Amazon will lay off 9,000 white-collar employees by the end of April, CEO Andy Jassy announced on Monday (March 20), on top of the 18,000 jobs the online retailer has cut since November.

The decision comes amid a crunch in the tech industry that has led the e-commerce giant to cut its more than 1 million worldwide workforces with the company’s largest workforce reduction ever. Jassy cited economic headwinds in a memo to employees.

“Given the uncertain economy in which we reside, and the uncertainty that exists in the near future, we have chosen to be more streamlined in our costs and headcount,” Jassy said, specifically announcing cuts in some of Amazon’s most profitable sectors, including Amazon Web Services, which is responsible for almost three-quarters of Amazon’s entire profit margin.

The decision comes after Amazon went on a significant hiring spree during the pandemic. The previous round of layoffs targeted Amazon’s sprawling human resources and recruiting teams, signaling a major shift in hiring strategy.

With over 1 million workers, Amazon is one of the largest employers in the world, however, the vast majority of the workforce is employed in the company’s warehouse operations.

Why the tech industry is laying off so many people

Almost every major tech company has announced layoffs since the fall. The most common refrain in sheepish memos from CEOs? We hired too many people.

Tech companies such as Amazon, Meta, Alphabet, and Microsoft went on unprecedented hiring sprees in recent years, luring workers fresh out of college with six-figure salaries and lavish perks. Now, in just the last year and a half, nearly 300,000 of those fresh-faced new hires have been laid off, according to Layoffs.fyi, which is tracking the job cut announcements.

The companies chose to spend big on new talent, prompted in part by low-interest rates and a booming pandemic-era market, but mostly by the lottery ticket mindset that you just need one smart young person to come up with one good idea to hit payday.

In Silicon Valley, hiring has always been a numbers game, with corporate bloat just an unfortunate side effect. Now, these mass layoffs might be evidence that big tech’s spend-first-ask-questions-later strategy could finally be coming to an end.

Source: qz

The Walt Disney Co. plans to lay off about 4,000 people company-wide as part of the 7,000 job cuts CEO Bob Iger announced in February, according to a report by Business Insider.

Managers have been asked to identify layoff candidates by April, an unidentified person with knowledge of Disney’s decision told the publication. The same individual said the remaining 3,000 cuts will come from open positions that will be eliminated, Business Insider reported.

It is unclear how many of Disney’s jobs in Florida could be affected by the cuts.

State records show Disney has not filed any mass layoff notices with the Florida Department of Economic Opportunity as of Monday. Federal law requires companies to file notices 60 days in advance of layoffs affecting 50 or more workers.

Disney Parks, Experiences and Products Chairman Josh D’Amaro said in February he did not expect the job cuts to affect workers in hourly frontline roles at Disney’s theme parks. Iger has praised the performance of Disney’s theme parks in recent quarters, saying “demand on the parks is extraordinary right now.”

Eric Clinton, a union president at Walt Disney World, said the resort’s service workers will not be laid off because their positions are protected by the union coalition’s contract with Disney.

“You don’t save the company money by cutting your lowest-paid workers,” he said in February, adding Disney was still hiring hundreds of workers into frontline jobs weekly. Disney World’s minimum wage starts at $15 an hour.

The downsizing comes as part of Disney’s efforts to slice a total of $5.5 billion in costs. Labor cuts are about 30% of Disney’s cost-reduction plan, CFO Christine McCarthy said last month.

Disney declined to comment to Business Insider on the development. Local Disney representatives did not immediately respond to the Orlando Sentinel’s request for comment.

Initial news of the company’s layoffs came as executives announced they were restructuring Disney into three core business segments — Disney Entertainment, ESPN and Disney Parks, Experiences and Products — as part of overhauling its streaming business.

Source: detroitnews

Last year’s techwide reckoning continues. In 2023, layoffs have yet again cost tens of thousands of tech workers their jobs; this time, the workforce reductions have been driven by the biggest names in tech like Google, Amazon, Microsoft, Yahoo and Zoom. Startups, too, have announced cuts across all sectors, from crypto to enterprise SaaS.

