Twitter continued to cut more than 4000 jobs while Amazon planned to dismiss 10,000 workers.

Elon Musk took over Twitter on October 27 and became the CEO of this company after closing his $44 billion purchase. Just four days after taking over the firm, Musk shocked the world by dismissing the entire board of directors, making himself the sole leader of Twitter. Shortly after that, on November 4, Musk added to the upheaval at Twitter by laying off roughly 3700 of its 7500 employees, or about half of the company. The impacted employees only received a general notice email that was sent to all Twitter employees one day before the massive layoffs took place, not a private email to inform them about their situation. Platformer claims that this email, which bears solely Twitter’s signature, stated that Twitter’s decision to reduce its global workforce was “an effort to place Twitter on a healthy path.” And “to ensure the company’s success moving forward.” though it would “impact a number of individuals who have made valuable contributions to Twitter”.

Twitter’s affected employees only realized about their being dismissed after they unexpectedly lost access to their corporate email. However, some of those dismissed employees received offers to come back since they had been fired by mistake. However, the layoffs did not yet stop. Recently, it was reported that Twitter continued letting 4,400 of its 5,500 contract workers go on Saturday, Nov. 12, without giving them any notice. According to Business Insider, the layoffs affected a number of areas, including marketing, real estate, and content moderation. This action is reportedly called by Twitter as part of the “reprioritization and savings exercise” aimed to cut down on costs in response to the social media network’s sharp fall in advertising over the past year.

Twitter is not the only tech company that has undergone significant workforce transformation. The past month has witnessed many tech giants’ massive layoffs which shook the whole sector. Meta’s 11000 employee layoffs over a week ago sparked media controversial debates. It followed the first round of layoffs at Twitter that resulted in 3700 job losses, 1000 job cuts at Microsoft, a 14% staff reduction at Stripe, and over 700 job cuts at Lyft. According to different sources, Amazon will be the next tech giant to reduce employment. The New York Times claims that this week, Amazon plans to eliminate 10,000 jobs. Currently, Amazon employs about 1.6 million full- and part-time workers, as well as over 300,000 corporate staff. The coming jobs cut will therefore account for about 3 percent of its corporate employees and less than 1 percent of Amazon’s global work force.

According to CNBC, before that the corporation had already made preparations to stop hiring for corporate positions within its retail business. In recent months, Amazon has terminated its telehealth service, canceled or postponed the opening of some new warehouse locations, closed all but one of its U.S. call centers, killed off its roving delivery robot, and shuttered underperforming brick-and-mortar chains.

The reasons for these adjustments are said to come from the ecommerce giant’s recent poor business performance.

In October, Amazon announced poor third-quarter earnings that alarmed investors and sent its shares plunging more than 13%. It was the second time this year that Amazon’s results caused a double-digit percentage sell-off, and it was the first time since April 2020 that Amazon’s market capitalization went below $1 trillion. The sell-off continued for days after the report and nearly completely erased the stock’s pandemic boom.

Amazon stock is on track to have its worst year since 2008 after dropping by almost 41% so far this year, more than the 14% drop in the S&P 500.

The fact that major businesses in the sector, including Amazon, Meta, Twitter, Microsoft, Snap, and many others, have seen significant layoffs has let us truly understand how the shaky economy is affecting the tech sector. If the world’s leading economists’ fears of an impending global recession come to pass, it appears the situation won’t change anytime soon.