Companies across the tech industry have been laying off staff and reducing hiring after explosive growth during the pandemic.
Over the last couple years, it feels like we’ve heard news of mass layoffs and hiring freezes from tech companies nearly every week, and since the beginning of 2024, there’s been a new wave of layoffs and firings.
In the first few days of January 2024 alone:
- Google cut around a thousand employees
- Discord cut 17 percent of its staff
- Twitch cut a third of its staff (and Amazon fired hundreds from Amazon Prime Video and MGM Studios)
- Unity cut 25 percent of its workforce
- Humane cut four percent of its employees
And all that adds to the tens of thousands of tech and gaming layoffs that hit in 2023.
Elizabeth Lopatto spoke to experts in an article published last year to try and answer the question of why so many layoffs are happening right now despite tech companies continuing to register sizable profits. One reason is that “investors have changed how they’re evaluating companies,” even if there’s a lack of evidence that the layoffs can help solve any of the problems they may have.
Here’s all our coverage of the recent outbreak of layoffs from big tech, auto, crypto, gaming, and more.