The world’s largest IT companies are once again foreshadowing the reduction of manpower. Amid concerns over a recession in the United States, several large companies are delaying or reducing new hires and cutting staff.
According to CNBC, the US economic broadcaster on the 12th (local time), Google chief executive Sundar Pichai sent an email to employees saying they would delay hiring until 2023. Like all businesses, we want to respond to a recession, he said.
Google’s parent company Alphabet’s growth in the first quarter of 2022 slowed to 23 percent, down 11 percent from the first quarter of last year. Still, Pichai emphasized in an email that the company hired 10,000 people in the second quarter. He added, We will slow down hiring until the second half of this year, giving priority to engineering and technology jobs until next year.
However, analysts say that even this will not be smooth due to the cut winds implemented by several big tech companies in the United States. Electric vehicle maker Tesla announced last month that it had fired employees of Autopilot, a driving assistance function, and Microsoft announced that it had laid off 1,800 employees. Tesla CEO Elon Musk has expressed a super bad feeling and plans to cut full-time employees by up to 10%.
The social media sector is no exception. Maher Sava, head of engineering at Facebook’s parent company Meta, has issued instructions on an internal bulletin board to report any underperforming or under-contributing people to the team and remove them. Twitter also laid off more than 100 people, or 30% of its talent sales team.
Netflix, which had been on an upward trend thanks to the pandemic effect, also had a brake on its growth. Netflix said the number of subscribers fell by more than 200,000 in the first quarter compared to the fourth quarter of last year, and expected further declines. Experts claim that the number of subscribers plummeted as the economic recession and the endemic era intersect.
Netflix’s subscribers dropped for the first time in 11 years since 2011. The share price plummeted by about 25% following the release of subscriber trends in the first quarter, and a major restructuring was carried out accordingly.
With global inflation and the economic downturn in the second half of the year, this may not be the story of another country. As it is an issue that can affect Korea at any time, it is time to pay more attention.
