Messiest Public Breakup of Knowledge Workers and Tech Companies

Et Tu, Google?

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On the morning of 20th January this year, a host of knowledge workers woke up to find out from the news that they were among the 12,000 Google employees who had been unceremoniously disposed of in the dead of night. The recent Google layoff, while massive in itself, follows an ever-growing trend in the tech industry.

According to layoffs.fyi, 1044 tech companies laid off 159,846 employees last year. This year is going strong as well. 107,930 knowledge workers have been laid off so far, and it's only February.

Others will quickly join their ranks as companies announce plans to lay off large chunks of their employees to cut costs. Dell, for example, is geared up to lay off 6650, or a staggering 5% of their entire workforce this year. Even Disney is about to lay off 7000 employees as subscriptions to Disney+ start to dip.

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While the happiest place to work on earth may have made headlines, companies removing employees from their system with little to no forewarning is not that novel of a piece of news at this point.

Tech giants dove headfirst into hiring in the last few years, spending millions beefing up their staff. They're now reversing that trend, perhaps not putting enough resources into developing sustainable plans. The entire situation is a mess, to say the least.

The grim news of back-to-back layoffs is further punctuated with ridiculous situations like Google firing a guy who had already given notice. Instead of paying a few days of ‘banked' time off, they're on the hook for months of severance pay. So much for cost-cutting.

Last year, Amazon laid off about 20,000 employees, closely followed by other tech giants quickly clearing their ranks to cut costs. Almost instantly, the tech industry posted an almost equally ludicrous number of job openings.

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