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roku

Roku lays off 200 employees after weak Q4 Results

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In the perfect example of what appears to be daily job cuts in Big Tech, Roku declared its plans presently to lay off about 200 employees, which represents nearly 7 per cent of its workforce. In an SEC filing, the streaming company stated that it intends to cut jobs in the United States due to economic conditions.

Roku
Image Source: news.yahoo.com

The company estimates that the reductions will cost between 28 and 31 million USD in severance pay, notice pay where relevant, employee benefits contributions, as well as other costs.

“Due to the current economic conditions in our industry, we have made the difficult decision to reduce Roku’s headcount expenses by a projected 5%, to slow down our [Operating Expenses] growth rate. This will affect approximately 200 employee positions in the U.S. Taking these actions now will allow us to focus our investments on key strategic priorities to drive future growth and enhance our leadership position,” Roku said in an official statement.

Source: techcrunch.com

As per Roku, a large percentage of the layoffs will occur in Q4, with the remainder predicted to be “substantially complete” by the end of Q1 2023.

In a statement, Roku said, “Taking these actions now will allow us to focus our investments on key strategic priorities to drive future growth and enhance our leadership position.”

Source: engadget.com

These layoffs arrive after Roku warned during its most recent quarterly results that it expects a year-over-year profits decline in Q4. In pre-market trading today, the company’s stock fell nearly three per cent.

Read More: Coinbase to lay off more employees amid FTX saga

Job cuts in Big Tech have emerged as an unfortunate trend in recent days. Roku’s layoffs arise on the heels of downsizing at Meta, which laid off 11,000 of its employees last week; Twitter, which laid off nearly 3,800 staff members earlier this month; and Amazon and Microsoft.

Even though Apple has thus far been an exception, it has decided to impose a hiring freeze that is expected to last until late 2023. Similarly, Disney is reportedly freezing hiring and planning layoffs, while Netflix laid off about 300 workers in June. Streaming companies, including Roku, have encountered the dual difficulties of an uncertain economy and revenue downturn following a surge during the coronavirus pandemic.

contract workers

Elon Musk fires thousands of contract workers without notice

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According to reports, Twitter has terminated thousands of contract workers as Elon Musk appears to be taking strong steps to revive the once-dominant social media platform. Platformer estimates that employment cuts have affected over 4400 out of 5500 contract workers.

contract workers
Image Source: pynr.in

The widespread firings, which affect both US-based and international staff working in real estate, marketing, content moderation, engineering, and other departments, were first reported on by Platformer on Saturday night.

According to Platformer’s Casey Newton, Twitter fired a sizable number of contract workers on Saturday, impacting anywhere between 4,400 and 5,500 individuals. Most contract workers didn’t get any notice that they were fired and only learned of their dismissal after being denied access to the company email and inner communications systems.

According to CNBC, the fired employees didn’t discover they had been fired until they lost access to Slack as well as other work networks over the weekend. Twitter states that the job losses are a result of a “reprioritization and savings exercise” in an internal message sent to contract employees that Business Insider was able to obtain.

Read More: Twitter To Let Users Post Long-Form Tweets and help creators monetize

Platformer’s Casey Newton noted, “Contractors aren’t being notified at all, they’re just losing access to Slack and email. Managers figured it out when their workers just disappeared from the system.”

A bunch of Twitter officials have either resigned or been dismissed since Musk took over, and more employees will probably be let go due to the company’s new in-person work requirement. Elon Musk sacked Twitter’s CEO Parag Agrawal, CFO Ned Segal, and head of legal policy, trust, and safety Vijaya Gadde as soon as he took control of the platform.

Since that time, a number of high-profile employees have left Twitter. Only “exceptional people” are permitted to work remotely, according to a Q&A session between Elon and Twitter employees.  Musk remarked, “Basically if you can show up in an office and you do not show up at the office, resignation accepted.” The company’s communications division is no longer in operation.

