I will teach you how to bring your life stories to essays faster with F1GMAT's essay guides. Download below or subscribe to F1GMAT's Service and work with me - Atul Jose, Author/Editor/Founding Consultant, F1GMAT(16 Years of helping applicants gain admissions to M7 and Top 30 schools) After a too-good-to-be-true climb in stock prices and revenue, the Technology industry faced its biggest slump since the dot com crisis in 2001. The high was followed by massive layoffs of close to 10-15% of workforce. The cuts began to be announced in late 2022. Business Schools had to come up with new deadlines just for those affected by the layoff.
Technology Layoffs - 2023
The technology layoffs that began in 2022 are expected to continue in 2023 as giants in the industry reconcile with the decreased demand for online services and digital consumptions. The pandemic that forced most to be cooped up at home built up enough demand for revenge travel that decreased the need for meeting applications, online educational services, and even online socializing tools. Lesser the eyeballs in virtual spaces, the lesser advertisers spend on online marketing platforms.
Related Service: If you would like to know whether the Technology industry is the right post-MBA industry for you, Subscribe to F1GMAT's Career Planning Service.
The Tech top 5 – Twitter, Amazon, Meta, Alphabet, and Salesforce were all affected by the layoffs.
a) Twitter: The micro-messaging service was disrupted by the company going private under the leadership of Elon Musk and the general slowdown in demand for advertising that affected their revenue. Taking a cue on the reversal, 200+ data scientists, engineers, and product managers working on problems like site stability were among those let go. Out of the approximately 7,500 employees before the company's go-private agreement, Twitter only employs less than 2,000 now.
b) Meta: Mark Zuckerberg stated that Meta eliminated 11,000 jobs or 10% of the company's workforce. Attributing the layoff to the company's prioritization of VR development and a slowdown in revenue, Zuckerberg has put significant investment in improving the lost ad signal from Apple's new privacy measures and improving user engagement to match TikTok's dominance.
c) Alphabet: Alphabet, the parent company of Google, announces massive layoffs, eliminating 12,000 positions. Reuters said the changes would impact recruiting, engineering, and product teams. When the demand for digital services and goods skyrocketed, hiring was on overdrive. When the demand reached pre-pandemic levels, the need for a high-cost talent pool wasn't required anymore.
d) Salesforce: Salesforce is eliminating 10% of its global workforce, translating to 8,000 positions. According to the corporation, it hired too quickly, and these job losses were an effort to make up for it. The business will also consider closing some of its physical offices as it invested heavily in its internal workforce and project management tools, decreasing the need for physical spaces.
e) Amazon: The company anticipates losing 18,000 employees. Amazon has yet to disclose the places that these changes will impact. This is in addition to the 10,000 positions that were made redundant in 2022.
Technology Industry – The High-Risk Roles
Customer service, coding, and maintenance teams are among the occupations at risk of being redundant. Companies are making sales, DevOps, support, and administrative positions redundant – from the lower demand and an increased integration of automation tools within the company. In addition, those in secure employment status anticipate reduced bonuses and variable compensation.
Support Staff, Engineers, HR and Managers – Most IMPACTED
Layoffs among support staff and engineers are a serious concern. The distribution of layoffs per position is remarkably comparable at Twitter, Amazon, Meta, Microsoft, and Google.
The software engineer role was most impacted at Twitter and Google, whereas the HR departments suffered the most at Amazon, Meta, and Microsoft.
Twitter software engineers lost about 23.7% of their jobs, while HR & Talent Sourcing at Amazon lost the most workers—37.4%. Meta fired 18.3% of software engineers and 29.8% of HR & Talent Sourcing employees. Software engineer layoffs at Alphabet were 35.3%.
Other negatively impacted roles included program manager, product manager, and marketing. Not all positions in the IT sector are in danger.
Most Demand – Technology Industry
According to the Bloomberg news agency, IT managers, information security analysts, web developers, and database administrators will have the most job security in the technology sector in 2023. Employees in legal and strategy areas have so far been unaffected. In addition, staff members with strong digital skills or in client-facing roles are the most protected.
IMPACT of AI and increased pandemic hiring on roles – Technical, Marketing, Product Development, and Product Management
Over the past four years, the use of AI in businesses has increased by 270%. ChatGPT, one of the most recent AI iterations, can write code for programs and applications. Even programming languages can have their mistakes checked. According to some experts, many coding positions may someday be replaced by AI. Others have countered that this will be challenging with the technology ecosystem – hardware, middleware and software evolving. Many of these base codes on which ChatGPT is trained might become redundant soon.
Microsoft has begun testing with Codex, an AI system that converts natural language to code, which OpenAI created.
Others monitor AI developments and understand what improvements they can soon bring to digital marketing, while some marketers insist that robots cannot replace people. In addition, 61% of marketers feel that using artificial intelligence in their data strategy is crucial.
With their drive-thrus, certain businesses, including McDonald's and Chipotle, have started experimenting with artificial intelligence robots. These examples imply that AI will eventually replace most workers in customer service, even if it still needs to be more sophisticated to accurately mimic a human agent.
One in Ten Businesses Uses AI
According to MMC Ventures, one in ten businesses currently utilize ten or more AI applications, growing the Total Available Market for new applications and related products like chatbots, process optimization, and fraud analysis. AI and machine learning (ML) are significantly expediting the development of new goods, helping startups and established businesses rush to market with new items.
More than 30% of the revenues generated by totally digital products or services are generated by 14% of businesses that are the most adept at applying AI and ML for new product development. These businesses also outperform their competitors.
Trends in Technology Hiring for the Post-MBA Market (2022-23)
Haas MBA program offers the highest percentage of Technology Industry placement (32.9%), whereas, with 7.6%, Yale offers the lowest number of Tech jobs. Other schools with a high percentage of Tech jobs are Stanford, MIT, LBS, and Duke Fuqua.
Stanford, MIT Sloan, LBS, INSEAD, and Darden are those with increased placement in the Technology industry. Conversely, Booth, Columbia, NYU Stern, Wharton, Kellogg, Duke Fuqua, Tuck, and Cornell are the schools that saw their Technology placements falling.
The highest placement increase was observed at INSEAD MBA (+5.5%), whereas Booth faced the most cuts (-8%).
| Business School | Technology Industry Hiring Percent (2022-23) | Technology Industry Hiring Percent (2021-22) |
|---|---|---|
| MIT Sloan | 22.6% | 21.4% |
| Stanford | 30% | 28% |
| Columbia | 16% | 17% |
| Chicago Booth | 14.9% | 22.9% |
| Harvard | 19% | 19% |
| NYU Stern | 17% | 19.2% |
| Wharton | 16.9% | 18.6% |
| Kellogg | 21% | 26% |
| Duke Fuqua | 23% | 27% |
| LBS | 29% | 26% |
| INSEAD | 23.5% | 18% |
| Tuck | 11% | 15% |
| Yale | 7.6% | 10% |
| Darden | 20% | 18.9% |
| Haas | 32.9% | 33% |
| Ross | 17.3% | 17.3% |
| Cornell | 15% | 17% |
Related Service
If you would like to know whether the Technology industry is the right post-MBA industry for you, Subscribe to F1GMAT's Career Planning Service.
Related MBA Application Essay Guides
Reference
- Twittery Layoffs 2022 1, 2
- Amazon Layoffs 1
- Tech Company Layoffs (Mint Report 1, 2022-23 trend)AI Future
- AI Digital Marketing
- AI product development
