With recession fears mounting — and inflation, the war in Ukraine and the lingering pandemic taking a toll — many tech companies are rethinking their staffing needs, with some of them instituting hiring freezes, rescinding offers and making rounds of layoffs.
On Tuesday, Shopify announced that it cut 10% of its workforce, joining dozens of others in pulling back on jobs. Here’s a look at the companies tapping the brakes.
Alphabet, Google’s parent company, has been decelerating its recruiting efforts. Chief Executive Officer Sundar Pichai told employees this month that — although the business added 10,000 Googlers in the second quarter — it will be slowing the pace of hiring for the rest of the year and prioritizing engineering and technical talent. “Like all companies, we’re not immune to economic headwinds,” he said. The hiring pause is part of that slowdown, Google said, “to enable teams to prioritize their roles and hiring plans for the rest of the year.” It had nearly 164,000 employees at the end of March.
Amazon said in April that it was overstaffed after ramping up during the pandemic and needed to cut back. “As the variant subsided in the second half of the quarter and employees returned from leave, we quickly transitioned from being understaffed to being overstaffed, resulting in lower productivity,” Chief Financial Officer Brian Olsavsky said. Amazon is subleasing some warehouse space and has paused development of facilities meant for office workers, saying it needs more time to figure out how much space employees will require for hybrid work. The company had 1.6 million workers as of March, making it the biggest employer in the tech world.
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Apple is planning to slow hiring and spending at some divisions next year to cope with a potential economic slump, according to people familiar with the matter. But it’s not a companywide policy, and the iPhone maker is still moving forward with an aggressive product-release schedule. Apple had 154,000 employees in September, when its last fiscal year ended.
Carvana, an online used car retailer, laid off 2,500 people in May, about 12% of its workforce. In an unusual move, the executive team will forego salaries for the rest of the year to pay severance to those who were let go, according to a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission. The company had more than 21,000 full-time and part-time employees at the end of last year.
Coinbase Global, a cryptocurrency exchange, told employees it was cutting 18% of staff in June to prepare for an economic downturn. It also rescinded job offers. “We appear to be entering a recession after a 10+ year economic boom,” CEO Brian Armstrong said in a blog post. “While it’s hard to predict the economy or the markets, we always plan for the worst so we can operate the business through any environment,” he said. The company ended the quarter with about 5,000 employees.
Compass, a real estate brokerage platform, is eliminating 450 positions, about 10% of its staff, according to a filing last month. The company had nearly 5,000 employees at the end of 2021.
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Gemini Trust, a cryptocurrency exchange founded by Bitcoin billionaires Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss, announced a 10% staff reduction in June. TechCrunch reported that the company laid off another 7% on July 18 and said a leaked plan showed it was seeking to cut a total of 15%, bringing it from 950 employees to 800 employees.
GoPuff, a grocery delivery app, is laying off 10% of its workforce and closing dozens of warehouses. The cuts will affect about 1,500 staff members — a mix of corporate and warehouse employees.