The reasoning behind these workforce reductions follows a common script, citing the macroeconomic environment and a need to find discipline on a tumultuous path to profitability. Still, tracking the layoffs helps us to understand the impact on innovation, which companies are facing tough pressures, and who is available to hire for the businesses lucky to be growing right now. It also, unfortunately, serves as a reminder of the human impact of layoffs and how risk profiles may be changing from here.

Below you’ll find a comprehensive list of all the known layoffs in tech that have occurred in 2023, to be updated monthly. If you have a tip on a layoff, contact us here. If you prefer to remain anonymous, you can contact us here.

• January: 84,714 employees laid off — see all January 2023 Tech Layoffs
• February: 36,491 employees laid off — see all February 2023 Tech Layoffs

March 2023

Twitch

Announced March 20 that it will lay off 400 employees.

Amazon

Announced March 20 another round of substantial layoffs, this time 9,000 people are set to lose their jobs. TechCrunch is hearing that around 10% of today’s total came from AWS.

Livespace

Announced March 20 that it has laid off at least 100 employees, about 2% of the company’s workforce.

Course Hero

Announced March 16 that it has cut 15% of staff, or 42 people.

Klaviyo

Announced March 15 that it has laid off 140 of its staff across all teams.

Microsoft

As a part of its recent announcement to layoff 10,000 people, Microsoft laid off an entire team dedicated to guiding AI innovation that leads to ethical, responsible and sustainable outcomes.

Meta

CEO Mark Zuckerberg confirmed rumors March 14 that the company will be cutting 10,000 people from its workforce and around 5,000 open roles that it had yet to fill.

Y Combinator

Announced March 13 that it will impact 20% of staff, or 17 team members.

Salesforce…continued

Salesforce first announced that it was laying off 10% of the workforce in January, but some employees didn’t know until February. The week of March 10, more employees are just learning they have been laid off. Salesforce confirmed that these layoffs were part of the 10%.

Atlassian

Announced on March 6, Atlassian is laying off about 500 employees, or 5% of its total workforce.

SiriusXM

Announced on March 6, the company laid off 475 employees, or 8% of its total workforce.

Alerzo

The Nigerian B2B e-commerce platform had a headcount of more than 2,000 before a first round of layoffs in September 2022. Alerzo has laid off 15% of its full-time workforce, the company confirmed on March 6, leaving about 800 employees at the startup.

Cerebral

Announced March 1, the company is letting go 15% of it’s workforce — roughly 285 employees.

Waymo

Announced March 1, Alphabet’s Waymo issued a second round of layoffs this year. Combined with the initial cuts in January, the self-driving technology company has let go of 8%, or 209 employees, of its workforce.

Thoughtworks

Announced on March 1, the company laid off about 4% of its global workforce — approximately 500 employees.

February 2023

Twitter

Announced on February 26, the company laid off more than 200 employees, including Esther Crawford, Haraldur Thorleifsson and Leah Culver. Since Musk took over Twitter in October last year, the company’s headcount has fallen by more than 70%.

Poshmark

Announced February 24, Poshmark confirmed with TechCrunch that less than 2% of its workforce was affected, primarily in the U.S. The company employs roughly 800+ employees.

Green Labs

We do not have an exact figure of how many Green Labs plans to lay off its staff. Green Labs confirmed to TechCrunch that it is conducting a round of layoffs that could impact at least 50% of its workforce.

Chipper Cash

Announced on February 20, the African cross-border payments platform conducted a second round of layoffs just 10 weeks after it cut approximately 12.5% of its workforce. Chipper Cash relieved almost one-third of its workforce, about 100 employees.

Convoy

Announced on February 16 that it is shuttering its Atlanta office and laying off workers as part of restructuring. This is the third time in less than a year that the company has laid off workers.

Sprinklr

Announced on February 15 that it will impact 4% of its global workforce — or more than 100 employees.

iRobot

Announced on February 13 that it will lay off 7% of its workforce, roughly 85 employees.

