More than half of tech workers in the Bay Area are concerned about being laid off or furloughed in the next six months, or their salaries hitting a plateau or dropping, according to a new report from Hired. From a news article: The tech industry has generally fared better than other sectors in the pandemic downturn, offering more chances to work…
Tag: layoffs
LinkedIn Cuts 960 Jobs as Pandemic Puts the Brakes on Corporate Hiring
Microsoft’s professional networking site LinkedIn said on Tuesday it would cut about 960 jobs, or 6% of its global workforce, as the coronavirus pandemic is having a sustained impact on demand for its recruitment products. From a report: California-based LinkedIn helps employers assess a candidate’s suitability for a role and employees use the platform to find new job. Jobs will be…
Nearly 70,000 Tech Startup Employees Have Lost Their Jobs Since March
Technology startups have been laying off tens of thousands of workers to cope with the economic fallout of the coronavirus pandemic, potentially blunting a key innovation pipeline for the enterprise information-technology market, according to industry analysts. From a report: “Startups are a great source of innovation in the IT industry, but are now especially cash constrained,” said Max Azaham, a senior…
After Merger, T-Mobile Lays Off Hundreds of Sprint Employees
In a conference call on Monday lasting under six minutes, T-Mobile vice president James Kirby told hundreds of Sprint employees that their services were no longer needed. He declined to answer his employees’ questions, citing the “personal” nature of employee feedback, and ended the call. From a report: TechCrunch obtained leaked audio of that call, which was said to be one…
AI Isn’t Magical and Won’t Help You Reopen Your Business
The coronavirus is helping to erode the hype around artificial intelligence; data scientists get the axe and some ‘old-fashioned’ solutions work better. From a report: When SharpestMinds, a startup that sells mentoring services to data scientists, surveyed its alumni in April and again in May, it found that 6% of respondents had been affected by furloughs, pay cuts or layoffs. That’s…
Behind Tech Layoffs Lay Systemic Cash Flow Negative Companies
An anonymous reader shares an analysis: Since the pandemic started, there’s been approximately 61,260 tech layoffs. Close to 30% of the layoffs came from public tech companies, 85% of those companies are unprofitable. No deep insights here, just the simple fact that the once growth hyper focused startups grew to be publicly traded companies without ever sorting their unit economics, and…
Is Support Now Growing for a Universal Basic Income?
Economist Tyler Cowen and former world chess champion Garry Kasparov (now the chairman of the nonprofit Renew Democracy Initiative) co-authored an opinion piece this week in Bloomberg arguing that “a pandemic is providing a tragic preview of some of the conditions UBI was conceived to address.” Though they worry about the cost of such a program, “And, though there are some…
Airbnb Is Laying Off a Quarter of Its Workforce
Airbnb announced that it is laying off around a quarter of its workforce, citing revenue declines and a need to curtail costs. TechCrunch reports: In the note, written by Airbnb CEO and co-founder Brian Chesky, the company said that 1,900 employees will be laid off, or 25.3% of its 7,500 workers. The layoffs will impact a number of internal product groups,…
How Kickstarter’s New Union Negotiated Terms For Pandemic-Related Layoffs
“The COVID crisis has led to a 35% drop in live projects” says Kickstarter communications officer David Gallagher — who points out that fees on those projects are the company’s sole source of income. This led Kickstarter’s CEO to announce “sweeping layoffs of up to 45 percent of employees,” the union of Kickstarter employees tells Gizmodo. (Though Gallagher says the final…
Lyft To Lay Off 17 Percent of Staff As Uber Weighs Even Bigger Layoffs
Less than 24 hours after it was reported that Uber was considering layoffs of 20% of staff, its big rival Lyft said it would be reducing its staff by 17%, working out to 982 employees, and furloughing an additional 288, due to the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic. TechCrunch reports: It also will put in place salary reductions of 30% for…