Tech layoffs in 2024: a timeline

After two years of massive layoffs at IT companies, 2024 was expected to be a year of recovery for the IT industry. While there were early signs of that, with global IT spending expected to increase 8% to cross $5.1 trillion in 2024 according to Gartner, jobs continued to be impacted in the sector. Some of the layoffs seen through the year were an extension of job cuts announced in 2023.

Last year, tech giants including Amazon, Cisco, Facebook parent company Meta, Microsoft, Google, IBM, SAP, and Salesforce—as well as many smaller companies —announced sweeping job cuts.

The problem: Big Tech went on a hiring binge during the pandemic when lockdowns sparked a tech buying spree to support remote work and an uptick in e-commerce, and now they face revenue declines.

According to data compiled by Layoffs.fyi, the online tracker keeping tabs on job losses in the technology sector, 1,193 tech companies laid off 264,220 staff in 2023, dropping to “just” 152,104 employees laid off by 547 companies in 2024. Here’s a round-up of some of the most significant.

See news of more recent layoffs.

Tech layoffs in 2024

• Equinix
• AMD
• Freshworks
• Cisco
• General Motors
• Intel
• OpenText
• Microsoft
• AWS
• Dell
• Cisco
• Docusign
• Microsoft
• SAP
• Ebay
• Google
• Alphabet

Nov. 26, 2024: Equinix to cut 3% of staff

Despite intense demand for its data center capacity, Equinix is planning to lay off 3% of its workforce, or around 400 employees. The announcement followed the appointment of Adaire Fox-Martin to replace Charles Meyers as CEO and the departures of two other senior executives, CIO Milind Wagle and CISO Michael Montoya.

Nov. 13, 2024: AMD to cut 4% of workforce

AMD will lay off around 1,000 employees as it pivots towards developing AI-focused chips, it said. The move came as a surprise to staff, as the company also reported strong quarterly earnings.

Nov. 7, 2024: Freshworks lays off 660

Enterprise software vendor Freshworks laid off around 660 staff, or around 13% of its headcount, despite reporting increased revenue and profits in its fourth fiscal quarter. The company described the layoffs as a realignment of its global workforce.

Sept. 17, 2024: Cisco lays off 6,000

After laying off around 4,200 staff in February, Cisco is at it again, laying off another 6,000 or around 7% of its workforce. Among the divisions affected were its threat intelligence unit, Talos Security.

Aug. 20, 2024: General Motors lays off 1,000 software staff

More than 1,000 software and services staff are on the way out at General Motors, signalling that it could be rethinking its digital transformation strategy. In an internal memo, the company said that it was moving resources to its highest-priority work and flattening hierarchies.

August 1, 2024: Intel removes 15,000 roles

Intel plans to cut its workforce by around 15% to reduce costs after a disastrous second quarter. Revenue for the three months to June 29 stagnated at around $12.8 billion, but net income fell 85% to $83 million, prompting CEO Pat Gelsinger to bring forward a company-wide meeting in order to announce that 15,000 staff would lose their jobs. “This is an incredibly hard day for Intel as we are making some of the most consequential changes in our company’s history,” Gelsinger wrote in an email to staff, continuing: “Our revenues have not grown as expected — and we’ve yet to fully benefit from powerful trends, like AI. Our costs are too high, our margins are too low. We need bolder actions to address both — particularly given our financial results and outlook for the second half of 2024, which is tougher than previously expected.”

July 4, 2024: OpenText to lay off 1,200

OpenText said it will lay off 1,200 staff, or about 1.7% of its workforce, in a bid to save around $100 million annually. It plans to hire new sales and engineering staff in other areas in 2025, it said.

June 4, 2024: Microsoft lays off staff in Azure division

Microsoft laid off staff in several teams supporting its cloud services, including Azure for Operations and Mission Engineering. The company didn’t say exactly how many staff were leaving.

April 4, 2024: Amazon downsizes AWS in a fresh cost-cutting round

Amazon announced hundreds of layoffs in the sales and marketing teams of its AWS cloud services division — and also in the technology development teams for its physical retail stores, as it stepped back from efforts to generalize the “Just Walk Out” technology built for its Amazon Fresh grocery stores.

