Alphabet and Spotify the latest to announce tech layoffs

More layoffs have been announced as the tech industry faces mass job cuts and Alphabet and Spotify lose thousands of employees. 

Google’s parent company will be cutting 12,000 jobs, or about 6% of its workforce worldwide, whilst music streaming service Spotify announced a similar cut of 6% or around 600 people.

The announcements follow similar moves by Microsoft, Amazon and Meta as the industry faces slowing sales after a period of rapid hiring and growth during the Covid-19 pandemic, Apple has also instigated an indefinite hiring freeze. 

In a blog post about the layoffs, Spotify CEO Daniel Ek explained that efforts to reduce costs had not been enough, he said: ‘Like many other leaders, I hoped to sustain the strong tailwinds from the pandemic and believed that our broad global business and lower risk to the impact of a slowdown in ads would insulate us. 

‘In hindsight, I was too ambitious in investing ahead of our revenue growth.’ He added. ‘I take full accountability for the moves that got us here today.’ 

An internal email was also sent to Alphabet staff by CEO Sundar Pichai who said he took ‘full responsibility’ for the decision and asked that affected employees took good care of themselves. 

Though it is not yet clear who will be affected by the news, Google currently employs about 5,500 staff in the UK and whilst Spotify has a London HQ, there are no clear numbers on its employee numbers though the company has about 8-10,000 staff worldwide. 

The streaming service has never posted a net profit for the year despite a dominance in the sector and the latest moves are part of a ‘restructuring’ by the CEO in the hopes of creating greater efficiency in the company. 

Meanwhile the market responded well to Alphabet’s announcement as shares rose by 3.5% after the decision before the stock market opened.