from a Twitter employee, staff members have been flooding an internal Slack channel with blue heart emojis as they wait to learn their fate tomorrow. (Update: the tweet has since been deleted.)

The love is real. #OneTeam pic.twitter.com/t1txt74SbZ
— Cristina Angeli (@CA_CrissyAngel) November 4, 2022
Musk’s team has already tried to evaluate the productivity of Twitter employees by asking engineers to print out the code that they have written in the last 30 to 60 days. Musk also brought in Tesla engineers to look over Twitter code.

Still, it’s not clear which divisions of the company will be impacted. At Tesla, Musk axed the entire PR team a few years ago — by that notion, it’s likely that he will get rid of Twitter’s PR team.

Musk’s deal to buy Twitter included making the company take on $13 billion in debt from banks, which means Twitter will owe about $1 billion a year in interest payments.

According to a report from Platformer, Twitter’s newsletter service Revue will be shut down by the end of the year. Revue was acquired by Twitter in January 2021 for an undisclosed amount. The report also says that Notes, a longform posting feature, is on hold, as is Twitter’s plan to build crypto wallets.

When Musk first took over last week, he immediately fired four key executives: CEO Parag Agrawal, CFO Ned Segal, General Counsel Sean Edgett and Head of Legal Policy, Trust and Safety Vijaya Gadde. Twitter’s Chief Consumer Officer Sarah Personette and Chief of People and Diversity Dalana Brand resigned the following day.
 

