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Major tech companies like Meta, Amazon, and Twitter recently let go of thousands of people, in the wake of global recession. Adobe and Netflix have also partaken in the layoffs. This week, networking giant Cisco has also joined the layoff wagon.
According to the latest reports, Cisco has started firing 5% of its workforce, which is more than 4000 of its employees. “We didn’t take this decision lightly, and we will offer those impacted extensive support, including generous severance packages,” said company spokesperson Robyn Blum. Cisco, the fourth-largest technology employer in Silicon Valley, is letting people go amid falling stock prices, higher interest rates and recession fears.
Joining Cisco is the American IT company Salesforce planning to conduct a second round of layoffs. Contrary to Protocol’s report, the firm could fire almost 2,500 employees, but it said in a media announcement that “less than a thousand” of its employees would be relieved. The first wave of layoffs hit the company in November 2022 when about 1,000 employees were fired. The layoff is a part of Salesforce’s measures of cutting down on budget expenses and ongoing leadership changes. Vice-chair and co-CEO Bret Taylor will leave his position on January 31, 2023, the company said earlier this month.
When asked about layoffs at the company, Google CEO Sundar Pichai recently responded that it’s difficult to “predict the future”. However, prior reports suggest that Google will let go of 10,000 underperforming workers in the first quarter of 2023.
In July, Tesla closed one of its US headquarters and fired 229 key staff members from the Autopilot team. In its second round of layoffs in June 2022, OTT juggernaut Netflix fired 300 employees (4% of its workforce). Adobe joined the rest by laying off 100 people.
Indian software companies like Meesho, Whitehat Jr., and Udaan fired approximately 13,618 employees in 2022. Amid the widespread layoff, Indian IT Accenture has promoted over 60,000 employees in India out of 157,000 promotions distributed globally during the financial year 2022.
In the past few months, Twitter has cut close to 7,500 jobs worldwide, leaving only 20 or so staff working in India. On the other side, as part of cost-cutting initiatives, Meta fired 11,000 workers. Mark Zuckerberg, CEO, accepted full accountability for the layoffs.
Although the enterprise IT expenditure is predicted to grow over the next year, it is not convincing enough for the computer industry, especially those with significant consumer retail operations. In the past few months, several software companies have declared layoffs due to rising interest rates, the war in Ukraine, supply chain issues, high fuel prices, and a decline in personal computer sales.
