Massive layoffs continues in US: Salesforce and other companies that have let people go

“Today I’m sharing some of the most difficult changes we’ve made in Meta’s history. I’ve decided to reduce the size of our team by about 13% and let more than 11,000 of our talented employees go,” this is part of Mark Zuckerberg's letter to his employees last week in yet another case of major tech companies cutting their workforce.

From declining revenue to employee layoffs, we can say that it’s not been a good few months for a lot of tech companies.

Salesforce will become the latest in a growing list of companies that have to let their employees go as they continue to feel the effects of post-covid business slump and a looming recession. The SaaS bigwig was one of the companies to benefit from Covid-19 lockdown as that led to many businesses transitioning into a work-from-home setup.

In a 2020 interview, the company CEO was quoted saying that they may need to hire over 12,000 people in the following year. However, business is back to normal and with many governments having removed their lockdown restrictions business has slowed down for the company and reports have now emerged suggesting that it may be laying off hundreds of employees. However, this represents less than 1% of Salesforce current workforce that stands at about 78,600.

Twitter also recently announced a 50% cut of their workforce following Musk’s controversial takeover in a move that saw 3,700 employees lose their job. Musk said in a series of tweets that all those affected by the cut had been awarded three months of severance pay.

"Unfortunately there is no choice when the company is losing over $4M/day," Musk wrote in a tweet.

Crypto company Coinbase is also on our list after having to let 1,160 employees go to cut on operational cost. Coinbase CEO and Cofounder Brian Armstrong said in a message that affected workers would get a minimum of 14 weeks of severance plus an additional 2 weeks for every year of employment beyond 1 year.

Other companies that have laid off their employees to cut on cost include Stripe (1,000 employees), Robinhood (1,000 employees), Twilio (900), Lyft (743), and Netflix (450 employees).