It seems like only a little while ago that I was writing about the Great Resignation – that fact that many employed people – not just in IT – had decided that they didn’t want to go back to the office after they’d got used to working from home during the lockdown. Many people re-evaluated their life and decided their current role wasn’t for them anymore. But now there seems to be a rush to lay off staff. IBM has announced plans to layoff 3900 people. Amazon, which owns AWS is laying off 18 000 people. And Microsoft is laying off 10 000 staff.
And that’s not all. Alphabet, the company owns Google is laying off 12 000 people. Salesforce plans to cut around 10% of its workforce, which is around 7000 staff. And Meta – the Facebook and Insta people, are laying off 11 000 employees. Twitter is saying farewell to 7 500 staff. Dell is cutting 6650 jobs. Even Stripe is cutting its staff number by 14%.
So, what’s going on?
One can only assume that much like individuals looked at their life and asked themselves some searching questions, these large organizations are doing the same. Whereas people wondered whether they needed to commute into the office every day and spend time doing something they didn’t really enjoy, organizations are looking at their corporate structure and wondering how to stay successful moving into the future.
For IBM, it’s been suggested that there are still some employees whose job function was more closely related to the Kyndryl and Watson Health businesses, which have now been spun off. Are those roles really needed moving forward?
Amazon apparently feels that it over-expanded during the pandemic, so most of those roles will go from Amazon stores and other parts of its retail business. But it's worth noting that there has been a pause in its hiring of new staff at AWS, as well as a slow-down in growth at AWS.
Microsoft also increased its staff number at the start of the pandemic. It's suggested that they have taken on 57,000 more employees in the past two years, before the layoffs were announced. So, they are still a larger company than they were.
Dell is losing about 5% of its workforce because of an uncertain future. The company enjoyed a boom time in sales of PCs during the pandemic with so many people working from home. This demand for PCs seems to have decreased as people return to the office and face an economic slowdown.
So, maybe these layoffs aren’t all bad, maybe they are a necessary realignment as the pendulum swung too far in one direction – taking on new staff – and it’s now swinging back the other way towards having the right number of staff for the current economic landscape.
Of course, using pendulum metaphors doesn’t help those individuals who are being made redundant. Even using just the numbers mentioned above that’s nearly 62 000 individuals who are changing their job through no fault of their own. They are the people who will be lying awake at night wondering whether they will be able to get a job without having to move to a different city and all the other upheavals associated with that – leaving friends and local organizations, taking children out of school, etc etc.
As mentioned at the beginning, there are some vacancies around because of the people who voluntarily left their old job during the great resignation. But, as I alluded to above, are those jobs in the right location?
A recent OnePoll survey of 1,000 Americans who had recently moved were asked about the most stressful events in their life. Moving was selected most often by respondents (45%). Getting divorced or going through a breakup was a close second at 44%. Getting married was 33%, having children 31%, starting a first ever job was 28%, and switching careers was 27%.
The other problem facing these newly-redundant people is that there will be lots of people with very similar skills to them suddenly joining the job market in their area. And that will make the competition for any existing IT jobs all the harder.
While I understand that companies need to be ruthless in order to stay in business, I also have deep concerns for the people who are affected by layoffs and reorganizations. Their future is looking grim. I hope the world doesn’t move into recession, and that things pick up for them very soon.
I have on-going concerns about the mental health and wellbeing of people generally in the post-pandemic world, and being made redundant is good for anyone’s mental health at any time.
Good luck to those people.
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