The tech industry’s layoffs and hiring freezes: all of the news

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Microsoft’s ‘performance-based’ cuts have started.
Following up on an earlier report, Business Insider reports some Microsoft employees have been let go with letters citing “your job performance has not met minimum performance standards and expectations for your position,” and several reported receiving no severance.
Asked about the plan earlier this month, Microsoft spokesperson Frank Shaw said, “...When people are not performing, we take the appropriate action.”
Zuckerberg says Meta will lay off more ‘low-performers’
Image: Nick Barclay / The Verge
Meta will soon lay off more “low-performers” across the company, according to an internal memo from CEO Mark Zuckerberg that was shared by a source at the company.
“I’ve decided to raise the bar on performance management and move out low-performers faster,” Zuckerberg says in the memo, which you can read in full below. “We typically manage out people who aren’t meeting expectations over the course of a year, but now we’re going to do more extensive performance-based cuts during this cycle — with the intention of backfilling these roles in 2025.”
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Meta is laying off employees at WhatsApp, Instagram, and more
Illustration by The Verge | Photo by Tom Williams via Getty Images
Meta has begun laying off employees across various departments, including WhatsApp, Instagram, and Reality Labs, according to people familiar with the matter. Rather than a mass, companywide layoff, these smaller cuts seem to coincide with reorganizations of specific teams.
Some Meta employees have started posting that they’ve been laid off. Among them is Jane Manchun Wong, who gained notoriety for reporting on unannounced features coming to apps before joining the Threads team in 2023.
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Brave has laid off around 15 percent of its employees.
The web browser and search startup confirmed to TechCrunch that 27 roles have been axed, but provided no explanation for the cuts.
Apple is cutting jobs across its Books and News apps
Illustration by Kristen Radtke / The Verge
Apple has eliminated about 100 jobs across its digital services group according to Bloomberg, as part of a “shift in priorities” for the division. The majority of those laid off reportedly worked within the team that runs the Apple Books app and Apple Bookstore, with the remaining cuts made to some engineering roles and services like Apple News.
According to Bloomberg, the layoffs aren’t a sign that Apple is shifting its focus away from services like Apple Books, and the Books app is still expected to receive future updates for new features. While the services division — which includes things like Apple TV Plus, Apple News, and Apple Music — has been a revenue driver for Apple in recent years, the company reportedly doesn’t consider Apple books to be a major part of the lineup.
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Dell is creating a new sales team to focus on AI.
The company’s restructure mostly affects sales and managerial staff. Some outlets have reported, based on sources, that the layoffs will cut more than 10,000 jobs, but an analyst told SiliconAngle a number that high seems unlikely.
Intuit fires 1,800 employees to hire 1,800 employees and focus on AI.
Last spring, Business Insider noted that Intuit was unusual among its peers because it hadn’t done mass layoffs.
Best Buy is laying off more employees as it reckons with falling sales
Image: Best Buy
Best Buy carried out another round of layoffs and job restructurings last week, with the company cutting some of its sales staff and reducing the pay for others, according to current and former employees who spoke with The Verge. Multiple people said their new pay will be much lower due to the changes.
The layoffs appeared to have mostly targeted in-home sales roles called designers, who would go to customers’ homes to help identify products that would work in their space. It’s not clear how many were let go, but designers who weren’t laid off have been moved into a different, largely in-store role. Also, pay scales for a similar, existing in-store “consultant” position were revamped.
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Microsoft layoffs hit HoloLens, Azure cloud teams
Image: The Verge
On Monday, Microsoft announced layoffs reportedly affecting around 1,000 employees. As reported previously by CNBC, the mixed reality department working on HoloLens 2 is one of the areas affected. Separately, Business Insider reported that Azure for Operators and Mission Engineering has also seen cuts of “hundreds” of employees.
Microsoft spokesperson Craig Cincotta said in a statement emailed to The Verge, “Earlier today, we announced a restructuring of Microsoft’s Mixed Reality organization. We remain fully committed to the Department of Defense’s IVAS program and will continue to deliver cutting-edge technology to support our soldiers. In addition, we will continue to invest in W365 to reach the broader Mixed Reality hardware ecosystem. We will continue to sell HoloLens 2 while supporting existing HoloLens 2 customers and partners.”
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Microsoft shuts down Bethesda studios behind Redfall and Hi-Fi Rush
Image: The Verge
In an email to staff sent this morning, head of Xbox Game Studios Matt Booty announced the closure of several game studios, including Redfall developer Arkane Austin, Hi-Fi Rush developer Tango Gameworks, Alpha Dog Games, and more. According to the email, as first reported by IGN, Booty wrote the reason for the closures was due to a “reprioritization of titles and resources.” Some staff at the affected studios will be relocated while other studios will completely shut down.
Redfall developer Arkane “will close with some members of the team joining other studios to work on projects across Bethesda,” says Booty. Redfall’s previous update will be its last as Microsoft is ending all development on the game. Servers “will remain online for players to enjoy and we will provide make-good offers to players who purchased the Hero DLC,” says Booty.
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More Google layoffs.
As previously reported in Alex Heath’s Command Line newsletter, layoffs at the $2 trillion company have cut “at least 200 employees” in the Core engineering group, according to CNBC.
That division handles “building the technical foundation behind Google’s flagship products, protecting our users’ online safety, and maintaining our global IT infrastructure.” Some roles moved to India or Mexico, and includes at least 50 in Google’s Sunnyvale offices.