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PRESENTED BY CHARTER COMMUNICATIONS
Axios Login
By Ina Fried · Nov 08, 2022
I'm sure nobody has mentioned it, but it's Election Day in the U.S., so please vote. As y'all know, I love sports and democracy is a participation sport. Today's Login is 1,256 words, a 5-minute read.
1 big thing: What to expect when your tech firm is downsizing
Illustration of two cursor hands holding a box full of office supplies.
Illustration: Allie Carl/Axios
As Silicon Valley and the broader tech industry face a season of layoffs, workers are unprepared for the ordeal and management has little experience with the wrenching process, Axios' Scott Rosenberg reports.
Driving the news: Meta is expected to announce large-scale job cuts as soon as Wednesday, the first ever in its history. That comes on the heels of major layoffs at Twitter and many other flagship tech firms.
Why it matters: At most companies, layoffs are a business decision for top execs but a deeply personal experience for everyone else.
The big picture: The industry's phenomenal 20-year run of largely unimpeded growth means that most of its workforce doesn't have much idea of what to expect from widespread layoffs. Here's a brief guide.
1. For those laid off, the pain is personal.
  • Even in the best cases, where a company has carefully selected who gets the axe and applied sensitivity to the process, people who are let go can feel a sense of failure — even though, typically, the actual failure belonged to the company and its management.
  • The worst cases — as with Twitter's reportedly 50% cuts last week, made by a new ownership team with little preparation or apparent care — create a broader kind of sorrow among a workforce as well.
2. While no one should shed tears for the managers, they're having a hard time too.
  • Middle managers often find themselves having to select winners and losers from groups of people they handpicked to join their teams not that long ago.
  • Then, they have to face the people who are left and help them through what can be extended bouts of anger, depression and survivor's guilt.
  • Workers and managers both face bigger workloads under post-layoff do-more-with-less mandates.
3. For companies, layoffs leave slow-healing psychic wounds.
  • Tech companies often aim to inspire workers with mission statements and caring rhetoric. But once a firm has gone through a round of layoffs, it becomes effectively impossible to persuade employees that anything matters beyond the bottom line.
  • After big rounds of layoffs, tech leaders can't just move on as if nothing happened. They also have to try to rekindle workers' belief that the organization can do big things.
Between the lines: Layoffs that are tied to the shutdown of a specific product line or division can be written off as strategic in nature. Broader layoffs are a sign that a company grew too fast, took too many risky bets, or just never hit overly ambitious goals.
  • Many tech companies overhired during the pandemic and now face tougher times.
  • The people responsible for such choices are rarely the people who lose their jobs — though sometimes, as in Twitter's case, layoffs are made by a new management with a belt-tightening agenda.
To be sure, many tech workers have been generously paid and are relatively well-off compared with other industries. But losing your job is still losing your job.
Scott's thought bubble: I'm a veteran of a dotcom era startup that went public and then laid off half its staff more than two decades ago, and I still get flashbacks.
  • You never forget these experiences, and this year's cuts could reshape how a generation in tech thinks about their careers.
Yes, but: When laid-off developers filled the coffeeshops of San Francisco and other tech hubs after the bust in 2000-2001, they used their newfound don't-give-a-damn state to hatch passion-project ideas.
  • Some of them took off and sparked the next boom. That could happen again.
2. Musk's Twitter chaos opens door to challengers
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Data: Apptopia; Chart: Axios Visuals
Downloads of Twitter's app have grown steadily in the first week since Elon Musk became the company's owner, but other apps — particularly Mastodon, a distributed open-source service — are starting to gain traction as some users begin to experiment with alternatives, Axios' Sara Fischer reports.
Why it matters: That competitive pressure is clearly irking Musk, who tweeted, and then deleted, a series of lewd tweets about Mastodon on Monday.
  • Unlike competition in electric cars or spacecraft, software companies can very quickly seize market share from rivals. Users can download a new social app instantly, and usually for free.
Details: Downloads of Mastodon, a social media app that works something like Twitter but with a chronological feed and no central server, have exploded since Musk took over Twitter, according to new data from Apptopia.
  • Between Oct. 27 and Nov. 6, daily downloads of the app increased from 3,400 to 113,400.
  • Mastodon's founder Eugen Rochko said in a Mastodon post Monday that it now has more than 1 million monthly active users, having added a whopping 489,003 new users since Oct. 27, when Musk bought Twitter.
The big picture: Meanwhile, Apptopia data suggests Twitter's global downloads have increased slightly since Musk took over, averaging roughly 571,000 downloads daily.
  • For the full year preceding the purchase, Twitter was averaging around 350,000 to 450,000 downloads per day.
  • According to internal documents obtained by The Verge, Twitter is telling sales staff that it has added more than 15 million monetizable daily active users since the end of the second quarter.
Yes, but: Advertisers are slowing or pausing their Twitter buys as companies grow frustrated with Elon Musk's moves.
3. How tech can make work harder
Animated illustration of a wobbling stack of computer parts.
Illustration: Aïda Amer/Axios
Tech enables many people to do their jobs however and wherever they like, but the number of applications jobs now require can make it feel like we're working multiple jobs at the same time, Axios Closer's Hope King reports.
By the numbers: Workers are using an average of six to eight apps to perform a single business process, Tori Paulman, senior director analyst at Gartner, told Axios.
  • A salesperson, for example, switches among email, calendar, enterprise chat software such as Slack, a customer relationship management (CRM) platform such as Salesforce, a notetaking application, a presentation maker, a video conference system, and maybe a conference room system in order to meet with a client.
  • One study published in the Harvard Business Review suggests workers are switching from app to app and website to website nearly 1,200 times a day — and paying a so-called "toggling tax" that amounts to a total of 9% of their annual time at work.
Context: The number of ways workers stayed in touch with one another digitally shot up during the pandemic, said Paulman.
  • Friction (and frustration) increased as a result — whether it's learning a completely different set of apps for a new job, clashing with colleagues who have varying levels of tech proficiency, or being forced to use one program when you prefer another.
What they're saying: "You might not be commuting into the office, but you're commuting from email to CRM and from CRM to [browsing the web] and from the internet to [using your phone]," Paulman said.
Some repeatable solutions: Employers should enable workers with a lot of "digital dexterity" to help their peers, Paulman said.
  • For example, Gartner's research has shown that peer learning (a colleague showing another colleague a tip or trick) is more effective than an IT department forcing new programs onto workers.
 

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Salesforce cut hundreds of employees Monday​



KEY POINTS
  • Salesforce let go of fewer than 1,000 employees Monday, according to a person familiar with the move.
  • Top executives at some of the business software company’s clients have been weighing in on purchases, resulting in longer deal cycles.
In this article


Salesforce on Tuesday confirmed that it cut some employees this week after the enterprise software maker saw demand lighten in some countries and industries.
Protocol reported earlier on the cuts, saying they could affect up to 2,500 employees. One person familiar with the matter said Salesforce let go of fewer than 1,000 people Monday. At the end of January it employed 73,541 people. In August Salesforce said in a filing that headcount rose 36% in the past year “to meet the higher demand for services from our customers.”



