The wave of mass layoffs impacting the global technology sector continues to encompass more and more companies.
What began with some layoffs on Twitter and other smaller technological ones, grew to encompass all and with large volumes of job cuts that, in some cases, exceed 10 percent of the workforce.
The first big tech firm to lay off employees en masse was Meta Platforms (formerly Facebook), which laid off more than 11,000 people worldwide, 13 percent of its employees. For some, it was devastating, because they had left other very important jobs only a few months before.
Another big company that lost employees along the way was Salesforce and, weeks later, an e-commerce giant: Amazon.
Last week it was the turn of Microsoft and Google, who between them decided to lay off more than 22,000 people.
The massive layoffs have various causes, but basically they are due to the impact of inflation, followed by the dark forecasts of economic recession.
It’s that as companies struggle to stay afloat and cut costs, layoffs are seen as the most direct way to avoid higher spending.
Mass layoffs at Spotify
The latest news in this regard comes from the Swedish Spotify, which according to BloombergNews is about to announce hundreds of layoffs in different departments of the company.
The news report cites sources with knowledge of Spotify’s plans, though it does not specify the exact number of jobs to be cut.
According to BloombergThe company, which has about 9,900 employees, laid off 40 workers from its Gimlet Media and Parcast podcast studios in October.
Like the rest of the companies that succeeded in the pandemic, they did not have a good 2022.
Last year, Spotify’s shares fell 66 percent, raising doubts among investors regarding the viability of the podcast business, where the company made very heavy investments between 2019 and 2022. There is talk of more than 1,000 million dollars between buying other firms, content creation software, hosting services, and rights to popular programs.
In June 2022, the board of directors told investors that the podcast industry would be profitable in the next year or two, something that seems unlikely now.
According to the tech site layoffs.fyinearly 195,000 tech workers have lost their jobs in the US since the start of 2022, not including the thousands affected by Google on Friday, January 20.
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