Mass layoffs are the common denominator of 2022 in technology companies.
Although in other sectors unemployment fell in much of the world, among technology companies (big and small), there was a constant in the second half of last year and, apparently, in the beginning of 2023: massive layoffs.
For example, a few days after taking office, Elon Musk, the new head of Twitter, applied massive layoffs in his offices around the world. It affected some 3,700 employees, almost half of the workforce of more than 7,500.
A few weeks later, another big tech company joined: Meta Platforms. The company in charge of networks like Instagram, Facebook and WhatsApp and mega companies like Oculus, announced the forced departure of 11,000 workers around the world, 13% of the total.
Amazon also applied layoffs. Although there was no official confirmation, the media estimated that some 10,000 working in corporate and technology roles had to leave their jobs.
Tencent Holding followed suit, laying off thousands of workers from its video streaming, gaming and cloud business units.
ByteDance applies massive layoffs
The novelty of this Tuesday, January 3, comes from China, where according to the South China Morning PostByteDance, has carried out cuts in the app douyinthe Chinese equivalent of TikTok with about 600 million daily users, as well as in its gaming and real estate operations.
The mass layoffs represent a small percentage of ByteDance’s workforce, the report says.
Until the early hours of Tuesday, ByteDance has not responded if it will apply the same criteria in its other big app, TikTok.
Banks also lay off
The news last week was that Goldman Sachs had also applied massive layoffs: there were some 4,000 employees between the end of December and the first days of January 2023.
It was confirmed by Bloomberg and the Financial Times.
The layoffs at Goldman Sachs represent approximately 8% of the total workforce and will take place until the middle of this month.
According to these media, the executive president of Goldman Sachs, David Solomon, has already informed the 49,000 employees about the bank’s decision to carry out the reduction of staff.
TikTok carried out employee layoffs last August in North America.
The departure of workers was part of a restructuring of the sales division with the idea of seeking to focus the team on ad management and customer relations, that is, with the brands that carry out the advertising strategies on the social network of origin. Chinese.
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