Cloud News
Joseph F. Kovar
A review of the layoffs that have hit some major tech companies and startups alike over the past few months — from Oracle and Intel to Avaya, Meta and Cybereason.
Layoffs In A Time Of Tight Tech Talent
Ever since the recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic started, the U.S. has been in an increasingly tight labor market with the official U.S. unemployment rate in October at 3.7 percent. But with rising interest rates and cooling spending amid rising prices, companies have been starting to pause hiring and even cut their payrolls.
The second half of 2022 has been characterized by a series of tech layoffs as firms from small operations to multinational giants have laid off a significant number of employees. In fact, layoff tracking website Layoffs.fyi reports that more than 100,000 tech workers have been fired in 2022. And that number is likely to grow.
[Related: Economic Outlook For 2023: 10 Tech Execs Weigh In]
Douglas Holtz-Eakin, the former director of the U.S. Congressional Budget Office, in October told a crowd at CRN parent The Channel Company’s XChange Best of Breed 2022 conference that he expects a modest recession to hit during the middle of 2023 due to the Federal Reserve increasing rates, continuing inflation, and uncertainty ahead with China as well as Russia’s war in Ukraine.
The impact was first felt more in the cybersecurity sector than tech as a whole, with a host of startups and some mature cybersecurity companies undergoing layoffs in the last few months. But those initial layoffs have spread to other tech firms as soon as soon as the fall season set in.
Mark Hatfield, a founder and general partner of Ten Eleven Ventures, in May told CRN that cybersecurity remains a solid long-term bet for investors, but acknowledged that cybersecurity startup valuations had reached their peak and have been falling.
Meanwhile, a new report from Progress Partners, a Boston-based investment bank, said that the amount of venture funds invested in cybersecurity companies declined in the third quarter compared with the same period last year, to $3.3 billion from $5.6 billion, or by 41 percent.
The pullback comes amid uncertain economic times, with market gyrations, high inflation and predictions of a coming recession dominating recent headlines.
Progress Partners’ VC outlook generally confirms what other analysts are seeing: a cooling-off of early stage cybersecurity investments in dollars but an increase in deals.
CRN looked at the layoff activities of 23 IT tech companies in the second half of 2022. The focus of this look at the industry is on companies focused on building the hardware, software, tools, and services that power the IT industry or are used by IT professionals.
To review a sampling of the tech companies laying off workers in recent months, click through the slideshow.
Jay Fitzgerald, Wade Millward, Gina Narcisi, Mark Haranas, David Harris, O’Ryan Johnson, and C.J. Fairfield all contributed to this article.
