![]() The uncertainty over jobs has filtered down to the entire tech sector, which is becoming much more cautious due to the weakening economic environment. “Microsoft will continue to grow headcount in the year ahead, and we will add additional focus to where those resources go.” Twitter, meanwhile, confirmed in early June that it had reduced its talent-acquisition team by a hefty 30 percent, partly due to mounting business pressures but also following a company announcement in May that hiring would be paused and cost-cutting would be required. “As Microsoft gets ready for the new fiscal year, it is making sure the right resources are aligned to the right opportunity,” a Microsoft spokesperson told CNBC. “Google is seeing a slowdown in digital ad spend, and we view this as a prudent move.”Īpple, Amazon, Facebook, Microsoft and Twitter have also signaled that they would markedly slow their hiring paces. “Google is reading the room and following the trend of other Big Tech players slowing hiring into 2023 given the macro storm clouds,” Wedbush analyst Dan Ives told The Verge. ![]() Google, for example, announced a two-week hiring freeze on July 20, which was perceived by many as a concerted move to slow the rate of new additions to the company. Indeed, several of the world’s biggest tech companies have done the same. Robinhood represents one of many tech companies that thrived in recent years, only to recently acknowledge experiencing downturns in financial support and user activity in the wake of recent economic deterioration they have thus been forced to scale down their operations. As CEO, I approved and took responsibility for our ambitious staffing trajectory-this is on me.” ![]() “In this new environment, we are operating with more staffing than appropriate. “Last year, we staffed many of our operations functions under the assumption that the heightened retail engagement we had been seeing with the stock and crypto markets in the Covid era would persist into 2022,” Tenev confirmed in a blog post on the company’s website. ![]() But the most recent reduction will bring that headcount down to around 2,600. The company’s earnings call with its chief executive officer, Vlad Tenev, in April also revealed that it had grown its employee base to nearly 3,900 in the first quarter from around 700 at the end of 2019. What’s more, the announcement came just three months after the company confirmed it was laying off 9 percent of its employees, further underlining the precarious situation the global economy and tech sector find themselves in today.Īccording to Robinhood’s second-quarter results, monthly active users fell by 34 percent from a year earlier to 14 million, while the company’s revenue fell by a whopping 44 percent to $318 million. The popular trading and brokerage app, which saw its user base spike during the pandemic, noted a sharp slowdown in customer-trading activity on its platform. In early August, Robinhood announced that it would be laying off 23 percent of its full-time staff. Out of the dot-com ashes, techies like to remind us, grew Amazon, PayPal and eBay.Įven as the biggest factor driving investors to high-growth start-ups over the last decade - low interest rates - begin to change, even as economists worry about an impending recession and even as start-ups lower their valuations or suddenly run out of cash, few today are predicting a total collapse.Ī decade of talking about a bubble that never burst will do that.By Samantha Barnes, International Banker Without all that attention and excitement, how can a start-up founder convince workers and investors to help turn their crazy moonshot ideas into reality? Sure, most of the people who flock to a bubble are in it for the money. Some investors believe market euphorias are a good - even necessary - thing for progress. This decade-long start-up boom has surged in the face of so many scares, each time amassing even more money and power. Tech is too enmeshed in our lives, the thinking goes, and the dot-com bubble is too far in the rear view. “This time is different” used to be a morbid joke among investors now people believe it. Every time the alarm bells rang, more money poured into start-ups. Investors tiptoe around the word “bubble,” referring instead to a “recalibration,” a “pullback” or even a gentle “softening.” The people who once called for caution grew tired of being wrong, and their audiences became numb to the warnings. Today’s warnings are different from those of the last decade. Was the bubble finally, really, truly bursting?
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