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layoffs

Meta

Meta lays off tech teams, battering employee morale

Another round of employment layoffs was implemented by Meta on Wednesday, this time affecting engineers and related tech teams as CEO Mark Zuckerberg continued to restructure the company in an effort to make 2023 a “year of efficiency.”

The second round of mass layoffs at Meta, which it estimated would affect 10,000 workers, was announced in March, making it the first Big Tech company to do so. It was stated that 10,000 employees would be impacted over a period of months and in three main groups.

Meta
Image Source: livemint.com

According to one of the dismissed workers who spoke with CNBC, the most recent job cuts also affected teams that worked with products, and Meta plans to eliminate business-related positions like those in finance, law, and human resources starting next month.

Also Read: Google wins appeal of $20 mln US patent verdict

This individual also said that technology teams who were not affected by the layoffs on Wednesday might be affected by those scheduled for the following month. The Business Programme Manager at Facebook, Teresa Jimenez, wrote on LinkedIn: “I woke up this morning to the awful news that I was one of the many laid off from Meta today.

While I am undoubtedly disappointed, I am also really #grateful for the chance to have collaborated with some of the most creative people for almost three years! (sic)”

Zuckerberg had stated in March that “We anticipate announcing reorganizations and layoffs in our tech groups by the end of April 2023, followed by our business groups by the end of May 2023.

In a small number of cases, it may take through the end of the year to complete these changes. Our timelines for international teams will also look different, and local leaders will follow up with more details.”

After a pandemic-driven surge in online advertising and cloud computing, Meta’s initial wave of layoffs in the fall affected more than 11,000 workers, or 13% of its total staff at the time, and came before other significant IT businesses laid off thousands of workers.

Along with the restructuring, Meta is “flattening” the levels of middle management and shelving lower-priority projects. The corporation has benefited from shrinking thanks to investors. In comparison to the tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite, Meta shares have increased by almost 80% this year.

The company, which will release its first-quarter earnings on April 26, is anticipated to profit from regulatory pressure on primary rival TikTok and a minor uptick in the digital advertising sector

Google

Google workers in London stage walkout over job cuts

Following a dispute regarding layoffs, hundreds of Google workers organized a protest at the company’s London offices on Tuesday.

Google’s parent company Alphabet revealed in January that it would be laying off 12,000 workers globally, or 6% of its total workforce.

Google
Image Source: channelnewsasia.com

The decision was made in the midst of a wave of layoffs sweeping corporate America, especially in the tech industry, where companies have so far fired over 290,000 employees since the year’s beginning, according to tracking website Layoffs.fyi.

Also Read: UBS to cut up to 30% of the global workforce

The trade union Unite, which has hundreds of Google workers in the UK as members, claimed that the company had disregarded employee complaints. According to Unite regional officer Matt Whaley, “Our members are clear: Google needs to listen to its own advice of not being evil.

They and Unite will not back down until Google allows workers full union representation, engages properly with the consultation process, and treats its staff with the respect and dignity they deserve.”

Speaking anonymously out of concern for retaliation, a Google employee who was present at the walkout told Reuters that discussions with company management turned out to be “extremely frustrating.” He stated, “It has been difficult for those involved. We have a redundancy process for a reason so that employees can make their voice heard,” they said. But it feels as if our concerns have fallen on deaf ears.”

In many European countries, Google’s top management has held layoff discussions in accordance with local labor laws. Employee representatives claimed that Google had rejected their suggestions to limit job cuts, and employees at the company’s Zurich branch in Switzerland conducted a walkout akin to this one last month.

A representative for Google stated, “As we said on January 20, we’ve made the difficult decision to reduce our workforce by approximately 12,000 roles globally.

We know this is a very challenging time for our employees. In the UK, we have been constructively engaging and listening to our employees through numerous meetings, and are working hard to bring them clarity and share updates as soon as we can in adherence with all UK processes and legal requirements.”

Also Read: Google Drive now caps the number of files you can create

In the UK, Google has a workforce of over 5,000 employees. The Sundar Pichai-led corporation said it was ready for “a different economic reality” and that the CEO accepted “full responsibility” for the choices that resulted in the layoffs when it announced them in January.

In an effort to prepare for a global economic slowdown, a number of other tech firms, including Microsoft, Twitter, and Meta, among others, have fired thousands of employees. Apple Inc. reportedly cut staff within particular corporate store teams earlier this week, signaling a change in the way the company handles layoffs.

UBS

UBS to cut up to 30% of the global workforce

After wrapping up its acquisition of Credit Suisse, UBS will reduce its employees by 20 percent to 30 percent, eliminating up to 36,000 employees globally, according to a senior UBS manager quoted in the SonntagsZeitung.

