Alphabet, Microsoft, Amazon, Meta, here are the top tech companies joining the layoff spree

Tech companies are facing turbulent times as they brace themselves to adapt to the new reality resulting in mass layoffs around the world. Microsoft is letting go of 10,000 employees, which will reduce the company's headcount by less than 5 per cent. This comes just days after Amazon began a fresh round of job cuts that is expected to eliminate more than 18,000 employees. This is the largest workforce reduction in the eretailer's history. Here are some of the major job cuts in the tech industry so far.

Google parent Alphabet Inc. said it will cut about 12,000 jobs, more than 6 per cent of its global workforce, becoming the latest tech giant to retrench after years of abundant growth and hiring.

With the layoffs, Google joins a host of other tech giants that have drastically scaled back operations amid a faltering global economy and soaring inflation. Meta Platforms, Twitter and Amazon.com have all slashed their ranks. Thanks to a resilient search business, Google has been one of the longest tech holdouts. But the company is dealing with a slowdown in digital advertising and its cloud-computing division continues to trail Amazon and Microsoft.

Microsoft: 10,000 jobs cut | Microsoft said it plans to cut 10,000 jobs, or about 5 per cent of its workforce, taking steps to cope with an increasingly bleak outlook. The layoffs come as the software giant said it's seeing customers exercise caution, with some parts of the world in recession and others heading toward one.

The company had 221,000 full-time employees, including 122,000 in the United States and 99,000 internationally, as of June 30, according to filings. Microsoft had said in July last year that a small number of roles had been eliminated and that it would increase its headcount later.

Amazon: 18,000 jobs cut | Grappling with slowing online sales growth and bracing for a possible recession, Amazon kicked off a new round of deep job cuts in January.

The company announced that it was laying off more than 18,000 employees among its corporate ranks - the largest job cull in its history. While the cuts represent only about 1 per cent of the total workforce, which includes hundreds of thousands of hourly warehouse and delivery personnel, they amount to about 6 per cent of Amazon's 350,000 corporate employees around the globe.

Meta: 11,000 job cut | Facebook parent Meta announced its most significant round of layoffs ever in November. Meta Platforms said it will let go of 13 per cent of its workforce, or more than 11,000 employees, in one of the biggest tech layoffs in 2022.

While the entire tech industry has seen a slump, Meta’s woes are a bit more specific. The parent company that owns Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp has been facing intense competition from other social media platforms including TikTok and Snap. The pandemic boom that boosted tech companies and their valuations has turned into a bust this year in the face of decades-high inflation and rapidly rising interest rates.

Tesla: 6,000 jobs cut | In June 2022, Musk wrote in an email to Tesla executives saying he has a ‘super bad feeling’ about the US economy and needed to cut jobs by about 10 per cent. In another email to employees, Musk said Tesla would reduce salaried headcount by 10 per cent, as it has become ‘overstaffed in many areas’. But "hourly headcount will increase," he said.

The Wall Street Journal estimated the reductions would affect about 6,000 employees, based on public filings.

Ahead of his emails on staffing levels, Musk to Tesla employees issued an ultimatum to return to the office for a minimum of 40 hours a week. Failure to do so would be taken as a resignation, he wrote.

Twitter 3,700 job cut | Twitter’s new chief exec’s top priority after taking over was to cut cost hence the job cuts. Twitter employees have been bracing for layoffs ever since Musk took over and immediately ousted much of the top executive team, including CEO Parag Agrawal, finance chief Ned Segal and senior legal staffers Vijaya Gadde and Sean Edgett. In the days that followed, other departures have included Chief Marketing Officer Leslie Berland, Chief Customer Officer Sarah Personette, and Jean-Philippe Maheu, who was vice president of global client solutions.

In a tweet on November 4, Musk said there was "no choice" but to lay off employees as the company was losing $4 million per day.

Netflix: 450 jobs cut | Netflix announced two rounds of layoffs. In May 2022, the streaming service eliminated 150 jobs after the company reported its first subscriber loss in a decade. In late June, it announced another 300 layoffs.

The streaming giant, however, ended the year on a high note. The company added 7.66 million subscribers in the final quarter of 2022, easily topping the 4.5 million average estimate of Wall Street analysts.

Earlier today, Netflix co-founder Reed Hastings stepped aside as CEO of the company, leaving the position to his two longtime associates, Ted Sarandos and Greg Peters.

Salesforce: 7,000 jobs cut | Following the footsteps of other tech giant, Salesforce said it will lay off 10 per cent of its personnel and reduce some office space as part of a restructuring plan. It employed more than 79,000 workers as of December.

In a letter to employees, co-CEO Marc Benioff said” "As our revenue accelerated through the pandemic, we hired too many people leading into this economic downturn we're now facing, and I take responsibility for that." Salesforce said it will record charges of $1 billion to $1.4 billion related to the headcount reductions, and $450 million to $650 million related to the office space reductions.

Snap: 1,000 jobs cut | In late August, Snap announced it laid off 20 per cent of its workforce, which equates to over 1,000 employees. Snap CEO Evan Spiegel told employees in a memo that the company needs to restructure its business to deal with its financial challenges. He said the company's quarterly year-over-year revenue growth rate of 8 per cent "is well below what we were expecting earlier this year."

Coinbase: 2,000 jobs cut | On January 10, Coinbase announced plans to cut about a fifth of its workforce as it looks to preserve cash during the crypto market downturn. The cryptocurrency market is going through turbulent times as the plunging value of digital assets amid rising interest rates and the collapse of some of its biggest players, including FTX, have shaken the faith of investors in what was seen as the next big thing in the world of finance.

Coinbase is also halting its operations in Japan due to volatile market conditions, days after it announced job cuts amid waning demand for digital assets.