Caught by the economic slowdown that has gripped the tech giants, two Silicon Valley companies, Stripe and Lyft, announced major layoffs Thursday, while Amazon is freezing hiring at its offices. Twitter may follow suit. according to the information of the Bloomberg agency, confirmed by a source of AFP, the new owner of the social network, Elon Musk, plans to lay off half of the workforce in order to reduce costs.
Stripe, the payment services company based in San Francisco and Dublin, has already laid off 14% of its workforce, explaining to employees that it “hired too much for the world we’re in today,” according to a statement. “We face persistent inflation, energy shocks, high interest rates, shrinking investment budgets and a scarcity of funding for start-ups.”explained general manager Patrick Collison.
Stripe has been “I am extremely optimistic about the near-term growth of the digital economy in 2022 and 2023.”, he added. The group plans to return to February’s employment level of 7,000 workers. In another press release, ride-hailing company Lyft announced the layoff of 683 employees, or about 13% of its workforce.
Freezing work in Meta
“We’re likely to face a recession in the coming year, and rideshare insurance costs are on the rise.”, the company’s co-founders Logan Green and John Zimmer justified. Amazon also values the macroeconomic environment “unusual” to explain the temporary suspension of all hiring in its offices. The group expects growth of 2% to 8% in the fourth quarter, which is quite weak by its standards.
The hiring freeze signals that sentiment is changing in the retail and consumer sectors, said Neil Saunders, distribution specialist at consultancy Global Data. “The boom days are now over and have given way to an environment where greater caution is needed to protect profits.”he said in the post. Another tech giant, Meta (Facebook, Instagram), is also getting active. The company’s CEO, Mark Zuckerberg, indicated last month that the workforce should not increase until the end of 2023, or even decrease slightly. As of September 30, Meta had approximately 87,000 employees worldwide.
Source: Le Figaro
I am David Wyatt, a professional writer and journalist for Buna Times. I specialize in the world section of news coverage, where I bring to light stories and issues that affect us globally. As a graduate of Journalism, I have always had the passion to spread knowledge through writing.