According to the Swiss publication, up to 11,000 workers in Switzerland would be laid off. By the end of the previous year, the two lenders collectively employed approximately 125,000 people, with about 3 percent of the overall working in Switzerland.

UBS
Image Source: cnbctv18.com

The anticipated layoffs surpass the 9,000 job losses that Credit Suisse disclosed before UBS’s steady for the past month rescue of the company. Given the significant similarities between the two former competitors, a multiple of that amount of job cuts had been anticipated as the ultimate total.

Also Read: Accenture to Cut 19000 Jobs as IT Spending Slows

An inquiry for comment made by phone outside of regular business hours was not immediately answered by UBS.

UBS has publicly stated that it will be as transparent as it can on job cutbacks. Even though it was obvious that there would be large job cuts, the lender considers talent retention to be an important execution risk for the acquisition.

Firms like Deutsche Bank, Citigroup, & JP Morgan Chase are preparing to hire some wealth managers as well as investment bankers who are certain to lose their jobs.

Credit Suisse bankers looking for work have already descended onto headhunters in droves.

The Swiss administration introduced the 3.3 billion USD emergency purchase of Credit Suisse by its own greater Swiss rival on March 19 following five days of negotiations facilitated by officials.

As per Switzerland’s minister of finance, Credit Suisse had enormous asset outflows as a consequence of several scandals, which could have caused it to implode the coming Monday if no measures were taken.

To force the purchase without needing to get necessary approvals from shareholders, the authorities used emergency law. Hence, even if many irate voices are anticipated at the two institutions’ annual general assemblies, which are this week, the impact on shareholders will be Hence, even if many irate voices are anticipated at the two institutions’ annual general assemblies, which are this week, the impact on shareholders will be minimal.

Major shareholder and Norway sovereign wealth fund, has declared it will not support the re-election of numerous Credit Suisse directors which includes chairman Axel Lehmann.

Also Read: Apple launches ‘buy now, pay later’ service in the US

The report states that because of the intricate, protracted process required to merge the banks, it is anticipated to be one of the most profitable contracts for providing financial services advice at times.

Comment requests made outside of business hours were not answered immediately by UBS, BCG, Bain, McKinsey, or Oliver Wyman.

Accenture

Accenture to Cut 19000 Jobs as IT Spending Slows

In the coming 18 months, Accenture PLC will eliminate around 19,000 employees, or 2.5 percent of its staff, as the professional services company strives to reduce expenses and increase operational efficiency in the face of a slowdown in IT spending.

Accenture
Image Source: wsj.com

In a statement on Thursday, the firm, which provides IT consulting as well as other business services, stated that the majority of the workers anticipated to be impacted will be in nonbillable corporate functions. To meet its “strategic growth initiatives,” Accenture stated it is currently hiring.

Also Read: Amazon to Cut 9,000 More Jobs, Deepening Biggest Pullback Ever

The corporation stated that it anticipates spending around $1.5 billion on its business optimization plan between the remaining months of the present fiscal year and fiscal 2024, primarily from employee termination.

According to Chief Financial Officer KC McClure, Accenture employs around 738,000 employees worldwide and has grown by 28,000 over the past two quarters. Beyond what it stated in a 10-Q filing with the Securities & Exchange Commission (SEC), the corporation declined to comment on the cutbacks.

The consultancy business “recognized a chance to pursue more fundamental costs as per The Chief Executive of Accenture Julie Sweet. She added that Accenture has been addressing the issue of accumulating pay escalation through pricing, cost-saving measures, and digitalization.

The IT consultancy firm’s layoffs are associated with a recent wave of job losses as businesses in tech, manufacturing, and some other areas seek to reduce costs in the midst of concern over higher interest rates, ongoing inflation, and other economic issues.

However, until now, large technological businesses such as Amazon.com Inc., Alphabet Inc., & Meta Platforms Inc. mainly shielded IT positions from the massive job cuts.

For the very first time in over two years, the employment market for IT experts fell in January, an indication that as businesses cut spending, IT staffers are receiving the same level of scrutiny as employees in other jobs and industries.

Also Read: Google begins opening access to its ChatGPT competitor Bard

According to Victor Janulaitis, the CEO of consultancy firm Janco Associates Inc., a notable portion of the IT jobs getting eliminated or digitized are in data center operations and telecommunications, while there is still a significant skills deficit in fields such as cybersecurity & software development.

What we are seeing is still a big demand for IT skills,” said Ray Wang, founder and principal analyst at IT consulting firm Constellation Research Inc. “While Accenture is managing to its shareholders, there are a large number of firms with 20% to 30% attrition that is happy to pick up folks from Accenture.”

