Jose Granados was optimistic about landing a job at Meta Platforms Inc. until the very end. He was a 32-year-old Kelley School of Management MBA student at Indiana University who had landed a summer internship with the social media giant. These 12-week contracts are frequently stepping stones to full-time jobs after graduation. Granados was aware of “rumblings” among his coworkers about the industry’s financial unpredictability, but he chose to focus on his profession.
Midway through his internship in August, his recruiter informed him that the employer would decide on a full-time offer in December instead of the usual two or three weeks. He claims, “I wasn’t really concerned since I performed a pretty excellent job, everyone appeared to appreciate me, and I was advancing in my role.” It was a setback when Meta announced in November that it would fire 11,000 employees and extend a recruiting ban until March. Granados admits, “I wasn’t entirely dissuaded. But, he claims that by the time he ultimately realised he wouldn’t be going back to California a month later, he had already coped with his sadness. He says, “Now I have to devote time to recruiting.
Granados isn’t the only one. 18,000 job cuts have been announced by Amazon.com Inc. Microsoft Corp. and Alphabet Inc. removed 12,000 employees. Unease about the downturn has spread to business schools throughout the country. More than any other industry, except for consulting, the American tech sector has taken on nearly a quarter of recent MBA graduates during the previous few years. Many students join tech clubs at their schools to plan how to get into the field. At least one major IT company consistently ranks among the top employers at elite universities.
The beginning of 2023 has become frightening globally for job seekers. There aren’t many new positions available since many businesses, particularly tech giants, unicorns, and startups, are letting go tens of thousands of current workers. More than 2,700 people have lost their jobs daily so far in 2023. In the initial two months of 2023, the number of job losses has already surpassed 76.75% of 2022’s job losses. 161,411 people were let go by a total of 1,048 tech companies last year. And those who, thankfully, still have jobs under their feet will either see compensation reductions or no raises. Despite being employed, many are still having difficulties because of slow onboarding.
Over the past six months or so, tech businesses have laid off hundreds of thousands of individuals, yet the bulk of those workers did not have IT professions. Contrary to what we see in the headlines, many of the employees who were laid off worked in executive and business functions rather than technical roles.
According to Gartner Research, even when businesses cut their workforce through layoffs, the percentage of the staff that was let go was often no higher than 5% to 6%. In fact, Gartner discovered that the organisations that are responsible for the headlines “biggest IT talent layoffs” currently employ almost 150,000 more employees than they did at the start of 2020. Hiring for tech positions continues to significantly surpass termination. According to market research firm Janco Associates, the IT job sector added roughly 264,500 new positions in 2022. These new positions were added to the 213,000 IT positions created in 2021. According to Gartner’s Schoen, data indicates that recruits were not particularly impacted, even though the layoffs have been characterised as an adjustment following overly enthusiastic hiring. Lisa Rowan, vice president of research in IDC’s HR, Talent, and Learning Strategy Group, says that while layoffs eliminate some jobs in the technology sector, everyone who is fired with an IT background is hired quickly by other firms. On the other hand, Fiona Mark, a research analyst at Forrester Research, noted that recent layoffs impact a broader spectrum of personnel and initiatives as firms prioritise critical products and services to position their company for specific market possibilities.
More than any other industry, except for consulting, the American tech sector has taken on nearly a quarter of recent MBA graduates during the previous few years. Many students also join tech clubs at their schools to plan how to get into the field. In contrast to other sectors, tech companies hire MBA graduates twice a year. According to career advisers at half a dozen institutions, It’s too soon to know the number of offers that were given or accepted during the autumn recruitment before the start of the layoffs. Counsellors pointed out that despite the headlines, tech companies are still hiring.
According to Rebecca Cook, executive director of Kelley Career Services, Amazon made more offers to Kelley students last fall than it had the year before, despite delaying start dates for those who were supposed to start in June, roughly half the students, until the conclusion of the school year. And despite significant news of further layoffs, Meta has informed several schools that it intends to employ this spring, indicating that its freeze would expire at the end of March. The present shrinkage “is kind of simply a level-setting,” according to Cook. For the volume of business they had in 2021 and the first half of 2022, tech businesses “overhired.” She and other counsellors expect hiring to rebound by 2024 if it drops sharply this year.
Author- Muhammad Mujtaba
