by Kevin Coupe
I spend very little time on social media, and only will venture over when I get an email notification based on somebody I happen to follow.
But this one grabbed my attention … a graphic from Scott Galloway, the entrepreneur/teacher/podcaster, who thought that is was important to keep the technology layoffs currently taking place in context:
Salesforce, he points out, has laid off 8,000 people … but it hired 30,824 people during the pandemic. Meta has laid off 11,000, but hired 42,372 people during the pandemic. At Google, it is 12,000 layoffs, compared to 67,880 pandemic-era hired, and at Microsoft it is 10,000 layoffs compared to 77,000 new hires.
Amazon isn't in the graphic, but on the last "Pivot" podcast, Galloway used it as a prime example of this phenomenon - it has announced 18,000 layoffs, but during the pandemic, Amazon hired 746,000 people.
The lesson is simple. While there are a lot of people being laid off by tech companies in the past few months, it is a lot fewer people than were hired during the pandemic.
It doesn't mean that the tech sector isn't going through a rightsizing … but it does have to be kept in perspective.
And that's an Eye-Opener.
