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Big tech employers in NZ say the job market is tighter than ever after border reopenings saw a rush of OE departures.
But in North America, a spate of hiring freezes, withdrawn job offers and
Shopify shares fell 14 per cent after the NYSE-listed, Canadian software company – the largest player in the global market for ready-made online stores – said it was cutting 1000 staff or roughly 10 per cent of its global workforce.
The Wall Street Journal says tech recruiters in the US now see a chance to fill vacancies as a tech job market that has been red hot for years shows signs of cooling.
“Tech workers used to asking for the moon are starting to hear an unfamiliar word as startups and giants such as Google and Microsoft get more cautious: No,” the paper reports.
Flexible working perks are starting to dry up as the market becomes less tight.
Recession fears, slowing growth, falling stock prices, falling private equity valuations, rising interest rates, continuing pandemic disruption and the crypto meltdown have been cited as factors.
Earlier this month, Microsoft said it would cut a small percentage of its workforce in an excercise affecting around 1 per cent of its global workforce.
Tesla laid off 200 staff following a June 3 message to executives by CEO Elon Musk, who said he had a “super bad feeling about the economy”. Musk ordered his team to “pause all hiring worldwide” and cut 10 per cent of salaried staff (Telsa employed around 100,000 at the end of 2021).
On June 23, Netflix said it would cut 3 per cent of its workforce or around 300 employees globally following subscriber losses.
Twitter, which had already paused hiring, said earlier this month it would lay off 30 per cent of its talent acquisition team.
Google chief executive Sundar Pichai told employees last week that the company would slow the pace of hiring for the rest of the year.
Meta head of engineering Maher Saba said on July 11 that his company would freeze hiring in some areas and, in an internal memo reported by the Wall Street Journal, asked managers to weed out “low performers”.
Trading platform Robin Hood said it would lay off 9 per cent of its 3400 staff.
Amazon has said it will pare back hiring in some areas.
Snapchat maker Snap, which saw its shares plunge 40 per cent last Friday on weaker than expected results, said it now plans to hire 500 new staff this year rather than 2000 (and one report said it had actually culled 120 roles).
On June 13, Coinbase – the first crypto firm to list on Wall Street – said it was laying off 1100 employees, or around 18 per cent of its staff. Like Twitter and a number of other tech firms, Coinbase has also rescinded job offers.
And on June 30, San Francisco-based Unity Software – which hit headlines in November last year when it bought Weta Digital’s tech division for $2.3 billion – said it would lay off 225 of its 5864.
The list goes on. It’s striking after years of relentless expansion across the sector.
The fall is not universal, however. In some highly specialised areas, such as machine learning and AI, candidates can still name their price.
But overall, things are tightening.
In May, the US tech sector still added a net 2300 jobs, according to US Labor Department statistics.
But the rate of growth slowed from an average 2800 per month over the prior five months. And a wave of hiring freezes and layoffs over June and this month have yet to flow through into the stats.
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