Since taking over the Twitter business in the final week of October, Musk has been seeking to overhaul the entire system by firing top executives, cutting manpower by 50%, charging users for the “verified” tick, and other measures. The Tesla CEO has received harsh criticism for his handling of the crisis and for firing some employees without notifying them in advance. Twitter even barred access to its headquarters and instructed staff to wait in their homes for company communications.

Silicon Valley is reeling from a slump across the entire sector. Meta, the parent company of Facebook, just announced widespread layoffs, eliminating 11,000 positions, or around 13% of the workforce. The company overhired during the pandemic, but eventually realized the hyper boom isn’t sustainable, according to Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, who called the layoffs “some of the most difficult changes we’ve made in Meta’s history.”

In addition to Twitter and Meta, major tech giants like Apple, Amazon, and Alphabet have announced they will halt hiring or make job cuts due to inflation and recessionary fears. The companies are allegedly operating in a more risky environment, which is causing them to spend less on business expansion.

ftx

Coinbase to lay off more employees amid FTX saga

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Leading cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase will shortly announce more layoffs as the industry faces yet another existential threat following the FTX collapse.

ftx
Image Source: bizzbuzz.news

According to recent reports, the present crisis in the cryptocurrency market led Coinbase, one of the biggest crypto platforms, to lay off 60 of its employees. Alesia Haas, CFO, referred to the modifications as “surgical” measures meant to save costs amid trying times.

According to The Information, Coinbase is expected to lay off about 60 employees from its recruitment and institutional induction teams. The layoffs were communicated internally. The layoffs will occur at a time when the cryptocurrency market as a whole is in disarray as a result of the ongoing FTX controversy, which has spooked investors and further depressed cryptocurrency valuations.

Though they are not nearly as astounding as Meta’s decision to lay off over 11,000 employees recently, Coinbase’s most recent series of layoffs is an indication that the crypto exchange may be attempting to cut expenses in the continuing bear market. Nevertheless, this development barely changes the picture of a week that has been filled with terrible news for the cryptocurrency industry.

According to reports, Coinbase had already attempted to minimize costs before the FTX issues as dropping cryptocurrency trading volumes were harming this year’s profitability. Due to the economic slump, the cryptocurrency exchange company stated in June that it will be cutting 1,100 employees or 18% of its workforce.

As the value of Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies continues to fall, the crash of the FTX cryptocurrency exchange has now brought about yet another wave of threats to the whole crypto industry.

When bitcoin was trading last week at over $21,500 and the market cap was over $1 billion, the cryptocurrency winter, which is expected to linger for the majority of 2022, appeared to have eased its hold. Hopes that a new bull run is about to begin, however, were dashed by FTX’s collapse this week.

At one point, the value of the cryptocurrency market fell below $850 billion, with bitcoin falling to a two-year low of about $15,500.

According to statistics from Nomics, transaction volume on Coinbase fell by over 75% in the hours after FTX announced its bankruptcy early on Friday. This is an indication that the company is starting to feel the pain of crypto investors pulling out of the increasingly unpredictable cryptocurrency market.

The majority of Coinbase’s user base, which consists primarily of newer investors who don’t trade frequently, generates 90% of the exchange’s revenue from the sizeable transaction fees it charges. Because of this revenue model, the company must constantly add new users in order to maintain its user base. Onboarding new users, however, could be challenging given that FTX’s collapse has undermined investor sentiment in the digital asset sector.

The price of cryptocurrencies plummeted this year as a result of rising interest rates and growing concerns about an economic slowdown, wiping out important firms like Three Arrows Capital, Celsius Network, and Voyager Digital. But once FTX started to show early signs of trouble, digital assets took a heavier hit.

FTX, which has a history of saving failing crypto companies, is considering its options in light of a liquidity crisis and is currently under investigation by US regulators for its management of customer cash and its crypto-lending activities.

elon musk

Elon Musk changes plans, to not cut 75% of Twitter Jobs

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Elon Musk informed Twitter employees that he does not intend to fire 75% of the workforce after taking over the organization. According to reports, Musk informed potential investors that he would fire 75% of Twitter’s staff, leaving the company with only 2,000 employees.

