Over 100 Big Tech companies such as Google, Meta, Amazon, Microsoft and TikTok have collectively cut around 35,000 employees already this year, according to Layoffs.fyi. In 2023, 262,735 employees were laid off.
These companies are financially at the top of their game. According to the New York Times, they generated $1.63 trillion in sales in their most recent fiscal years, about 81% more revenue than five years earlier. Over the past year, Meta, Amazon, Microsoft, Google and Apple have gained nearly $3.5 trillion in market value.
The pandemic and artificial intelligence (AI) have played major roles in the job cuts in companies that seem to be doing primarily well at a financial state.
At New Haven, the computer science program is designated as a National Center of Academic Excellence in Cyber Operations (CAE-CO) by the National Security Agency, according to their website.
Computer science program coordinator and associate professor, Dr. Medhi Mekni said, “Our program, computer science, is the largest undergraduate program in the College of Engineering.”
Mekni has worked in software engineering for more than 15 years and he has worked as a software developer for the financial technology industry, the gaming industry and governmental industry. He started his academic career in 2012 and joined the university in 2020.
Regarding Big Tech job cuts, Mekni said, “It’s not surprising by the way they happened in the past and they will happen in the future.”
There are three factors that cause companies to lay off their employees in the first place, said Mekni. Some companies need to restructure, which means “they undergo kind of organizational changes, merging units, splitting units and that,” he said.
The second factor could be a shift in business priorities or business focus.
“Companies when they grow, they explore different paths…when those products do not meet those anticipated or expected goals or objectives they usually are abandoned, and more focus is put on what is actually generating those profits,” said Mekni.
The third factor relates to the tech sector.
Mekni said, “We use more and more automation in the way we develop software and we operate softwares. You know, we used to need a lot of people to maintain platforms to take care of the infrastructure, networking, security software, developments, maintenance, evolution and so on. Those profiles are disappearing nowadays.”
AI has also impacted the tech sector, according to Mekni.
“I think AI is there to deal with,” said Mekni. “It’s not an option anymore, it’s not a choice we don’t have, unfortunately, the luxury to say should we go AI or not. Anyone who will resist AI will basically follow the path of Nokia when touch screens on phones arrived.”
Nokia did not take that shift to touch screens like Apple and Blackberry and they “have disappeared, literally, as a company,” he said.
The introduction of AI to Big Tech companies will cause loss of jobs of “low quality that require human intervention, but it will also open up opportunity for jobs with high caliber, high quality employees coming from the computing and the tech, basically educational programs and industry in general,” said Mekni.