With reports of 417 tech companies firing over 0.12 million workers globally sending down chills among the professionals in the industry, smaller businesses and start-ups have started hiring these laid-off talents with a rider, “We can’t pay you anymore.”
According to the layoffs tracking website Layoffs.fyi, 1,046 tech companies have terminated over 0.161 million employees in 2022. It was followed by another round of firing of nearly 0.1 million tech workers worldwide in January 2023. As of February 2023 data, approximately 0.3 million tech workers had their employment reportedly eliminated. And the number is rising.
As per The Seattle Times, United States-based Eric, a former Amazon software engineer, was on a USD 200,000-plus salary-and-stock package, before being laid off. When a smaller tech firm offered the professional less than his pay package at Amazon, Eric tried to negotiate, only to be reportedly told that the company that he could not be paid more and he accepted the job with a pay cut.
As per industry standards, a senior software engineer with seven to 15 years of experience can expect anywhere from USD 300,000 to USD 450,000 in total compensation from a big tech company.
“We were seeing people with two, three years of experience getting over USD 200,000 in total compensation. It was absolute insanity,” Albert Squiers, who runs technology recruitment for Seattle-based Fuel Talent, was quoted as saying.
Jacob Vigdor, an economist with the University of Washington’s Evans School of Public Policy, remarked that he would not be surprised to see more rounds of layoffs.
“Tech firms may find now that they’ve adapted to this somewhat smaller workforce, that they could make deeper cuts,” he said while interacting with IANS.
Talking about the tech sector layoffs, most companies have already promised to offer severance pay to the sacked employees. IT professionals, who are on H-1B visas in the United States, have been severely hit by these layoffs and are now facing the prospect of leaving the country, if they don’t find a new job in about the next 60 days of their firing.
While factors like over-hiring, hazy global socioeconomic conditions and the COVID outbreak have been cited behind this phenomenon, layoffs have also hit the news for reasons like not considering employee performances before firing him/her. Several laid-off Google employees informed via social media posts that despite receiving good ratings, they got kicked off from their jobs.
Facebook parent Meta is reportedly planning another significant round of layoffs, similar to the one announced in November 2022, as early as March 2023, after the distribution of its performance awards.
Meta allegedly has given ‘subpar ratings’ to thousands of employees ‘in the most recent round of performance evaluations’, thus paving the way for additional layoffs.
According to Bloomberg, the company, which has been witnessing a slowdown in advertisement revenues, asked its leadership to come up with a list of employees who could be sacked.
As per reports, the layoffs are likely to be finalised by March 2023. The November 2022 layoff affected 13% of the company’s employees.