tech layoffs then and now

Recent layoffs in BigTech are more likely the result of corporate leadership reshuffling their bets than business financial hardship.

Google (Alphabet,) Facebook (Meta), Amazon, Microsoft and most of the big tech companies in the US, which laid off hundreds of thousands of workers last year alone, are all doing just fine financially, better than fine, most of them are doing great.

I worked in Silicon Valley through the dot-com bubble bursting and subsequent downturn. Many tech companies really were struggling then. Layoffs were the result for several hundred thousand tech workers as over a thousand significant and once promising dot-coms scaled back or completely wound down their operations between mid-2000 and 2002.

But that’s not the case with today’s layoffs, or those from the last couple years, most of which are about disappearing the leadership’s previous (failed) plan and clearing the path for some new plans, potentially from some new leadership (note no hiring freezes.)

If a company has a massive layoff and they’re still hiring into those same teams, the layoff wasn’t about finances. It was more likely that leadership wanted to shuffle pieces on the game board hoping for better luck with their next set of bets.

And I think that kinda sucks. Workers should be treated better. If a division or whatever really is failing to produce results for the company and eliminating that division is the best thing to do for shareholders, I could almost swallow that. But upending the lives of hundreds of thousands of workers because leadership’s previous plans failed and that same failed leadership wants another stab at it with a somewhat different cast? That isn’t something any of us should stomach.

Tech needs a serious workers’ union.