Over the last couple years, it feels like we’ve heard news of mass layoffs and hiring freezes from tech companies nearly every week, and since the beginning of 2024, there’s been a new wave of layoffs and firings.
In the first few days of January 2024 alone:
- Google cut around a thousand employees
- Discord cut 17 percent of its staff
- Twitch cut a third of its staff (and Amazon fired hundreds from Amazon Prime Video and MGM Studios)
- Unity cut 25 percent of its workforce
- Humane cut four percent of its employees
Elizabeth Lopatto spoke to experts in an article published last year to try and answer the question of why so many layoffs are happening right now despite tech companies continuing to register sizable profits. One reason is that “investors have changed how they’re evaluating companies,” even if there’s a lack of evidence that the layoffs can help solve any of the problems they may have.
Here’s all our coverage of the recent outbreak of layoffs from big tech, auto, crypto, gaming, and more.
Feb 28
EA is the latest gaming company to lay off workers.Just one day after PlayStation laid off 900 employees (which followed layoffs from Activision Blizzard, Riot Games, Discord, Unity, and others), EA announced on Wednesday that it’s cutting 5 percent of workers, which amounts to around 670 roles.
The game publisher also said that it’s “moving away from development of future licensed IP that we do not believe will be successful in our changing industry,” allowing it to focus on its own IP, sports, and online communities.
Continuing to evolve our business and teams[Electronic Arts]
Feb 23
“Why are we expected to do the coding Olympics for every company that wants to interview you?”Wired writes about how tech job interviews have gotten even more demanding after the series of layoffs that rocked the industry these past few years:
Emails reviewed by Wired showed that in one interview for an engineering role at Netflix, a technical recruiter requested that a job candidate submit a three-page project evaluation within 48 hours—all before the first round of interviews.
A Netflix spokesperson said the process is different for each role and otherwise declined to comment.
A similar email at Snap outlined a six-part interview process for a potential engineering candidate, with each part lasting an hour. A company spokesperson says its interview process hasn’t changed as a result of labor market changes.
Feb 13
Mozilla is laying off around 60 workers and scaling back its Mastodon instance.In a memo obtained by TechCrunch, Mozilla said the company is making a “strategic correction” that will involve “working through a much smaller team to participate in the Mastodon ecosystem.” The company launched its mozilla.social instance last year.
Additionally, Mozilla is shutting down Hubs, its virtual 3D platform initially launched in 2018. Mozilla says the platform’s userbase isn’t “robust enough to justify continuing to dedicate resources” during an “unfavorable shift in demand.” This shift comes just days after Mozilla appointed Laura Chambers as its interim CEO.
Feb 13
Paramount is cutting 800 jobs as it looks to “grow revenue, while reducing costs.”After rumors about layoffs emerged last month, Paramount CEO Bob Bakish announced that the company is laying off around 3 percent of staff. In a memo obtained by Deadline, Bakish tells employees the Super Bowl was a “blockbuster event” that “showcased the full power of Paramount.”
Despite this, the future of Paramount remains unclear, as Deadline reports that media companies and private equity firms are looking into acquiring “some or all” of the entertainment giant. CNBC reported last year that Warner Bros. Discovery was in talks to merge with Paramount.
Feb 8
Warner Music Group to lay off 600 employees and close the Interval Presents podcast division.WMG CEO Robert Kyncl -- who thinks you could pay more for Spotify-- revealed the record label will lay off 10 percent of its workforce, or 600 employees. It’s winding down the podcast division behind Rap Radar and Drink Champs, and IMGN Media. It's also in an "exclusive process" to sell Uproxx and HipHopDX.
Earlier on Wednesday, WMG reported Q1 revenue of $1.75 billion — its highest quarterly revenue since it went public, and net income of $193 million.
Feb 6
Amazon Health, Corsair, DocuSign, Drizly and Glowforge are the latest tech layoffs.▸ Amazon is cutting a “few hundred roles” from healthcare units. It’s not Amazon’s first health cut.
▸ Corsair is permanently closing an entire Origin PC factory in Miami, laying off 55.
▸ DocuSign is cutting approx. 6 percent of its workforce or around 440 jobs.
▸ Drizly, Uber’s defunct alcohol delivery service, is laying off 168 as its HQ closes for good.
▸ Glowforge, laser engraver maker, wouldn’t say how many new layoffs, but has apparently lost half its staff since last summer.
