Tag: LAY OFF

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Business

‘Sacking’ January

Hiring in India up ahead of festive season, records 13% YOY growth

The mass tech layoffs of 2022 are continuing into the new year, and Indian companies and startups are among the leaders in firing staff…reports Asian Lite News

More than 1,600 tech employees are being laid off per day on average in 2023 globally including in India, and the sacking episodes have gained speed amid global economic meltdown and recession fears.

In 2022, over 1,000 companies laid off 154,336 workers, as per the data from layoffs tracking site Layoffs.fyi.

The mass tech layoffs of 2022 are continuing into the new year, and Indian companies and startups are among the leaders in firing staff.

Homegrown social media company ShareChat (Mohalla Tech Pvt Ltd) laid off 20 per cent of its workforce due to uncertain market conditions, affecting more than 500 employees.

Backed by Twitter, Google, Snap and Tiger Global, ShareChat has about 2,300 employees.

In December 2022, ShareChat laid off less than 5 per cent of its employees after it shut down its fantasy sports platform called Jeet11.

Companies like Ola (which fired 200 employees) and voice automated startup Skit.ai also dominated the headlines for laying off employees this month.

Homegrown quick-grocery delivery provider Dunzo has laid off 3 per cent of its workforce amid cost-cutting measures.

The year 2023 has begun on a bad note for tech workers globally and 91 companies have laid off more than 24,000 tech employees in the first 15 days this month, signalling worse days ahead.

Amazon announced to lay off 18,000 employees globally, including nearly 1,000 in India.

Meanwhile, LinkedIn is full of job hunts, offers of support for laid off friends and colleagues, and advice for coping with career hurdles as several companies trim their workforce to navigate through an uncertain macroeconomic environment.

According to market research firm Sensor Tower, the LinkedIn app was downloaded an estimated 58.4 million times in 2022 globally across Google Play Store and Apple App Stores — up 10 per cent from 2021.

Meanwhile, Hiring by Indian start-ups declined by 44 per cent during the last quarter of 2022 as compared to the first quarter that year.

According to a study by the company, hirings among Indian start-ups had been on a steady decline.

“The hiring experienced a 44 per cent decline in hiring in Q4 compared to Q1 of 2022,” the company said.

With the start-up sector witnessing turbulent times, attrition continued to be a major roadblock for the players.

Despite high attrition rates, the average median tenure increased to 1.9 years in start-ups vis-a-vis 1.7 years 6 months back. However, it is still not on par with other sectors like ITES (5.8 years), FMCG (4.1 years) and MSME Manufacturing (3.6 years), the study notes.

The study further stated that 64 per cent of the respondents (start-up employees) are willing to move to a “stable job”. Amongst these respondents, 47 per cent have stated job security as a concern to move to another job, followed by reasons like no work-life balance (27 per cent) and Better Pay in established firms (26 per cent).

Commenting on this, Aditya Narayan Mishra, Managing Director & CEO of CIEL HR Services, said, “India continues to be the front-runner of the Startup ecosystem despite the current threatening economic uncertainties. This downfall is only for a transient period, it will push the start-ups to be more serious in their overall operations and set new thresholds.”

“In this context, we see startups preferring onsite work, with 94 per cent of job openings looking for awork from office’. Startups are on the lookout for highly productive and skilled talent that can adapt quickly to the changes and stay ahead of the curve,” Mishra said.

As to the gender diversity in the start-up sector, the study notes that the women representation is at 24 per cent amongst start-ups with a negligible 11 per cent representation in leadership positions.

“Lack of flexibility, shift-away from remote working culture and inadequate support for childcare and eldercare needs continue to be hindrances for women to sustain and progress in the start-up ecosystem,” the report notes.

ALSO READ-Vodafone plans big job cuts

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Business China

Alibaba lays off nearly 10K employees

Alibaba reported a 50 per cent drop in net income to 22.74 billion yuan ($3.4 billion) in the June quarter, down from 45.14 billion yuan in the same period last year…reports Asian Lite News

Chinese tech conglomerate Alibaba has bid goodbye to nearly 10,000 employees in an effort to cut expenses amid sluggish sales and slowing economy in the country, the media reported on Saturday.

According to South China Morning Post, more than 9,241 employees left Hangzhou-based Alibaba during the June quarter, as the company trimmed its overall headcount to 245,700.

“That put the total decrease in employee numbers for Alibaba, owner of the South China Morning Post, to 13,616 over the six months to June, marking the firm’s first drop in payroll size since March 2016,” the report noted.

Alibaba reported a 50 per cent drop in net income to 22.74 billion yuan ($3.4 billion) in the June quarter, down from 45.14 billion yuan in the same period last year.

“The reduced payroll reflects Alibaba’s renewed efforts to cut expenses and drive up efficiency, as it faces continued regulatory pressure, sluggish consumption and a slowing economy in China, the world’s biggest e-commerce market,” the report noted.

Alibaba Chairman and CEO Daniel Zhang Yong said the company will add nearly 6,000 fresh university graduates to its headcount this year.

Last month, reports surfaced that billionaire Jack Ma is planning to give up his control of Ant Group amid pressure from the government regulators.

According to a report in Wall Street Journal, the move is aimed at part of the fintech giant’s effort to move away from affiliate Alibaba Group Holding that is under immense scrutiny from the government.