Source: wsj.com
amazon

Amazon to Cut 9,000 More Jobs, Deepening Biggest Pullback Ever

Amazon.com Inc. is going to lay off an added 9,000 workers, bringing the total number of layoffs to the firm’s all-time high.

CEO Andy Jassy declared the cutbacks privately on Monday, stating that they would take effect in the following weeks and therefore would impact Amazon Web Services, advertising, human resources, and the Twitch live broadcasting service communities.

Amazon
Image Source: news.yahoo.com

Given the uncertain economy in which we reside, and the uncertainty that exists in the near future, we have chosen to be more streamlined in our costs and headcount,” he said in his memo, published later to Amazon’s corporate blog.

Source: news.yahoo.com

Also Read: Twitter Cuts More Engineering, and Product Jobs to Curb Costs

Twitch’s arriving CEO stated in a personal blog article that 400 people would be laid off at the subsidiary based in San Francisco. A spokesperson for Amazon did not provide information on how the remaining layoffs would be distributed.

The e-commerce behemoth has been firing mainly corporate workers ever since a hiring binge during the global epidemic left Amazon with an overabundance of employees.

The company recently completed a round of massive layoffs summing up approximately 18,000 employees. These layoffs began in November and were concentrated primarily on Amazon’s recruitment and human resources workgroups, as well as its vast retail team as well as devices teams.

In New York, Amazon shares dropped 1.3 percent to 97.71 USD. This year, the stock has risen approximately 16 percent.

According to Jassy, the recent layoffs occurred ever since teams finished one other step of the firm’s yearly planning process. He stated that most of Amazon’s enterprises have witnessed tremendous growth in the last few years.

The overriding tenet of our annual planning this year was to be leaner while doing so in a way that enables us to still invest robustly in the key long-term customer experiences that we believe can meaningfully improve customers’ lives and Amazon as a whole,” he said.

Source: news.yahoo.com

The layoffs arrive in the week following the announcement that Facebook acquirer Meta Platforms Corporation revealed a further 10,000 layoffs and the closure of around 5,000 extra open positions as part of its second large round of massive layoffs.

Also Read: Meta to end news access for Canadians

Throughout a latest executive discussion, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg told staff that the business situation of job cuts as well as restructuring can last some more years.

Google’s parent corporation Alphabet Inc., Dell Technologies Inc., Microsoft Corp., and International Business Machines Corp. have all lowered their workforce. As per a Bloomberg survey, more than 67,000 positions had been lost in the business ever since the start of the calendar year as of early February.

Zappos

Amazon Subsidiary Zappos Lays Off Around 20% of Staff

As per individuals associated with the job cuts as well as a Zappos memo obtained by The Wall Street Journal, Zappos fired more than 300 of its workers the previous month, representing approximately 20 percent of the firm’s workforce in Las Vegas.

The Zappos job cuts were part of a larger round of cutbacks at Amazon which are anticipated to impact over 18,000 staff members, according to the Wall Street Journal. Those who are also the latest in a string of shifts by Zappos’ lifelong parent corporation that, according to individuals associated with the companies, have largely crumbled Mr. Hsieh’s legacy.

Zappos
Image Source: inventiva.co.in

In the early 2000s, Mr. Hsieh led Zappos from its starting as just an online shoe business to its selling to Amazon in 2009 for 1.2 billion USD, & he remained in charge of it independently till his death at the age of 46 in November 2020. He has been well-known as a leading pioneer via his greatest book “Delivering Happiness,” in addition to being a famous and successful downtown Las Vegas developer.

Also Read: Dell to slash about 6,650 jobs in latest tech job cuts

As per individuals associated with the businesses, one of the massive modifications at Zappos is the departure of a longstanding Zappos executive and Mr. Hsieh’s right-hand man for many years Tyler Williams, who resigned from the firm during the latest round of layoffs.

In an email to employees in January, existing CEO Scott Schaefer named the layoffs “extremely difficult news,” echoing views expressed by many other tech titans following recent layoffs.

As we enter 2023, we are still facing an uncertain economy which required us to continue to take a hard look at our business, and respond in a way that ensures we are set up for long-term success,” he wrote to employees.

Source: wsj.com

According to individuals associated with the industries, Mr. Hsieh was willing to sell the company to Amazon upon the condition that the firm will function independently, even though Amazon is much more engaged in Zappos as well as its management decisions than it was when Mr. Hsieh managed the company. Zappos is presently financially viable, even if it has yet to meet all of the growth set targets by Amazon, according to the company.

Also Read: Google has rolled out Immersive View for Maps across five cities

An Amazon spokeswoman said, “We’re proud of everything Zappos has accomplished since joining forces with Amazon in 2009, and we continue to support their ongoing commitment to delivering the best possible customer experience.”

Source: wsj.com