Feb 5
Snap is cutting 10 percent of its staff
Snap plans to lay off around 10 percent of its employees as the company continues to struggle with declines in the digital advertising market. The company had around 5,300 employees at the start of 2023. Snap previously cut 20 percent of its staff in 2022 and had a smaller cut of 3 percent in 2023.
Read Article >Snap has struggled to expand beyond its core social networking product. Its augmented reality glasses were never made widely available, and other hardware projects like a selfie drone were scrapped shortly after launch. Even products launched within Snapchat, like the TikTok-esque Spotlight and the Snapchat Plus subscription service, have failed to grow at the pace the company hoped for.
Feb 1
Almost 30,000 workers in tech have been laid off this year.That’s according to data from tech layoffs tracker Layoffs.fyi, which recorded 29,995 job cuts across 112 different companies in 2024. The data also includes the 150 layoffs at Zoom that just happened today, too.
Jan 30
Jack Dorsey’s Block is also cutting jobs.The company, which owns financial services like Cash App and Square, is laying off close to 1,000 employees, according to a report from Business Insider. Here’s what Dorsey told employees in a memo seen by BI:
Why is so much happening in one single day?... We decided it would be better to do at once rather than arbitrarily space them out, which didn’t seem fair to the individuals or to the company When we know we need to take an action, we want to take it immediately, rather than let things linger on forever.
Jan 30
Alphabet posted $307.4 billion in revenue for the 2023. It also spent $2.1 billion on layoffs.Alphabet generated 13 percent more revenue year over year in 2023, according to its fourth-quarter earnings report (PDF) released on Tuesday. You can follow along with execs on the call embedded below, that’s just starting.
The company also said that over the entire year, it spent $2.1 billion on employee-related severance for the layoffs it announced in January 2023. That doesn’t account for the thousand people it let go earlier this month.
Jan 30
PayPal is laying off 9 percent of its employees.CEO Alex Chriss told employees that PayPal is cutting existing jobs and open roles as part of an effort to “right-size” the company, according to a report from Bloomberg. The layoffs will reportedly impact around 2,500 workers.
PayPal is far from the only company in the tech industry to get hit with layoffs this year. Microsoft, Google, eBay, and many others have also been affected.
Jan 30
This is not “Play Nice, Play Fair,” Blizzard.It seems as if Activision Blizzard’s Overwatch and Call of Duty esports teams are getting hit with layoffs. On the Overwatch side, the entire observation crew has reportedly been let go along with long-time broadcast talent Soe “Soe” Gschwind and Matt “Mr. X” Morello.
On the Call of Duty side, according to a post from Scott Parkin, senior esports operations manager, Blizzard made the CDL team work a major event over the weekend without telling the team if their jobs were safe — only to lay them off on their first day off. It’s unknown if these layoffs are new or part of the 1,900 people let go last week.
Jan 29
Embracer lays off 97 Eidos employees and cancels new Deus Ex game
Embracer Group, the company attempting to forge one video game publisher to rule them all, has just presided over another round of layoffs. Eidos Montreal is letting go of 97 game developers and support staff, the company announced today on X, shortly after Bloomberg’s Jason Schreier scooped that the studio has canceled an unannounced Deus Ex video game.
Read Article >“The global economic context, the challenges of our industry and the comprehensive restructuring announced by Embracer have finally impacted our studio,” wrote Eidos Montreal. Eidos doesn’t mention the canceled game.
Jan 25
Microsoft lays off 1,900 Activision Blizzard and Xbox employees
Microsoft is laying off 1,900 employees at Activision Blizzard and Xbox this week. While Microsoft is primarily laying off roles at Activision Blizzard, some Xbox and ZeniMax employees will also be impacted by the cuts.
Read Article >The cuts work out to roughly 8 percent of the overall Microsoft Gaming division that stands at around 22,000 employees in total. The Verge has obtained an internal memo from Microsoft Gaming CEO Phil Spencer that confirms the layoffs:
Jan 24
Vroom goes screech — laying off 800 workers and exiting used car sales.While Carvana escaped its seeming plunge into bankruptcy and is now trading for $45 a share, the used car seller now has one fewer competitor. Vroom is technically still around but is now pivoting to just do auto financing and AI analytics for auto retail, laying off 90 percent of the company's employees as it exits the used auto business.
Jan 24
eBay will lay off 1,000 employees — 9 percent of the company
eBay is following in the footsteps of Google, Discord, Twitch, Unity, and more — by laying off loads of workers this January instead of right before the holidays. The company writes it’s laying off around 1,000 workers, or 9 percent of the company’s full-time employees, and that’s just the start: eBay will also lay off an unspecified number of contractors “over the coming months.”
