Tech CEOs will pay a heavy price for these job cuts

It’s hard to feel sorry for Silicon Valley tech workers. From high salaries and generous stock options to nap pods and unlimited time off, they are among the most privileged class of employees in the world. Conversely, it is undeniable that these pampered employees have engineered a technological revolution that has brought immeasurable economic and social value to the entire planet.

Yet there is one class of people who may lament the cold-blooded approach to downsizing that has torn the industry apart in recent months: the CEOs who fired them.

Nearly 100,000 jobs have been cut this year alone, according to Layoffs.fyi, which tracks the data. At some point over the next few years, these vacancies will return. We are on the cusp of an artificial intelligence boom, network speeds continue to accelerate, cars will drive themselves and there will be more data collected and stored than big tech knows what. TO DO. Recruiters and hiring managers will be begging those same employees to come back.

For the better part of two decades, the FANGs – Facebook, Amazon.com, Netflix and Google – epitomized the success of a young engineer or rising manager. Add Microsoft and Apple – let’s call them the MAFANGs – and you have $7.3 trillion (roughly Rs. 6,02,75,750 crore) in market cap, even after a 25% drop in major stock indices. More importantly, however, they are some of the most valuable names an employee can put on their resume.

These companies pride themselves on measuring, evaluating and rewarding performance. But rightly or not, they’ve recently presented the world with a sense of who they really are: callous corporations that dump people in the middle of missions or business trips with little explanation, no chance of a goodbye to their colleagues and any recognition they need that goes beyond salaries and free meals for a sense of dignity and appreciation.

Don’t be fooled into thinking that companies should display some sort of family values, as they have often pretended to do. But there’s a reason perks like on-site masseurs and free yoga classes are being rolled out – they help attract and retain the brightest and most creative minds, those needed to inspire new ones. products and solve seemingly insurmountable technical challenges.

MAFANGs were seen as a stepping stone to something better — your own startup, a job at a venture capital firm, a leadership role at a smaller, faster-growing tech company.

Business leaders need not worry if their company is just one rung on an employee’s career ladder. They should be worried if they are not.

Instead of hiring talent with drive and an entrepreneurial spirit who dream of something better, they could end up facing an even worse scenario: workers don’t see them as a place to start or build. a career, but rather a place to retire, where they can live out their days safely navigating the corporate bureaucracy until the next round of job cuts gives them a big reward. A repository for those who have nowhere to go, and no desire to even look.

What no tech CEO wants today is to become the next International Business Machines or General Electric, once high-flying bastions of innovation and power that have become symbols of the corporate quagmire and low morale.

While tech workers have borne the brunt of the layoffs this time around, their counterparts in finance are also feeling the pressure. Goldman Sachs said it plans to cut 3,200 jobs, Morgan Stanley about 1,600 and Bank of New York Mellon about 1,500 as a slowdown in public offerings and mergers hits profits.

But now, having botched their downsizing programs to try to appease activist investors, the tech companies are likely to be forever remembered not as the companies that brought pop stars to the annual party, but as companies that have laid off women on maternity leave in the middle of the night.

This approach can improve short-term results and appease shareholders who brag about corporate bloat. But in a few years, they’ll be competing in the hiring market with a new generation of tech names, many of which have emerged during the pandemic and downturn. For established leaders, size and legacy will be less of an attraction and more like an albatross hanging around their necks.

Of course, MAFANGs will always be able to attract new graduates and experienced hands. But not as much, and not the best. And it will hurt.