Five Tech Companies That Have Embarked On Massive Layoffs In 2022

Like most brands, technology companies this year have also been hit with the global economic crisis which many experts say is fuelled by the Russian-Ukraine war and the impact of COVID-19.

According to TrueUps' tech layoff tracker, this has led to significant industry-wide layoffs, with 1138 tech companies worldwide having fired 182,605 workers as a result.

The top five tech companies that have either announced job cuts or started widespread layoffs of their employees this year are listed below.

1. Netflix

Netflix stated in June of this year that it has lost 300 employees in the second round of layoffs after experiencing a subscriber decline for the first time in more than a decade.

The job layoffs primarily impacted US employees and represented around 4% of the streaming giant's staff.

They arrived after the business eliminated 150 workers last month.

According to a statement from Netflix, "While we continue to invest heavily in the business, we made these modifications so that our costs are growing in step with our slower revenue growth."

In February, Netflix reported losing 200,000 subscribers globally at the beginning of 2022 and forecast a two million user decrease in the ensuing quarter.

The company blamed the drop on a range of factors, including increased competition, the economy, the war in Ukraine, and the large number of people who share their accounts with non-paying households.

2. Tesla

Elon Musk announced in June 2022 that Tesla Inc. would reduce its salaried employees by around 10% during the ensuing three months, but that the overall headcount decrease would only be about 3.5% because the company still expects to hire more hourly workers.

At the Qatar Economic Forum on Tuesday, Musk stated in an interview with Bloomberg News Editor-in-Chief John Micklethwait, "We grew quite fast on the salaried side. In a Bloomberg story, he stated that "a year from now, I anticipate our headcount will be greater" but that the current drop will be between 3% and 3.5%.

The comments brought more clarity to the situation with Tesla’s staffing, after Musk made varied internal and public statements about reductions over the past month.

3. Twitter

It didn’t take long for Twitter’s new owner Elon Musk to lay off almost half of the company’s staff after assuming the new position.

This was just a week after officially closing the acquisition process to take over the company.

“…The Nov. 4 layoffs only affected “15% of our Trust & Safety organization (as opposed to approximately 50% cuts company-wide), with our front-line moderation staff experiencing the least impact." Twitter's then-head of content moderation, Yoel Roth said.

The company's sole office in Africa, which is located in Accra, Ghana, was also hit by the employment layoffs. Reports state that everyone was let go except for one employee.

Even though these layoffs are the largest staff reduction Twitter has ever experienced, this is not the first time this year that the firm has tried to reduce the number of employees it has.

Following the first implementation of a hiring freeze, the corporation later decided to fire 30% of its talent acquisition team in July 2022.

4. Amazon

On Tuesday (November 15), the company notified regional authorities in California that it would lay off about 260 workers at various facilities that employ data scientists, software engineers, and other corporate workers.

Those job cuts would be effective beginning on January 17, 2023.

In addition to the layoffs verified by California's Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification Act, or WARN, which mandates that employers give 60 days' notice if they have 75 or more full-time or part-time employees, Amazon declined to say how many additional layoffs may be planned.

More than 1.5 million employees, mostly hourly labour, are employed by Amazon worldwide.

The online retail giant, like other tech and social media giants, saw sizable profits during the COVID-19 pandemic, as homebound shoppers purchased more items online.

But revenue growth slowed as the worst of the pandemic eased and consumers relied less on e-commerce.

5. Facebook

Mark Zuckerberg, the CEO of Facebook's parent company Meta, stated on November 9 that the firm is laying off 11,000 employees, or approximately 13% of its staff, as it struggles with declining revenue and larger problems in the digital sector.

Zuckerberg said that he had decided to hire aggressively, anticipating rapid growth even after the pandemic lockdowns ended.

“Unfortunately, this did not play out the way I expected,” Zuckerberg said in a statement.

“Not only has online commerce returned to prior trends, but the macroeconomic downturn, increased competition, and ads signal loss have caused our revenue to be much lower than I’d expected.

"I got this wrong, and I take responsibility for that.”

Because more individuals stayed at home and read on their phones and laptops during the pandemic lockdown period, Meta, like other social media sites, benefited financially.

However, as the lockdowns ended and people resumed venturing outside, the growth of revenue slowed.