Reading the news recently, I came across something that caught my attention: Google is going to cut 12,000 employees, that is, almost 6% of its workforce.
The announcement was made last Friday (20), and these layoffs come to scare the technology sector even more, as Microsoft also announced a cut of 10,000 employees a few days ago.
This is a sector that is reasonably heated, and I believe that employees will be easily reallocated, but what is happening for these giants to be laying off en masse?
Lots of hires in the last two years
In the last two years Alphabet, Google’s parent, has increased its workforce by more than 50,000 employees.
This happened due to the growing demand at the time of the pandemic, which made the institution’s profit increase exponentially.
However, in recent quarters, due to the economic crisis, associated with fears of recession, there has been a change in the scenario, and advertisers have drastically reduced their spending.
In summary, my view is that managers saw a growth period above what is being presented today, and hired more than the possibility.
Result: the bill came, and those who suffer most from it are the employees themselves, who often left other jobs behind to work at the technology giant.
Learning for the future
This type of situation that arose this year, and which began last year, leaves a great learning curve for the future of technology companies.
One of them is that projections for the future cannot take into account a short period, even more so considering that atypical factors such as the pandemic occurred during this period.
Another great learning experience I see is that if growth was unsustainable and there was an increase in costs, it is right to deflate gradually and not abruptly.
Well, the scenario can change from one hour to another, and the cost of dismissal and then rehiring is much more expensive than retaining employees.
What will the technology sector look like going forward?
The technology sector, much like any other sector, is changing, only at a faster rate. Therefore, professionals need to constantly reinvent themselves.
I see that artificial intelligence will increasingly prevail, requiring employees to adapt to this new reality.
Therefore, what I see from now on is that the companies themselves will hire more cautiously in view of the lessons learned from this crisis.
But I believe that in the second half of this year the situation should be reversed, and consequently the giants will hire again.
Especially because this is a segment of the economy that has a very positive perspective, and which should contribute a lot to the GDP of many countries.
