2026 tech layoffs reach 45,000 in March

bearjaws

And Meta has another round coming, soon the only thing left at the company will be data center staff. Apparently 20% to be laid off soon. https://www.reuters.com/business/world-at-work/meta-planning...

napolux

AI as a real impact or more as an excuse?

bwestergard

The framing of this makes it seem like this is a sharp change in trend, but this long-running layoff tracker shows no evidence of this. 2020 and 2023 both had serious layoff spikes, but the 2023 spike trailed off to an asymptote that we're still hovering around. https://layoffs.fyi/

smithcoin

Cutting layers of bureaucracy not replacing with AI

small_model

Mangers and executives have better tools now to track a tech workers output/performance, they will cut the useless/low performers/in over their head people who were hired during preceding years. A small tech team with proficient intelligent devs augmented with AI can replace 100's of duds.

tayo42

Unemployed people, what are you doing?

ph4rsikal

I think the age of SaaS and Software companies is over. Given by all the overhyped TikTok videos there are lots of roles which are not needed.

tokyobreakfast

Not sure how you empathize with people that built their robot replacements.

d--b

Take with a spoonful of salt. Those trading firms that make these claims have skin in the game.

whatever1

The money tree is over. Companies now have to pick between gpus and employees. They picked gpus.

wek

From my experience in some large tech firms, you could easily cut 20% of the workers and not see much impact. There is so much bloat, process-people, meetings-people, etc... Even if the cuts aren't from AI, execs will use AI as a reason to make these cuts.

swarnie

META rumoured to be purging by Tuesday. Calls locked in.

lowsong

There's little to no evidence that companies are actually doing layoffs to focus on "AI-enabled" work. All there is are layoffs because of interest rates and concerns about the economic outlook. Companies using "AI" as a fig leaf justification and people are apparently falling for it.

dzonga

impact of A.I - reality vs hype reality - companies are choosing to spend money on CAPEX (i.e infrastructure things hoping that they can ride an uncertain wave into the future) and not spend on OPEX (humans) reality - AI agents are not doing human jobs. reality - money | debt is now more expensive. hence if you were spending more of it on OPEX stuff you would rather reduce that reality - more coasting jobs in tech. demand for stuff that still needs to get done is super high - workers just need to get more distributed and not hoarded at the big paying firms