“Our sales performance process drives accountability. Unfortunately, that can lead to some leaving the business, and we support them through their transition,” a Salesforce spokesperson told CNBC in a statement.
Several technology companies, Salesforce included, have announced plans to add employees at a slower rate than before this year to weather rougher business conditions as prices and interest rates move higher. Some of them have also gone a step beyond that and removed some existing employees, as experts debate the timing of a possible economic recession.


In August Salesforce issued full-year earnings and revenue guidance that came in below expectations, sending the stock down 3% the next day. Amy Weaver, Salesforce’s finance chief, told analysts that demand slowed down among small and medium-sized businesses, particularly in North America and Europe, and in communications, consumer goods, media and retail. Marc Benioff, Salesforce’s co-founder and co-CEO, said he expects longer sales cycles and greater scrutiny of corporate purchases to persist.
One of Salesforce’s top competitors in business software, Microsoft, announced a round of job cuts in October.
 

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Layoff spree in Silicon Valley spells end of an era for Big Tech​

A crypto-collapse, layoffs at Facebook and carnage at Twitter are rocking the tech industry. It’s stoking memories of the dot-com crash 20 years ago.​

Over the past week, Silicon Valley companies have laid off 20,000 employees, a swift ramp-up of the job cuts and hiring freezes that have been ricocheting through the tech industry for months.
Twitter, Facebook parent Meta, payment platform Stripe, software service firm Salesforce, ride-hailing company Lyft and a growing list of smaller companies all laid off double-digit percentages of their workers. That means tens of thousands of engineers, salespeople and support staff in one of the country’s most important and highest-paying industries are out of a job. Meanwhile, other companies including Google and Amazon have recently instated hiring slowdowns and freezes.

The departures are solidifying a feeling in Silicon Valley that the bull market of the past decade — which created massive amounts of wealth for tech investors, workers and the broader economy — is decidedly over, conjuring an image of what the rest of the economy could experience if a predicted recession materializes.
“It does feel a little like 2000,” said Lise Buyer, a longtime tech analyst, executive and investor, referring to the turn-of-the-century dot-com crash. “Hire engineers, hire engineers, hire engineers, and then suddenly companies get a cold bucket of water in their face.”

Executives at the companies making the cuts blamed a variety of interconnected factors — overzealous hiring during the pandemic, a slowdown in e-commerce activity and people spending less time online as in-person events return. Tech CEOs have been warning about a looming recession for months, telling their employees to expect tougher working conditions and drastically slowing down the rapid growth they had preached for years.
When it comes to newer tech companies, low interest rates over the past decade have allowed venture capitalists to easily raise money and pour it into new start-ups — even if their founders didn’t have solid plans for actually making money.

During the pandemic, that dynamic went into overdrive. At the same time, bigger tech companies expanded rapidly to take advantage of people spending more time online. Tech share prices soared, boosting confidence and stock-based payouts for workers.
But now that the Federal Reserve is aggressively raising interest rates to fight inflation, venture capitalists are being stingier with their investments, forcing companies to focus more on profitability than growth. Tech giants are doing the same, as higher prices cut into their revenue, forcing them to cut costs.
The layoffs come just a year after Silicon Valley was at its peak, with valuations of Big Tech companies spilling into the trillions, salaries at all-time highs and cryptocurrencies pouring new wealth into the pockets of investors and workers alike. Now, tens of thousands of workers are looking for work.
Marc Weil taught himself how to code when he was 9 years old, and has worked in tech since 2010 at various companies, even founding his own start-up at one point. This week, the 35-year-old engineering manager at Stripe was one of thousands who lost their jobs.
“Year after year goes by and the tech economy keeps getting bigger and bigger with no end in sight,” Weil said. “Everyone in tech has been warned by people who lived through the last few decades that this will end. And so it ended.”
Weil bought a house just three weeks before the layoffs. But he’s not too worried about finding a new job, thanks to the network he’s built up over 10 years in the Valley. He’s more concerned about his younger colleagues.

