It's news because it's been repeated ad nauseam only recruitment, HR, sales and other non tech roles will be affected by layoffs in big tech companies. The numbers aren't important just that there are numbers because it relates to engineering and it's something the tech community didn't expect.
Layoffs are life changing. Not everyone who is laid off is an in-demand engineer. “Tech jobs” obscure the fact that most roles are non- or light-technical jobs that are common at many companies (HR, sales, support, etc).
There's a lot of fear mongering among engineers that layoffs are bad and somewhat that the demand is lower and salaries will drop. But most "tech workers" laid offs were in non-technical positions as well (ie not engineers). HR, recruiting, DEI... The percentage of engineers impacted was minimal.
Can't help but wonder who would benefit from this fear climate.
> Does this suggest that a large fraction of laid off employees were in non-tech roles (e.g. pro{ject,duct} managers, scrum masters, sales, etc.)?
A lot of them were in "tech-adjacent" positions. PM, tech recruiters or evangelists, community managers, sales, DEI folks... At one point one layoff announcement had "returning to a healthy ratio of engineers to non-engineers" as a goal.
Weren't most of the layoffs in big tech done to shed positions related to recruiting or kill off floundering projects in R&D? If so, revenue is the wrong number to be looking at.
Layoffs make news, but if you look at the numbers they are relatively small compared to all the hiring the last few years. We have gone from the best time ever in history to be in IT, to a great time to be in IT. There are a lot of jobs if you step outside big tech (and targeted jobs in big tech with certain skills).
I've always assumed this was the stigma, so I've always avoided mentioning it, but during the much more competitive market in 2020-2021, it seemed like big tech types were the only ones wise enough to look past that stigma and appreciate that often, cuts are to business units, not people. My wife was part of a big (31%) layoff at an AI Healthcare company during the earliest round of layoffs, and she had literally hundreds of requests to interview within the first two days of being laid off.
This round of layoffs seems different. If big tech isn't hiring, and they're the only ones wise enough to see through the stigma, that is a possible explanation for why.
It’s newsworthy! The current story being told in tech is that we can lay off significant parts of the workforce with no impact. Following this, the resulting failures are generally hidden or otherwise non-obvious.
This same comment gets posted on nearly every layoffs thread. A lot of people work at tech companies. Despite that, it sucks for someone to lose their job.
There is a disconnect between “tech talent” and the overlap of layoffs. Sure, some firms have downsized across the board, but plenty of layoffs we are seeing in the last 12 weeks is focused on areas other than engineering.
Because a Fortune Global 500 high-tech company doesn't lay-off 10% of it's workforce very often. When they do it signals an underlying weakness in either the company, sector or economy and is thus newsworthy.
I posted a comment a while back about this same phenomenon, which I can't for the life of me find now, but it was quoting some data from media posts about job cuts in the tech industry. The overarching theme was that the "tech worker layoffs" almost never featured actual, STEM degree educated, feature making, bug fixing, engineering focused, individual contributors. The layoffs impacted Sales, Marketing, Product, HR, and Manager roles. Despite this, media outlets continued to make it out as if engineers and scientists were the ones being primarily impacted. They were doing it by hiding the actual jobs roles of those being interviewed deep into the article, in a short one-liner. There was never good data to suggest who those being most effected really were.
I don't understand the reasoning behind it beyond blatant ignorance, or perhaps that they have a dislike for silicon valley types and get satisfaction out of demeaning the job role in some way by making engineers out to be as "easily dispensable" as everyone else. It's bizarre. I guess, whatever generates the most clicks.
Firstly, I know nothing of the industry and am just speculating so don't take my question the wrong way...
Wouldn't the the sudden cascade of layoff announcements at big tech employers be interpreted as a leading indicator by employers industry-wide? Like especially considering the way the news cycle has basically amplified each successive announcement?
Again, just a question because my input is admittedly of no value.
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