Twilio

Announced on February 13 that it will impact around 17% of its global workforce, about 1,400 people.

GitHub

Announced February 9, 10% of its staff will be impacted through the end of the company’s fiscal year. Before this announcement, which was first reported by Fortune, GitHub had about 3,000 employees.

Yahoo

Announced on February 9, 20% of its staff, impacting 1,600 employees in its adtech business. Yahoo is the parent company to TechCrunch.

GitLab

Announced February 9 that it’s reducing its headcount by 7%. The round of redundancies will impact around 114 people, though that specific figure is dependent on its actual headcount as of February 9.

Affirm

Announced on February 8 that it is reducing its staff by 19%, or about 500 employees, and shutting down its crypto unit.

Zoom

Announced the cut of 15% of its staff, or 1,300 people on February 7.

VinFast

VinFast has not shared how many employees have been cut, but a LinkedIn post from a former employee said “nearly 35 roles” were affected. Announced on February 6.

Dell

Announced February 6, impacting 6,650 people, or 5% of worldwide workforce.

Getaround

Announced February 2, 10% of staff — about 42 employees.

Pinterest

Announced February 2, 150 employees impacted. This is the second job-cutting move within weeks of the first round in December 2022.

Rivian

Announced on February 1, cutting 6% of its workforce for the second time in less than a year.

January 2023

SoFi Technologies

Announced on January 31, cutting 65 jobs, or about 5% of its 1,300-person workforce. First reported by The Wall Street Journal.

NetApp

Announced on January 31, impacting 8% of its staff — about 960 people.

Groupon

Impacting another 500 employees announced on January 31. The company said this new set of layoffs will be spread across the first two quarters of 2023.

Impossible Foods

Reportedly affecting 20% of its staff, over 100 employees, Bloomberg reported first.

PayPal

Announced on January 30, about 2,000 full-time employees, or 7% of its workforce, were affected.

Arrival

Announced on January 30, with a newly appointed CEO, slashing 50% of its workforce — 800 employees globally.

Waymo

The self-driving technology unit under Alphabet quietly laid off workers on January 24, according to The Information and several posts on LinkedIn and Blind. It’s not yet clear how many of Waymo’s staff will be affected.

Spotify

Announced on January 23, impacting around 6% of its global workforce — around 600 employees.

Alphabet

Google’s parent company announced laying off 6% of its global workforce on January 21, equating to 12,000 employees. These cuts impact divisions such as Area 120, the Google in-house incubator and Alphabet’s robotics division, Intrinsic.

Fandom

The entertainment company announced an unspecified number of employees impacted across multiple properties on January 20. According to a report by Variety, the company employs around 500 people, and the layoffs have affected roughly 10% of its staff across different sites.

Swiggy

Announced plans to lay off 380 jobs on January 20 and shut down its meat marketplace.

Sophos

Announced on January 18, 10% of its global workforce, about 450 people were let go.

Microsoft

As announced on January 18, 10,000 employees will be impacted.

GoMechanic

Laid off 70% of its workforce on January 18.

Clearco

Announced on January 17, impacting 30% of staff across all teams.

ShareChat

Announced on January 15, ShareChat laid off 20% of its workforce — or over 400 employees — just a month after eliminating more than 100 roles.

SmartNews

Announced on January 12 a 40% reduction of its U.S. and China workforce, or around 120 people.

Intrinsic

Alphabet’s robot software firm, Intrinsic, is laying off 40 employees TechCrunch confirmed on January 12. Amounting to around 20% of the headcount.

Greenlight

The fintech startup offering debit cards to kids laid off 104 employees on January 12, or over 21% of its total headcount of 485 employees.

Career Karma

Learning navigation platform Career Karma laid off another 22 people on January 12 across its global and domestic workforce.

DirectTV

Announced on January 12 plans to lay off about 10% of its management staff on January 20.

