A Wave of Job Cuts Is Crashing Into the Tech Sector
Elon Musk bought Twitter for the good of humanity, said the world's richest man not long before scrapping thousands of roles for humans at the sinking social media platform. If mainstream press reports are correct, about half of Twitter's employees have been released into the technology wild. They are likely to form a tiny percentage of those losing technology jobs this year and next.
Twitter employed only 7,500 people last December, after adding about 2,000 to the payroll in 2021. Alongside Big Tech companies and veterans of Silicon Valley, it is a tiny bird that makes a shrill noise, garnering attention as an online megaphone for celebrities and egotists and – more recently – because of Musk's takeover. Since 2015, Apple alone has recruited enough people to staff seven Twitters, if it so desired.
The iPhone maker is one of numerous technology companies that have been on a hiring spree for several years. As telecom operators have cut thousands of jobs, so their American suppliers and other US technology firms have been adding them. A random list comprising Big Tech players, chipmakers, traditional IT companies and telecom equipment vendors – all with US headquarters – has gained more than 210,000 employees since 2018 (see US companies besides Amazon in table below), despite cutbacks at several organizations. Include the country-sized Amazon and the increase since then is more than 1 million.
