From begging to fireing
The pessimistic sees recurring cycle, while the others identify management improvement opportunities to optimize the workforce efficiency while preventing inhuman stories.
The job market was so hot in 2021, companies were fighting to get workers accepting to join. Benefits and salaries were seeing substantial increase, each move allowed nice compensation bumps. The turnover in many tech departments skyrocketed.
It was the norm. Until not.
Since the summer, many companies officialized the new growing trend and fear of crisis. Recruitments are on hold. Current employees are expected to halt king syndromes and fall back to the rank respecting management guidelines on onsite presence.
Those strong cooling sign comes after a market so hot; it will require time for both employer and job seeker to find the new balance. In the meantime, the turnover seems to be slowing down.
Many firms have officially announced a reduction of either employees or recruitments. In October it was already including Apple, Meta, Microsoft, Google, Salesforce, Johnson and Johnson, Coinbase, Nvidia, Uber, Tesla, Intel, Oracle, Robinhood, Credit Suisse...
Since then, Amazon placed a freeze for external recruitments for several months. Twitter facing the aftermath of change of ownership and the effort of "activist" pushing advertisers away from the platform has announced an official layoff season. Some mention a reduction of staff up to 50% which would target 3-4k employees. This is the first official reduction within GAFA. So far only freezes were officially mentioned.
A big bulk of the RIF impact employees in the valley
While it could be explained to the loss of attractiveness following the post-covid events, it is also the area with significant representation of tech work force.
In the meantime, official US figures from labor market remains stable despite the relatively strong dollar and increased rates. With a "so far so good" attitude, one question remains:
Was the upcoming crisis evitable?
think encore!