GTA 6, BioShock publisher Take-Two to lay off hundreds and cut projects
Take-Two Interactive, the gaming company behind franchises like Grand Theft Auto, NBA 2K, and BioShock, has announced cost-cutting measures that will lay off “approximately five percent” of its global workforce and scrap several projects already in development.
The company said in an SEC filing published on Tuesday that it is “streamlining its organizational structure, which will eliminate headcount and reduce future hiring needs.” Take-Two says it will incur charges of up to $200 million to enact its “cost reduction program,” which aims to save the company over $165 million per year. The downsizing efforts are expected to be “largely complete” by December 31st, 2024.
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Best Buy Geek Squad employees report mass layoffs
Former employees of Best Buy’s in-house tech support and repair team Geek Squad say there were mass layoffs this week, 404 Media reports. A former Geek Squad agent tells the outlet that they received an email on Tuesday about a work from home event the following day regarding a “company change.”
“Our leadership gave individual calls stating we were being let go for the simple fact that the company couldn’t afford to pay us, more or less. It was extremely short notice and devastating,” an ex-Geek Squad worker told 404 Media.
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Amazon lays off hundreds in the AWS physical store technology team.
The layoff comes after reports that the company is doing away with its Just Walk Out cashierless retail tech at its large format stores. GeekWire reports AWS VP Dilip Kumar cited the change in emails about the cuts internally.
EA is the latest gaming company to lay off workers.
The game publisher also said that it’s “moving away from development of future licensed IP that we do not believe will be successful in our changing industry,” allowing it to focus on its own IP, sports, and online communities.
“Why are we expected to do the coding Olympics for every company that wants to interview you?”
Emails reviewed by Wired showed that in one interview for an engineering role at Netflix, a technical recruiter requested that a job candidate submit a three-page project evaluation within 48 hours—all before the first round of interviews.
A Netflix spokesperson said the process is different for each role and otherwise declined to comment.
A similar email at Snap outlined a six-part interview process for a potential engineering candidate, with each part lasting an hour. A company spokesperson says its interview process hasn’t changed as a result of labor market changes.
Mozilla is laying off around 60 workers and scaling back its Mastodon instance.
In a memo obtained by TechCrunch, Mozilla said the company is making a “strategic correction” that will involve “working through a much smaller team to participate in the Mastodon ecosystem.” The company launched its mozilla.social instance last year.
Additionally, Mozilla is shutting down Hubs, its virtual 3D platform initially launched in 2018. Mozilla says the platform’s userbase isn’t “robust enough to justify continuing to dedicate resources” during an “unfavorable shift in demand.” This shift comes just days after Mozilla appointed Laura Chambers as its interim CEO.
Paramount is cutting 800 jobs as it looks to “grow revenue, while reducing costs.”
After rumors about layoffs emerged last month, Paramount CEO Bob Bakish announced that the company is laying off around 3 percent of staff. In a memo obtained by Deadline, Bakish tells employees the Super Bowl was a “blockbuster event” that “showcased the full power of Paramount.”
Despite this, the future of Paramount remains unclear, as Deadline reports that media companies and private equity firms are looking into acquiring “some or all” of the entertainment giant. CNBC reported last year that Warner Bros. Discovery was in talks to merge with Paramount.
Warner Music Group to lay off 600 employees and close the Interval Presents podcast division.
WMG CEO Robert Kyncl -- who thinks you could pay more for Spotify-- revealed the record label will lay off 10 percent of its workforce, or 600 employees. It’s winding down the podcast division behind Rap Radar and Drink Champs, and IMGN Media. It’s also in an “exclusive process” to sell Uproxx and HipHopDX.
Earlier on Wednesday, WMG reported Q1 revenue of $1.75 billion — its highest quarterly revenue since it went public, and net income of $193 million.
Amazon Health, Corsair, DocuSign, Drizly and Glowforge are the latest tech layoffs.
Snap is cutting 10 percent of its staff
Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge
Snap plans to lay off around 10 percent of its employees as the company continues to struggle with declines in the digital advertising market. The company had around 5,300 employees at the start of 2023. Snap previously cut 20 percent of its staff in 2022 and had a smaller cut of 3 percent in 2023.
Snap has struggled to expand beyond its core social networking product. Its augmented reality glasses were never made widely available, and other hardware projects like a selfie drone were scrapped shortly after launch. Even products launched within Snapchat, like the TikTok-esque Spotlight and the Snapchat Plus subscription service, have failed to grow at the pace the company hoped for.
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Almost 30,000 workers in tech have been laid off this year.
Jack Dorsey’s Block is also cutting jobs.
The company, which owns financial services like Cash App and Square, is laying off close to 1,000 employees, according to a report from Business Insider. Here’s what Dorsey told employees in a memo seen by BI:
Why is so much happening in one single day?... We decided it would be better to do at once rather than arbitrarily space them out, which didn’t seem fair to the individuals or to the company When we know we need to take an action, we want to take it immediately, rather than let things linger on forever.
Alphabet posted $307.4 billion in revenue for the 2023. It also spent $2.1 billion on layoffs.
Alphabet generated 13 percent more revenue year over year in 2023, according to its fourth-quarter earnings report (PDF) released on Tuesday. You can follow along with execs on the call embedded below, that’s just starting.
PayPal is laying off 9 percent of its employees.
CEO Alex Chriss told employees that PayPal is cutting existing jobs and open roles as part of an effort to “right-size” the company, according to a report from Bloomberg. The layoffs will reportedly impact around 2,500 workers.
PayPal is far from the only company in the tech industry to get hit with layoffs this year. Microsoft, Google, eBay, and many others have also been affected.