Spokespeople for Lyft, Twitter, Facebook, Amazon and Google did not return requests for comment. A spokesperson for Stripe referred to a blog post the company’s CEO had made about the layoffs.
“We are facing stubborn inflation, energy shocks, higher interest rates, reduced investment budgets, and sparser start-up funding,” CEO Patrick Collison said in the post. Salesforce spokeswoman Annie Vincent said the company is supporting its workers who were laid off.
For the past 10 years, Big Tech companies have ruled the U.S. economy. Apple, Amazon, Google and Microsoft all broke the trillion-dollar valuation mark, becoming by far the most valuable organizations in modern history. They competed with venture-funded start-ups such as Uber, WeWork, Airbnb and Stripe for tech and business talent, driving up salaries and the cost of living in the Bay Area and other tech hubs like Seattle.

But over the past year, cracks have begun to form in that dominance. The companies’ leaders began warning of cutbacks, and firms such as Google, Microsoft and Facebook quietly instituted hiring slowdowns. Over the summer, as economic sentiment whipped back and forth between positive and negative, the companies also provided mixed messages.
The past few weeks have triggered a deeper level of concern, as a wave of earnings reports showed that even the most stalwart companies such as Amazon and Google are having serious trouble keeping up the revenue growth they were able to show off over the past several years.

Share prices for Facebook and Amazon fell more than 20 percent when they reported their quarterly earnings the final week of October. Amazon’s forecast for the all-important holiday season was below what analysts had expected, and Facebook investors began ditching the company in droves after chief executive Mark Zuckerberg made clear he intended to keep losing money as the company pivots to focusing on building a new “metaverse” virtual world.
Microsoft and Google, the No. 3 and No. 4 most valuable firms in the world respectively after Apple and Saudi Aramco, also reported slowdowns in revenue growth, showing that demand for digital ads and cloud software is falling.

Last week, Twitter under its new owner Elon Musk laid off around half of the company’s 7,500 employees. Musk said Thursday the company would need to find new sources of revenue or it would not “survive the upcoming economic downturn.”
His statement came a day after Zuckerberg said the “macroeconomic downturn” was one of the reasons he needed to fire 11,000 workers, or 13 percent of Meta’s workforce, in the first wide-scale job cuts in its 18-year history.
Stripe is cutting 14 percent of its staff, real estate marketplace Zillow 5 percent and ride-hailing app Lyft 13 percent.
The week’s layoffs bring the total number of displaced tech employees in 2022 to just over 120,000, according to Layoffs.fyi, a layoff tracker run by tech founder Roger Lee.
Tech workers who previously could have counted on dozens of offers for their skills will now have to compete for jobs with thousands of other people.
Sarah Cho, 23, graduated from UCLA this year and was just months into her first job as a product manager at Lyft when she got her layoff notice.
“It’s a very saturated market right now, there’s only a handful of roles that are available,” Cho said. She’s a Korean citizen, so being on a visa is making the situation harder, she said. “It gets to a point where you are just looking for whatever’s available.”
The cuts contrast with other key economic indicators, which show a mixed picture of the economy. Inflation was not as high as analysts had expected in October, triggering hope that the Fed’s interest rate hikes are working as intended and may not need to be increased. The overall economy added 261,000 jobs in October, and, countrywide, companies classified as computer systems design by the government actually added some jobs.
Economists from Goldman Sachs said they expect U.S. wages to continue to rise in 2023, though home prices could fall, according to a Nov. 6 note to clients. Barclays economists predict a “shallow recession” next year, the bank said in a Nov. 9 research note.

Still, the layoffs in Silicon Valley will have a growing effect, said Julia Pollak, chief economist at ZipRecruiter, a job search site. Tech companies spend a lot of money on other tech services, such as cloud computing or communications platforms, as well as digital advertising.

“We could either see this have a ripple effect through the economy, or an avalanche. The question is how people react and how they perceive this,” she said.
The cuts likely aren’t over yet.
“We’re almost certain to see more,” Pollack said. “Tech companies will be under increased pressure to cut costs and become profitable sooner.”