April 1, 2024: Dell acknowledges 13,000 job cuts

Dell Technologies’ latest 10K filing with the US Securities and Exchange Commission disclosed that the company had laid off 13,000 employees over the course of the 2023 fiscal year; it characterized the layoffs and other reorganizational moves as cost-cutting measures. “These actions resulted in a reduction in our overall headcount,” the company said. A comparison to the previous year’s 10K filing, performed by The Register, found that Dell employed 133,000 people at that point, compared to 120,000 as of February 2024. Dell announced layoffs of 6,650 staffers on Feb. 6, but it is unclear whether those cuts were reflected in the numbers from this year’s 10K statement.

Feb. 14, 2024: Cisco cuts 5% of workforce

Cisco will shed 4,200 of its 84,900 employees as it refocuses on more profitable areas of its business, including AI and security. The company’s last major round of layoffs was in November 2022. Cisco’s sales of telecommunications equipment have been hit by delays at telcos in rolling out equipment they havealready purchased. AI, on the other hand, is a growing business for Cisco, with AI-related sales in the billions—and that’s before it announced its recent partnership with Nvidia, which is making bank on sales of chips for AI applications. 

Feb. 6, 2024: DocuSign will lay off 6% of workforce in restructuring

Digital workflow company DocuSign will lay off 440 of its 7,336 staff as it seeks to cut costs. The lay-offs come amid reports that attempts to sell the company to investment firms have fallen apart after a failure to agree on price.

Jan. 25, 2024: Microsoft axes 1,900 workers in its gaming division

Roughly 8% of Microsoft’s Gaming division is headed for unemployment, the company announced Thursday, with the lion’s share of job cuts affecting the newly acquired Activision Blizzard subsidiary. Microsoft completed its purchase of Activision Blizzard in October 2023, paying nearly $69 billion. About 1,900 employees will be let go, along with two executives at Blizzard: Mike Ybarra and Allen Adham. A pending survival game title, according to Reuters, has also been cancelled. The layoffs were largely expected in the wake of the Microsoft acquisition.

Jan. 24, 2024: SAP announces $2.2B restructuring program that’ll impact 8,000 jobs

German enterprise software giant SAP said this week that 8,000 jobs will be “impacted” by a large-scale shift in company priorities towards generative artificial intelligence (genAI). It’s unclear how many of the affected employees will be laid off, as the company has said many of the impacts will involve “voluntary leave programs and internal re-skilling measures.” SAP said the restructuring will not result in an overall loss of headcount. The company cut more than 3,000 jobs in 2023. Analysts expect the move to skew SAP’s workforce younger and more expert in genAI.

Jan. 23, 2024: EBay slashes 1,000 jobs as expenses rise

Online retailer eBay plans to cut nearly 10% of its workforce—about 1,000 jobs—saying “in an official blog post that “headcount and expenses have outpaced the growth of our business.” All of the company’s US workforce was told to work from home Wednesday as the firings were carried out via Zoom. Additionally, eBay said it would “scale back” on its work with outside contractors in a further attempt to rein in costs. The company fired 500 workers last year after sales slackened in the wake of the pandemic boom, according to NPR.

Jan. 17, 2024: Google to replace part of ad sales team with AI

Google’s ad sales team lost several hundred staff from its large customer department, part of the company’s move to automate some jobs with machine learning. Reports suggest that more staffers from the ad sales team were also let go in October 2023. The company also laid off hundreds more employees from its digital voice assistant, Fitbit, and Pixel teams earlier in the week. Google has been steadily shedding jobs since January 2023, when parent company Alphabet downsized its entire workforce by 6% across the board, putting 12,000 people out of work.

Jan. 11, 2024: Alphabet lays off hundreds from engineering, hardware, and digital assistant teams

Alphabet announced that it is laying off hundreds of employees from several teams, including engineering and the teams responsible for its digital voice assistant and hardware products, including Fitbit wearable devices and Pixel smartphones. The reorganization of the hardware teams will see a consolidation of different teams responsible for different devices, such as Nest, Pixel, and Fitbit, combined under a single team, which will be responsible for all devices, the news portal reported, adding that the activity has also seen the departure of Fitbit co-founders James Park and Eric Friedman.

See news of earlier layoffs.