Some 70,000 employees were laid off from Big Tech in January alone

The layoffs in the big tech in the world have intensified and are close to 70 thousand in January, a month in which the cuts have even exceeded those of November with massive departures from companies such as Google, MicrosoftAmazon, IBM either SAP.

After a “black” November, in which layoffs were announced at Amazon, Meta (Facebook’s parent company), Twitter and Cisco, putting 51,300 employees on the street, came a December in which the trickle of departures seemed to slow down, until be reduced to a fifth: about 10,000 employees, according to Layoff.fyi, an American tracker that collects this data.

After this slump, a January has arrived with announcements of massive cuts such as those of Alphabet, parent company Googlewith 12 thousand, 6% of the workforce; Microsoftwith 10 thousand, 5%; Amazonwith 8 thousand, 2%, which are added to the 10 thousand of November; IBM, with 3,900, 2%; Y SAP3 thousand, 3%.

Why are there massive layoffs at Big Tech?

“These are the blows of some adjustments that companies are making after the unprecedented acceleration of digitization that occurred as a result of covid-19,” says the president of the College of Computer Engineers of Spain, Fernando Suárez, who believes that “they will remain a few months for the waters to return to their channel”.

There has been an adjustment of the technological companies to the reality of our times after the pandemic, increased by the economic slowdown, which has generated a rise in inflation and a decrease in demand, he adds.

This assessment essentially coincides with that of the CEO of MicrosoftSatya Nadella, who this week stated that, just as it was seen that during the pandemic their clients began to increase digital spending, now it is perceived that they are wanting to optimize this economic amount.

Companies are also investing cautiously given global uncertainty, Nadella added.

Different reasons have been used by companies such as IBMwhich justifies the adjustments in the spin-off of companies such as Kyndril in 2021 and Whatson Health in 2022.

The reason in the case of SAP It is limited in that they want to focus on strategic growth areas and accelerate the transformation to a cloud computing services company, according to its chief executive officer, Christian Klein.

In 2022, a total of 1,040 large technology companies got rid of 159,684 employees, while 210 have announced layoffs in January.

These figures contrast, for example, with the fourth quarter of 2021, when departures were 1,539 in 24 companies. EFE

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