Informatica

Reported on January 11 that it will lay off 7% of it’s workforce, or 450 staffers globally.

Carta

Announced on January 11, the equity management platform cut 10% of its staff. Judging by LinkedIn data, the layoff could have impacted around 200 employees.

Citizen

Impacting 33 staff members on January 11.

Coinbase

To cut 950 jobs, or about 20% of its workforce, and shut down “several” projects, announced on January 10. This is the second round of major layoffs at the crypto exchange, which eliminated 18% of its workforce, or nearly 1,100 jobs last June.

SuperRare

The NFT marketplace is cutting 30% of its staff, announced on January 6.

Amazon

Announced on January 5, eliminating more than 18,000 roles. This announcement extends a previously announced round of layoffs in November of 2022. On January 19, the company announced it would end AmazonSmile.

Salesforce

Announced on January 4 that it’s cutting 10% of its workforce, impacting more than 7,000 employees. A month later, some Salesforce employees had just found out they were also a part of the 10% layoff announcement.

Vimeo

Announced on January 4, cutting 11% of its workforce.

Source: techcrunch

After cutting around 13% of its global workforce in November, Facebook parent company Meta has announced that an additional 10,000 workers are to be laid off at the tech company.

The previous reduction in staff totaled 11,000 layoffs, which means that across the two rounds of layoffs, Meta is letting some 22,000 employees go.

The news was shared by founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg in a letter to staff, published on Tuesday (March 14) in which he outlined impending restructuring and headcount reductions.

He said that “over the next couple of months, org leaders will announce restructuring plans focused on flattening our orgs, canceling lower priority projects, and reducing our hiring rates”.

Because the company will be hiring less, Zuckerberg says he’s also “made the difficult decision to further reduce the size” of Meta’s recruiting team.

“We will let recruiting team members know tomorrow whether they’re impacted,” he added. Meanwhile, restructurings and layoffs will be announced in Meta’s tech groups in late April, and in its business groups in late May.

Zuckerberg says that in a small number of cases, “it may take through the end of the year to complete these changes”.

Overall, said Zuckerberg, Meta expects to reduce its team size by around 10,000 people and to close around 5,000 additional open roles that it hasn’t hired for yet.

In the note outlining the upcoming structural changes and layoffs, Zuckerberg told employees that “Meta is building the future of human connection,” and that he wanted “to share some updates on our Year of Efficiency that will help us do that”.

He added: “The goals of this work are: (1) to make us a better technology company and (2) to improve our financial performance in a difficult environment so we can execute our long-term vision.”

Elsewhere in the letter, Zuckerberg writes that “Flatter is faster” and that in the company’s so-called “Year of Efficiency,” it plans to make its organization flatter “by removing multiple layers of management”.

Added Zuckerberg: “As part of this, we will ask many managers to become individual contributors. We’ll also have individual contributors report into almost every level — not just the bottom — so information flow between people doing the work and management will be faster.”

In the wider tech and adjacent music industry, US satellite radio service SiriusXM announced earlier this month that it was reducing its headcount by 475 roles, or 8% of its total workforce.

In January, SoundHound, a speech and music recognition company, laid off nearly half of its staff earlier this month, less than a year after the company went public on the NASDAQ.

Also in January, music streaming giant Spotify revealed that would be reducing its own global workforce by 6%.

In August 2022, music streaming platform and Spotify rival SoundCloud started the process of reducing its own global workforce by approximately 20%

Also in August, US-based collection society BMI (Broadcast Music, Inc) was reported to be laying off “just under 10%” of its total workforce.

In addition to Meta, a number of silicon valley giants have also reduced their workforces in recent months.

In January, Alphabet, parent company to Google was revealed to be cutting 12,000 roles (around 6% of its workforce).

The week prior to that also saw Microsoft announce 10,000 job cuts.

According to tracking site Layoffs.fyi, 483 tech firms have implemented layoffs so far this year, with a total of 128,202 tech workers losing their jobs.

You can read Mark Zuckerberg’s letter in full below.