Belen Molleda |
Madrid (EFE) companies like Google, Microsoft, Amazon, IBM or SAP.
After a “black” November, in which layoffs were announced at Amazon, Meta (Facebook parent company), Twitter and Cisco, up to 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 data from Layoff.fyi, an American tracker that collects all this data.
After this downturn, a January has arrived, with announcements of massive cuts such as those of Alphabet, Google’s parent company, with 12,000, 6% of the workforce; Microsoft, with 10,000, 5%; Amazon, with 8,000 (2% of the workforce), in addition to the 10,000 in November; IBM, with 3,900, 2%; and SAP, 3,000, 3%.
“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,” the president of the College of Computer Engineers, Fernando Suárez, told EFE, who believes that ” There will be a few months left for the waters to return to their course.
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 produced a rise in inflation and a decrease in demand, he added.
“The consumption of technology is decreasing. We have seen a few months ago that there have been significant layoffs, which will decrease once the companies adjust to the new situation, but which will continue to occur for a few months.
This assessment essentially coincides with that of the CEO of Microsoft, Satya Nadella, who this week when he presented results for his first fiscal semester (July to December) stated that just as it was seen that during the pandemic his 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 the global uncertainty, Nadella added in his speech, after announcing the results of his company, which continues to obtain profits (33,981 million euros), but 13.5% less than in the same period last year.
Different reasons have been used by companies such as IBM, which announced 3,900 layoffs, also during the presentation of 2022 results. Another company that had benefits, 1,500 million euros, but 671% less than in 2021.
In this case, the adjustments have been justified by the division of IBM from companies such as Kyndril in 2021 and Whatson Health in 2022.
Hours later, the manufacturer of software for companies SAP announced another 3,000 exits, also during the presentation of results, all this to reduce costs by up to 350 million euros per year from 2024. Its benefits fell by 56% in 2022, to 2,290 million.
The reason in the case of SAP is limited to the fact that they want to focus on strategic growth areas and accelerate the transformation to a cloud computing services company, according to their thin advisor, Christian Klein.
Layoffs beyond confinement times
In 2022, a total of 1,040 big tech companies got rid of 159,684 employees.
In total, there are 210 technological multinationals that have announced layoffs in this month of January, which has not yet ended and which has resulted in more than 67,000 layoffs, according to the US tracker.
In November there were 52,370 layoffs that were recorded at the hands of 225 companies.
In the fourth quarter of 2022, 79,953 layoffs were recorded, out of 459 technology companies, the highest number recorded since before the pandemic, even above the second quarter of 2020, when the lockdowns were massive, which resulted in 60,141 layoffs by 428 companies .
These figures contrast, for example, with the fourth quarter of 2021, when departures were 1,539, coming from 24 companies.