By 2020, the tech industry made up about 10.2 percent of U.S. GDP, according to the U.S. Department of Commerce. The seemingly endless growth of companies such as Amazon, Google, Microsoft, Facebook, Netflix, Tesla, Salesforce and others has padded the retirement accounts of millions of Americans as tech firms took up an increasingly big share of the stock market. Tech companies made up nearly 30 percent of the total value of the S&P 500 in March.
During the pandemic, tech companies grew even faster, as people spent more time online, bought more computers and video game consoles and shifted much of their shopping from in-store retailers to e-commerce. Tech companies took advantage of that shift, investing billions of dollars in hiring new workers and building new data centers to take advantage of what was seen as a once-in-a-lifetime shift. But as pandemic restrictions eased and most people returned to their pre-pandemic habits, the bet that that behavior would be permanently altered fell flat.
The leaders of Facebook and Shopify, which makes tools for merchants to sell online, explicitly blamed their layoffs on overestimating this shift to e-commerce. “This obviously didn’t play out the way that I expected or that any of us hoped,” Zuckerberg told employees during a call on Wednesday, according to a recording shared with The Washington Post.

The layoffs this week have cut back head count in Silicon Valley significantly, but most big companies still have more staff than they did in 2019. Still, the rapid reversal of a trend that had led to so much hiring and investment is having a big emotional impact, as people compare reality with the inflated expectations they had built up, said Buyer, who was a tech analyst during the dot-com crash and more recently has advised companies on structuring their initial public offerings.
“That’s why the sort of mood is so shocked and disappointed,” she said.

For years, skilled tech workers jumped between companies, leveraging one job to get a higher salary at another. For entry-level engineers, it was not unusual to get offers of $200,000 a year plus a signing bonus from Big Tech firms. Tech companies offered perks such as free catered meals, massages, dog walkers and on-site laundry, plus unlimited vacation days. With so many recently laid off workers out in the market now, that will change.
Rene Ronquillo, 37, worked his way up from being a Lyft driver to a full-time job at the company as a recruiter. He expects a lot of workers will have to take pay cuts or find roles below their level of experience if they want to get a new job in this environment.
“I can’t be too picky,” he said.

Semil Shah, a general partner at venture capital firm Haystack, estimates there may be as many as 25,000 to 50,000 out-of-work tech people on the Bay Area job market over the next few months. Salaries will go down, and people will take jobs they might not have considered earlier.
In the long term, the current shock could be a good thing, Shah said. For years, start-ups have struggled to compete with bigger tech companies for engineers, and the old-school ethos of working for a low start-up salary in the hope that the company will make it big and provide a large payout has eroded, he said.
“It seems like a very nasty correction that most insiders feel like is probably a healthy thing, as painful as it is,” Shah said.
 

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Imagine if the Long Island City project had gone through. I think they certainly would have kept the ?$6 billion? in benefits, and we would have seen all sorts of smoke and mirrors regarding whether all those promised/not "promised" jobs had actually been delivered.

Amazon Is Said to Plan to Lay Off Thousands of Employees​

The job cuts of approximately 10,000, which would start as soon as this week, would focus on the company’s devices organization, retail division and human resources.

Amazon plans to lay off approximately 10,000 people in corporate and technology jobs starting as soon as this week, people with knowledge of the matter said, in what would be the largest job cuts in the company’s history.
The cuts will focus on Amazon’s devices organization, including the voice assistant Alexa, as well as at its retail division and in human resources, said the people, who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly.
The number of layoffs remains fluid and is likely to roll out team by team rather than all at once as each business finishes plans, one person said. But if it stays around 10,000, it would represent roughly 3 percent of Amazon’s corporate employees and less than 1 percent of its global work force of more than 1.5 million, which is primarily composed of hourly workers.
Amazon’s planned retrenchment during the critical holiday shopping season — when the company typically has valued stability — shows how quickly the souring global economy has put pressure on it to trim businesses that have been overstaffed or underdelivering for years.

Amazon would also become the latest technology company to lay off workers, which only recently it had been fighting to retain. The e-commerce giant more than doubled the cap on cash compensation for its tech workers this year, citing “a particularly competitive labor market.”
Changing business models and the precarious economy have set off layoffs across the tech industry. Elon Musk halved Twitter’s head count this month after buying the company, and last week, Meta, the parent company of Facebook and Instagram, announced it was laying off 11,000 employees, about 13 percent of its work force. Lyft, Stripe, Snap and other tech firms have also laid off workers in recent months.
Brad Glasser, an Amazon spokesman, declined to comment.
The pandemic produced Amazon’s most profitable era on record, as consumers flocked to online shopping and companies to its cloud computing services. Amazon doubled its work force in two years, and funneled its winnings into expansion and experimentation to find the next big things.