Since last year, Chinese regulatory authorities have been cracking down harder on domestic tech giants like Alibaba and Ant Group to end their dominance in the internet sector.

According to the report, Ma could relinquish his control by transferring some of his voting power to other Ant officials, including Chief Executive Eric Jing.

Ma has controlled Ant since he carved its precursor assets out of Alibaba more than a decade ago.

Founded in 1999, Alibaba went through a major reshuffle when Ma passed the baton as CEO to Daniel Zhang in 2015 and further appointed him as Chairman in 2019.

ALSO READ-Data leak: Chinese authorities grill Alibaba executives

Categories
Business Economy

Layoffs finally hit giants

Cloud major Oracle recently considered laying off thousands of workers to save up to $1 billion in cost-cutting measures…reports Asian Lite News

The economic meltdown has reached Big Tech and Satya Nadella-run Microsoft has become the first tech giant to lay off employees as part of a ‘realignment’.

The layoffs at Microsoft reportedly affect nearly 1 per cent of its 1,80,000-strong workforce across its offices and product divisions.

“Today we had a small number of role eliminations. Like all companies, we evaluate our business priorities on a regular basis, and make structural adjustments accordingly,” Microsoft told Bloomberg in a statement late on Tuesday.

“We will continue to invest in our business and grow headcount overall in the year ahead,” the company added.

Microsoft has also slowed hiring in the Windows, Teams and Office groups.

Microsoft reported strong earnings in its third quarter, with a 26 per cent jump (on-year) in cloud revenue and overall revenue of $49.4 billion.

However, last month, the company revised its Q4 revenue and earnings guidance downward.

Twitter has also cut 30 per cent of its recruiting team while Elon Musk-run Tesla has been laying off hundreds of employees.

A Twitter spokesperson confirmed these layoffs to TechCrunch, without divulging further details or the number of employees affected.

The sacked employees will receive severance packages and the company will “reprioritise’ remaining recruitment staff.

Twitter had earlier announced to halt most hiring across divisions.

As Twitter paused hiring, the micro-blogging platform last month shifted employees away from audio Spaces, Communities and newsletters verticals for areas that “will have the greatest positive impact to the public conversation”.

Twitter CEO Parag Agrawal in May fired consumer product leader Kayvon Beykpour and head of revenue product Bruce Falck, saying there is a hiring freeze now and Twitter will also pause spending in most areas.

Agrawal had said that the company will also be reviewing all extended offers to determine criticality and those that should be pulled back.

“We are not planning company-wide layoffs, but leaders will continue making changes to their organizations to improve efficiencies as needed,” Agrawal had said in a memo to employees.

Twitter has paused most hiring and backfills, except for business critical roles as determined by ‘Staff’ members.

Other tech companies that have slowed hiring include Nvidia, Snap, Uber, Spotify, Intel and Salesforce, among others.

Cloud major Oracle recently considered laying off thousands of workers to save up to $1 billion in cost-cutting measures, the media reported.

Meanwhile, Elon Musk-run Tesla has laid off 229 annotation employees from its Autopilot team and closed one of its offices in the US.

According to a regulatory filing in California state in the US and seen by TechCrunch, Tesla had laid off workers from its San Mateo office that employed 276 workers.

The remaining 47 employees may be sent to work in Tesla’s Buffalo Autopilot office, according to the report.

“Most of the workers were in moderately low-skilled, low-wage jobs, such as Autopilot data labeling, which involves determining if Tesla’s algorithm identified an object well or poorly,” the report added.

The layoffs are part of the 10 per cent reduction in salaried workforce that Tesla CEO Elon Musk announced last month.

Tesla started laying off salaried employees after Musk’s announcement, which would result in reducing Tesla’s total headcount by roughly 3.5 per cent.

Tesla employs more than 1,00,000 people across its facilities.

A team of lawyers representing former Tesla employees, who were laid off last month, have sought emergency protection from a US court for the fired workers.

In a motion filed in the US District Court for the Western District of Texas, the lawyers asked the judge “to restrict Tesla’s ability to continue seeking releases from employees in exchange for one week of severance”..

As recession fears grow, the US-based autonomous vehicle technology startup Agro AI, backed by Ford and Volkswagen, has laid off about 150 people and slowed the pace of hiring, making it the latest tech auto company to reduce its workforce.

According to TechCrunch, the layoffs account for about 5 per cent of its more than 2,000 global workforces, according to sources familiar with the company’s actions.

The layoffs were widespread, affecting talent recruiters, digital media and communications employees as well as members of its operations teams, a review of LinkedIn profiles shows, the report said.

“With incredible growth and progress made in our mission to deploy driverless vehicles, we are making prudent adjustments to our business plan to best continue on a path for success,” the startup said in an email statement while confirming layoffs.

A close source, who remained anonymous because they are not authorised to speak on behalf of the company, told TechCrunch that Argo AI had hired too quickly, overshooting where it should be.

The company is still hiring and has dozens of engineering, legal, technical programme management and fleet operations positions open, the report said.

Argo AI, which is based in Pittsburgh, launched driverless testing operations in May 2022 in Miami and Austin, marking the company’s progress towards commercialising its technology.

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