Young Silicon Valley workers are in for a rude awakening as industry giants make major job cuts and ditch ambitious projects for the first time in their careers
It's a first for many tech workers, an entire generation of whom have known nothing but non-stop growth and a bull market. To these employees, recent changes are "straight up heresy," as Bill Gurley, a veteran venture capitalist, put it in June. "During this rate-induced boom, competition for employees created a Disney-esque set of experiences/expectations in high tech companies."
There was something of an outcry at Meta, for example, when the company earlier this year decided to limit the timing for free meals at offices and took away the laundry service it offered to workers. Within two months, the company froze hiring. Now, employees are worried about it cutting headcount by as much as 20%, as managers warn workers of impending cuts, Insider reported.
Over at Google parent Alphabet, CEO Sundar Pichai told investors he is reviewing spending and projects "at all scales pretty granularly." The company has also put in place a hiring slowdown. In August, Pichai told employees there are "real concerns that our productivity as a whole is not where it needs to be for the headcount we have." Earlier, the company told managers not to approve employee travel and team offsites unless they are "business critical." Back in April, workers were getting a private concert by Lizzo just for returning to the office.
"It is a poorly kept secret in Silicon Valley that companies ranging from Google to Meta to Twitter to Uber could achieve similar levels of revenue with far fewer people," Brad Gerstner, CEO of Altimeter Capital, wrote in a recent open letter to Meta, asking that the company cut costs, especially in its metaverse pursuit. "I would take it a step further and argue that these incredible companies would run even better and more efficiently without the layers and lethargy that comes with this extreme rate of employee expansion."