But earlier this year, Amazon’s growth slowed to the lowest rate in two decades, as the bullwhip of the pandemic snapped. The company faced high costs from decisions to overinvest and rapidly expand, while changes in shopping habits and high inflation dented sales.

Amazon experienced a slight rebound in its latest quarter. But it has cautioned investors that growth could weaken again, possibly falling to its lowest pace since 2001.

The company has told Wall Street that it has tightened its belt in the past and can do so again. Amazon cut 1,500 jobs, including hourly workers, in 2001 during the dot-com crash, which amounted to 15 percent of its staff at the time. It also laid off a few hundred corporate employees in early 2018 after another period of rapid expansion.

Last week, Amazon executives met with institutional investors, according to three people, just as its stock sank to its lowest level since the early days of the pandemic, erasing $1 trillion in value since Andy Jassy took over as chief executive last year.
Mr. Jassy, who previously ran Amazon’s lucrative cloud computing business, has been closely scrutinizing businesses to trim costs quickly. He initially pulled back on a warehouse expansion that was supercharged during the pandemic, then moved to other parts of the company.

In recent months, Amazon has also closed or pared back a smattering of initiatives, including Amazon Care, its service providing primary and urgent health care that failed to find enough customers; Scout, the cooler-size home delivery robot, that employed 400 people, according to Bloomberg; and Fabric.com, a subsidiary that sold sewing supplies for three decades.
From April through September, it reduced head count by almost 80,000 people, primarily shrinking its hourly staff through high attrition.
Amazon froze hiring in several smaller teams in September. In October, it stopped filling more than 10,000 open roles in its core retail business. Two weeks ago, it froze corporate hiring across the company, including its cloud computing division, for the next few months.
That news came so suddenly that recruiters did not receive talking points for job candidates until almost a week later, according to a copy of the talking points seen by The New York Times.

John Blackledge, an analyst at Cowen & Company who has covered Amazon for a decade, said his calculations showed Amazon’s core e-commerce business had been losing billions this year. “They need to review everything,” he said. “This is just not sustainable.”
Devices and Alexa have long been seen internally as at risk for cuts. Alexa and related devices rocketed to a top company priority as Amazon raced to create the leading voice assistant, which leaders thought could succeed mobile phones as the next essential consumer interface. From 2017 to 2018, Amazon doubled staff on Alexa and Echo devices to 10,000 engineers. At one point, any engineer getting a job offer for other Amazon roles was supposed to also get an offer from Alexa.
The company has sold hundreds of millions of Alexa-enabled devices. But Amazon has said the products are often low margin and other potential revenue sources such as voice shopping have not caught on.
In 2018, Echo and Alexa lost about $5 billion, said a person with knowledge of the finances. When Amazon introduced new devices this fall in an annual event, it was notably more restrained than past years when it had featured zany products like a sticky note printer and $1,000 home robot.

Amazon’s retail business, which covers its physical and online retail business and its logistics operations, has been under strain after the surge of demand and breakneck expansion during the pandemic. The company has said it pulled back expansion plans, and has told investors it sees uncertainty with consumers.
“We’re realistic that there’s various factors weighing on people’s wallets,” Brian Olsavsky, the finance chief, told investors last month. He said the company was unsure where spending was heading, but “we’re ready for a variety of outcomes.”
 

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Tech giant HP says it will cut up to 6,000 jobs by 2025 as PC demand slumps

HP Is the latest tech company to announce job cuts. Justin Sullivan/Getty Images
Tech giant HP plans to cut 4,000 to 6,000 jobs by fiscal 2025.
It's the latest tech company announcing big job cuts, after a hiring spree during the pandemic.
HP posted an 11% drop its fourth-quarter revenues, as demand slumped from a pandemic peak.

Hewlett-Packard, or HP, has become the latest company in the doom struck tech sector to conduct layoffs, after it said it would cut up to 6,000 jobs over the next three years.

In a statement on Tuesday, HP said the company expects to cut global headcount by 4,000 to 6,000 employees by the end of its 2025 fiscal year under its "Future Ready Transformation" plan.

Restructuring costs will amount to $1 billion over the three years, but HP expects to save $1.4 billion a year by the end of fiscal 2025.