Elon Musk
Image Source: outlookindia.com

Elon Musk, the tech magnate and incoming boss of Twitter, reportedly informed staff members on Wednesday that he does not intend to lay off 75% of the company’s workforce. Musk, whose $44 billion Twitter acquisition appears to be on pace to close by Friday, refuted the previously reported lay-off estimate in a speech to staff members at Twitter’s San Francisco office.

Twitter employees who may have been anxious following a story in The Washington Post last week suggesting that the Tesla and SpaceX CEO had planned to fire 75% of Twitter’s workforce once he acquired control of the company would likely be relieved by Musk’s comments.

However, Twitter Inc. warned staff to expect loads of public rumors and speculation as the acquisition by Musk approaches and stated that there haven’t been any plans for company-wide layoffs since it inked the deal.

Nevertheless, there has been a noticeable air of sadness in the Twitter offices since Musk revealed his intentions to purchase the microblogging platform. Many high-level executives have already left the company since the acquisition was first revealed in April, citing Musk’s actions and public statements as the reason for their resignation.

As per the Washington Post report, regardless of who operates the company, workforce layoffs are anticipated in the near future, The report states that Twitter’s present management intended to reduce the corporation’s payroll by around $800 million by the end of 2023, which would result in the departure of close to a quarter of the employees.

Layoffs are still anticipated after the Tesla CEO’s takeover even if he does not lay off the company’s staff by 75%, sources have told Bloomberg. It was also reported that despite assurances from Twitter’s human resources department that mass layoffs were not in the works, substantial measures to fire employees and reduce infrastructure expenses were in place even before Musk made an acquisition offer.

Elon Musk released a video earlier on Thursday showing him entering the offices while holding a kitchen sink with the caption “Entering Twitter HQ – let that sink in!” He updated the description of his Twitter profile to “Chief Twit.” Musk recently posted to Twitter, “A beautiful thing about Twitter is how it empowers citizen journalism – people are able to disseminate news without an establishment bias.”

As per the Wall Street Journal, banks have begun transferring $13 billion in cash to support Musk’s acquisition of Twitter, indicating that the transaction will complete by the end of this week.

The cash will be made accessible for Musk to complete the purchase by the Friday time limit once all closing requirements have been satisfied.

After making an initial $44 billion offer to purchase Twitter, Musk withdrew his offer, claiming that Twitter had overstated the number of bogus “spam bot” accounts it had on its platform.

Twitter sued to hold Musk to the stipulations of the acquisition agreement, but a US court recently put a halt on the case after Musk changed his opinion, and gave the parties time till October 28 to complete the acquisition.

1000 employees

Microsoft fires around 1,000 Employees Across Multiple Divisions

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Microsoft has laid off nearly 1000 employees across multiple divisions, including the Xbox and Edge teams. The layoffs affected less than 1 percent of Microsoft’s latest reported workforce of around 221,000 people, Axios stated by citing an anonymous source.

1000 employees
Image Source: financialexpress.com

The US tech behemoth officially confirmed the elimination of a small number of positions and the intention to increase its employee count in the future earlier in July.

In a statement released by Microsoft said, “Today we had a small number of role eliminations. Like all companies, we evaluate our business priorities regularly, and make structural adjustments accordingly.”

Source: financialexpress.com

Microsoft’s 1000 employees layoff is the latest in a string of job cuts or hiring freezes in the United States as the global economy slows. Due to the global economic slowdown, rising inflation, and other factors, several technology companies, which would include Meta Platforms Inc, Twitter Inc, and Snap Inc, have cut jobs and stopped hiring in recent months.

Meta recently laid off 60 contractors who were reportedly chosen at random by an algorithm. Snap officially confirmed its plan to reduce its headcount by approximately 20 percent of its full-time employees worldwide on August 31, 2022.