Read Article >Despite reporting profit of $1.3 billion last quarter, which it described as “another quarter of solid results,” eBay today suggests that there is a “Need for Change.” Company president and CEO Jamie Iannone writes that “there is more we can do to ensure our success,” and argues that eBay should be a “more nimble” company that “makes decisions more quickly” to position itself for “long-term, sustainable growth.”
Jan 23
Riot Games cuts more than 500 jobs
After last year saw over 9,000 layoffs in the video game industry, 2024 is continuing the trend, and League of Legends maker Riot Games is the latest example. On Monday night, the company announced that “we are refocusing on fewer, high-impact projects to move us toward a more sustainable future,” which means eliminating roles for 530 people globally, or about 11 percent of its total workforce.
Read Article >This news arrives just days after the results of a Game Developers Conference (GDC) survey showed 56 percent of respondents felt layoffs were in store for their studios due in large part to a “post-pandemic course correction.”
Jan 22
TikTok is cutting jobs, too.Around 60 workers in Los Angeles, New York, Austin, and places outside the US were laid off at TikTok, according to a report from NPR. The layoffs mainly affect workers on TikTok’s sales and advertising teams and follow a string of job cuts from other tech companies this year, including Google, Amazon, Unity, and Discord.
Update January 23rd, 5:16PM ET: Added updated details about the layoffs.
Jan 18
Layoffs at the developer of Dead by Daylight.Behaviour Interactive cut around 45 jobs, according to Kotaku. The studio has confirmed that it did layoffs, saying that it let go less than three percent of the company.
Kotaku has been compiling all of the video game layoffs that have already happened this year. Sadly, there have been a lot.
Jan 18
Google CEO tells employees to expect more job cuts this year
Google has laid off over a thousand employees across various departments since January 10th. CEO Sundar Pichai’s message is to brace for more cuts.
Read Article >“We have ambitious goals and will be investing in our big priorities this year,” Pichai told all Google employees on Wednesday in an internal memo that was shared with me. “The reality is that to create the capacity for this investment, we have to make tough choices.”
Jan 17
YouTube is the latest part of Google to be hit with layoffs
YouTube is cutting jobs on the business side of the house, according to a person familiar with the matter.
Read Article >The news was announced internally on Wednesday by chief business officer Mary Ellen Coe, who oversees thousands of people working in areas like business operations, partnerships, and advertising.
Jan 16
Google layoffs continue with ‘hundreds’ from sales team
After laying off about 1,000 employees last week, Google is now cutting jobs on its advertising sales team. In a statement to The Verge, Google spokesperson Chris Pappas confirmed that “a few hundred roles globally are being eliminated” as part of the change.
Read Article >The news of Google’s latest layoffs was first reported by Business Insider, which obtained a memo from Google senior vice president Philipp Schindler. Schindler reportedly hinted the layoffs will primarily affect its Large Customer Sales (LCS) unit, a team that sells ads to large businesses, while the Google Customer Solutions team (GCS), which sells ads to smaller clients, will become the “core” ad sales team instead. Google laid off some employees on its LCS team last October, according to a separate report from Business Insider.
Jan 15
Google’s latest layoffs are just the beginning
“Thank you, our corporate overlords, for our new annual tradition.”
Read Article >If you had taken a peek last week at Memegen, Google’s irreverent internal meme board for employees, you’d have seen that quote with thousands of upvotes. Even during a particularly nasty week of tech layoffs, Google led the way by suddenly cutting over 1,000 people with barely any explanation.
Jan 13
Layoffs hit a Gearbox studio.Some staffers at Lost Boys Interactive, a studio that has worked on games like Tiny Tina’s Wonderlands and Diablo IV, have been laid off, as reported by Aftermath.
One former producer said on LinkedIn that the layoffs affected a “sizable portion” of Lost Boys Interactive; Aftermath says the company had employed more than 400 people. We spotted a Washington State WARN Act notice that says 125 workers are affected companywide.
Jan 12
Instagram’s latest job cuts reportedly affect around 60 workers.Reports from Business Insider and The Information say the impacted employees were technical program managers at Instagram. They will reportedly have until March to apply for a new role within the company.
Meta made cuts across the company last year, but it seems job cuts are continuing into 2024. Google, Discord, Twitch, and Unity all announced layoffs this month, too.