Since the start of this year, Microsoft, eBay and PayPal have axed thousands of jobs in a pivot to artificial intelligence as companies revise their resources.
As reported by the Financial Times, tech companies have cut around 34,000 jobs in a matter of weeks as the focus turns to generative AI.
In addition to the heavyweight names mentioned above, Snap has also shed a significant number of roles as part of an industry-wide cut of 138 firms that have let staff go. These figures are significant but not quite at the same level as one year previous when Microsoft, Meta, and Amazon culled their numbers.
Layoffs.fyi — indicated 263,000 roles were lost in the tech sector during 2023 as analysts have indicated the latest round of cuts is a sign of the pivot to AI, while some companies have considered productivity relating to their overall output.
Brent Hill, an analyst at the renowned financial institution Jefferies, opined companies have assessed their workforces with the conclusion that “we’ve got a bunch of dead wood, and if we had a leaner organization, we can do more.”
“The lay-offs are going to continue, and it may get worse. It’s become contagious,” added Hill.
Who is next?
Last month, Amazon-owned Twitch was hit with the blow of around 500 employees being axed due to financial pressures, a further indicator of the cost-cutting and adjusting across the industry. Even the ‘Big Five’ are impacted as part of an extensive list of employers who have cut their cloth over the last few weeks.
Enterprise software company SAP confirmed a “company-wide transformation” in January, including the loss of around 8,000 jobs as it turns further to AI while reskilling staff as much as possible.
Autumn Mitchell, a QA tester at Microsoft subsidiary ZeniMax, commented on the current uncertainty, “Anybody working in tech or games right now is worried about lay-offs to some degree, either for themselves or someone they know.”
“You see one company announce lay-offs and think, Here we go, who’s it going to be next week?” Mitchell said.
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