A Twitter user going by the handle KC Lemson who is a Microsoft veteran and product supervisor in the office of the Chief Technology Officer tweeted on Monday that she had been laid off by Microsoft. Several other long-serving Microsoft employees were affected by the layoffs together with KC Lemson.

When we talk about current layoffs, a Microsoft spokesperson said, “like all corporations, we consider our enterprise priorities frequently, and make structural changes accordingly. We will proceed to take a position in our enterprise and rent in key areas in the year forward.”

Source: indiatoday.in

Wipro and Infosys have both officially declared layoffs this year in India. Aside from attrition, many companies, such as Apple, Oracle, and Google also, have publicly stated a hiring freeze for the months to come. As of late July, Crunchbase revealed that more than 32,000 workers in the US software industry had been laid off in mass layoffs.

“We’ve included both startups and publicly traded companies that are based in the US. We’ve also included companies based elsewhere that have a sizable team in the United States, such as Klarna,” the analysis said.

Source: financialexpress.com

The company has recently launched its new Microsoft Surface line-up, which consisted of the Surface Laptop 5, Surface 9 Pro tablet, Studio 2+, and numerous other products. On October 25, the company will release its fiscal second-quarter financial results.

Meta

Meta Might do ‘Quiet Layoff’ and Axe over 12,000 Facebook Employees

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Meta Platforms is implementing “quiet layoffs” at Facebook to reduce its workforce as global constraints and declining ad expenditure pose severe issues for Big Tech corporations.

Meta
Image Source: madhyamam.com

According to a Business Insider report, Facebook executives are currently in the midst of carrying out “quiet layoffs” of underperforming employees, which might result in thousands of workers receiving pink slips. Executives around the firm were instructed by Facebook leadership to choose at least 15% of the employees in their teams to be classified as “needs support” through an internal review process. This targeted restructuring raises the possibility of removing 12,000 employees or 15% of Facebook’s staff.

The report said that the possible layoffs were made public last week through a post by a Meta employee on Blind. Blind is a popular app amongst tech employees that requires a valid workplace email account to use the portal anonymously.

In Facebook’s employee-review procedure, an employee “in need of support” is regarded as performing below the benchmark standards. Such employees are placed on a performance improvement plan (PIP), which typically results in layoffs.

Facebook employees made predictions on the work app Blind that anyone who fell into the 15% bracket would probably lose their jobs. If 15% of Facebook’s workforce were to be let go, 12,000 workers might lose their jobs.

As per Business Insider, In July 2022, Maher Saba, Facebook’s chief engineer, reportedly told its managers that they should identify team employees that “needs support”. However, they did not give a specific percentage.

During the weekly Q&A session, Zuckerberg told its employees:

“ I had hoped the economy would have more clearly stabilized by now, but from what we’re seeing it doesn’t yet seem like it has, so we want to plan somewhat conservatively.”

In May 2022, the company announced a recruiting freeze that has since been extended to all of Meta’s other departments and verticals. While this is going on, a few employees have been given 30 to 60 days to find a new position within the company or leave. Meta has a longtime policy of dismissing the employee when a job position is eliminated but an employee cannot locate a replacement within the firm.

Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg pinned the blame on the economy and forewarned that the company would have to go through a downsizing or restructuring process. Zuckerberg said that all of Meta’s departments and subsidiary companies including Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp, would be experiencing budget cuts.

The CEO mentioned that Facebook had significant growth during the initial 18 years of its existence. However, according to Zuckerberg, recent quarters’ sales and revenue statistics have plateaued.

Meta’s move is in line with similar measures made by other major tech companies including Google, Apple, and Microsoft. To reduce costs while maintaining operating margins, some companies have stopped hiring new employees or started issuing pink slips to existing ones.

As per data collated by Crunchbase until late July, over 32,000 tech employees were laid off from their jobs in the USA.

After a surge in success that escalated during the pandemic, the tech sector has been experiencing a lull lately. Many tech giants are halting or ceasing hiring in the face of a more widespread global economic slowdown, interest rate hikes, and regulatory challenges.