The layoff announcement follows a sombre financial fourth-quarter performance. HP's revenues declined 11% year-on-year to $14.8 billion, as consumer demand for computers and tech equipment fell from a COVID-19 pandemic peak.

Though the revenues beat analysts' expectation, HP — which now employs 61,000 people globally — expects a "challenging market environment" in the current fiscal year which runs through October 2023, Enrique Lores, the CEO of HP, told Bloomberg in an interview.

The gloomy assessment echoes that of its competitor Dell, which foresees a damp outlook for demand, as some customers have "paused purchases," CFO Tom Sweet said in a Monday earnings call with analysts.

HP joins a slew of companies in the tech sector that are laying off employees after a hiring spree during the pandemic. Big Tech firms Meta, Amazon, and Microsoft have all laid off staff in the last two months amid macroeconomic concerns.
 

nicolebeauchamp

Well-known member

Tech giant HP says it will cut up to 6,000 jobs by 2025 as PC demand slumps

HP Is the latest tech company to announce job cuts. Justin Sullivan/Getty Images
Tech giant HP plans to cut 4,000 to 6,000 jobs by fiscal 2025.
It's the latest tech company announcing big job cuts, after a hiring spree during the pandemic.
HP posted an 11% drop its fourth-quarter revenues, as demand slumped from a pandemic peak.

Hewlett-Packard, or HP, has become the latest company in the doom struck tech sector to conduct layoffs, after it said it would cut up to 6,000 jobs over the next three years.

In a statement on Tuesday, HP said the company expects to cut global headcount by 4,000 to 6,000 employees by the end of its 2025 fiscal year under its "Future Ready Transformation" plan.

Restructuring costs will amount to $1 billion over the three years, but HP expects to save $1.4 billion a year by the end of fiscal 2025.

The layoff announcement follows a sombre financial fourth-quarter performance. HP's revenues declined 11% year-on-year to $14.8 billion, as consumer demand for computers and tech equipment fell from a COVID-19 pandemic peak.

Though the revenues beat analysts' expectation, HP — which now employs 61,000 people globally — expects a "challenging market environment" in the current fiscal year which runs through October 2023, Enrique Lores, the CEO of HP, told Bloomberg in an interview.

The gloomy assessment echoes that of its competitor Dell, which foresees a damp outlook for demand, as some customers have "paused purchases," CFO Tom Sweet said in a Monday earnings call with analysts.

HP joins a slew of companies in the tech sector that are laying off employees after a hiring spree during the pandemic. Big Tech firms Meta, Amazon, and Microsoft have all laid off staff in the last two months amid macroeconomic concerns.
Think we are only seeing the beginning of these cuts.

So many tech companies that hired based on the demands during the pandemic - but that level of growth isn't sustainable - and for the companies where ad revenue is a big part ...some companies almost doubled their employee count, in two years.....

Would expect that we see more of these types of statements about headcount elimination...
 

David Goldsmith

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Expanding from tech/financial services.

PepsiCo to lay off 'hundreds of workers' at New York headquarters: Report
It is being done 'to simplify the organization so we can operate more efficiently', PepsiCo said in a memo to its employees


Food, snack and beverage company PepsiCo Inc is reportedly laying off its employees, signalling that cost-cutting exercises have extended beyond tech and media companies, as reported by the Wall Street Journal (WSJ).

A person aware of the matter told WSJ that hundreds of jobs will be eliminated. The employees at the company's headquarters in Purchase, New York and its snacks and packaged-foods business headquartered in Chicago and Plano, Texas, are reportedly being laid off.

It is being done "to simplify the organization so we can operate more efficiently", the company said in a memo to its employees.

The WSJ report added that the cuts will be heavier in the beverage business as the snacks unit had already trimmed positions by providing a voluntary retirement programme.

"The overall US labour market remains historically tight, with employers competing for a limited pool of labor and bidding up wages despite an uncertain economic outlook," the report added.

In October, the FMCG company's officials said that they will focus on cutting costs to offset the pressure of thin profit margins. Along with several other companies, it increased the price of its products.

PepsiCo makes Doritos, Lays chips and Quaker Oats along with its Pepsi cola drink. It employs about 309,000 people worldwide. With this, it joins Walmart and Ford Motors in trimming its workforce.
 
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