The facade of Big Tech is crumbling

it’s hard knock life

Amazon executives were optimistic this week when they unveiled a slew of new hardware devices.

The mood behind the scenes is less optimistic. Hiring in the devices sector has slowed dramatically amid widespread efforts to cut spending across Amazon. New hires can now have their offers revoked or even choose another job within the company, such as advertising, Protocol learned.

• Publicly, Amazon is taking a more optimistic tone. As part of that, we may reprioritize required roles and offer similar roles to candidates with pending offers,” the company told the protocol in an email.
• Privately, sources say the environment has changed significantly across the company, with a clear focus on cutting costs.
• And it’s not just Amazon. Across technology, budget cuts are becoming more acute as companies prepare for a prolonged economic contraction.
• Meta freezes hiring and Alphabet is doing the most Google thing ever: killing projects. And overall, the industry is losing jobs. Most of these efforts are, of course, aimed at improving cash generation, a new investor demand for more than a decade.

Once impregnable technology fortresses are crumbling. And the collapse is forcing employees to take new stocks of their sectors. Workers have found jobs they thought weren’t there, beloved benefits are on the cutting board, and money once allotted for early retirement is now gone.

• It’s hard to remember what it was like in front of the ping pong table in the office, but corporate life wasn’t always so glamorous. was. But the employees weren’t getting massages, napping in pods, or drinking kombucha on tap.
• Then Silicon Valley came along and changed the paradigm. A motivated and entrepreneurial vibe was matched with enviable perks that helped make a job in the tech industry his hottest LinkedIn accessory of the decade.

Industry leaders are now forced to wrestle with the beasts they have created. And after decades of insane benefits, it’s somehow a surprise to them that employees are pushing efforts to cut those benefits.

• “You shouldn’t always equate fun with money,” Sundar Pichai told the now-infamous employee. Ironically, given that Google is the epitome of lavish employee benefits, his former HR executive, Laszlo Bock, has written a book about it.

Tech workers of some ability still wield great influence. But one of the proven routes to potential wealth in the industry is disappearing. Even high-demand technicians can find it difficult to find work quickly.

• The IPO market is mostly closed. As startups look to hold on to cash for better market conditions, many are pulling back on the luxury packages they once used to lure people away from places like Amazon and Google. is needed.
• And large companies are increasingly reluctant to approve high compensation packages, if not to stop hiring altogether.

There are always technical positions available. Perhaps even more so for those specializing in growing areas like machine learning. But many in the industry, especially those early in their careers, have never seen a market downturn this severe.

The side dishes that helped make working at Big Tech a sustainable feast are increasingly off the menu. For some, it may be time to jump on the tougher, more responsible East Coast tech cousin: finance. Silicon Valley, it’s time to break your suit.

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Using economic multipliers published by the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis, the NDP estimates that this Alibaba-fueled consumption spillover in 2020 supported more than 256,000 U.S. jobs and $21 billion in wages. increase. These US sales to Chinese consumers added $39 billion to US GDP.

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