Musk’s ‘muscular’ approach to running Twitter has seen almost 80 per cent of its staff either leave voluntarily or be made redundant, but while extreme it does mirror a growing trend in the tech sector where over 100,000 jobs have been lost this year because it seems that too many players have been working with overly heavy operating models.
Along with Twitter, Alphabet, Meta and Snap have laid off tens of thousands as they adapt to a more difficult trading environment following the pandemic boom. Executives now talk of miscalculating the strength of the market and are rowing back on investment.
Meta, for example, took on 15,000 people in the first nine months of this year but has now laid off 13% of all staff, while Amazon is looking to shed 10,000 workers.
While these losses are significant the bigger risk could be to innovation with investors now calling for a slowdown in investment in technologies such as autonomous vehicles, the metaverse and virtual reality, which are unlikely to see a return in the short term – and you just have to look at Meta’s recent trading figures to see why investors are making this call.
The sector is certainly leaving behind a ‘growth at all costs’ period but while these layoffs are significant, they also bring with them the prospect of new businesses being created as talented staff join existing or create new start-ups.
