Get Quartz in your inbox

Free daily briefing on global business news.

Amazon, Meta, Alphabet and Intel: 10 major tech job cuts since the 1990s

These 10 major tech layoffs, from Hewlett-Packard's 2012 restructuring to the 2023 cuts at Amazon, Meta and Alphabet, show how big tech companies shed jobs

In January 2023, four of the best-known names in American technology announced job cuts within weeks of one another. Amazon $AMZN, Alphabet $GOOGL, Microsoft $MSFT and Salesforce $CRM each said thousands of employees would lose their jobs. Amazon's share alone was 18,000 jobs. Meta $META had already cut more than 11,000 jobs in November 2022, and it announced about 10,000 more in March 2023.

That cluster is what many readers picture when they search for the largest tech layoffs in history. It is only part of the record. Job cuts at major technology companies did not start in 2022, and they did not stop in 2023. Cisco $CSCO announced more than 4,000 cuts in February 2024. Intel $INTC followed in August 2024 with plans to cut more than 15,000 jobs, about 15% of its workforce.

The pattern also reaches back decades. Hewlett-Packard, under CEO Meg Whitman, announced a restructuring in 2012 that aimed to eliminate 27,000 jobs by 2014. Earlier still, IBM $IBM's workforce shrank from a peak of roughly 400,000 in the mid-1980s to about 220,000 by the mid-1990s. Both IBM figures are approximate.

A change in ownership can bring cuts too. After Elon Musk acquired Twitter $TWTR, the company laid off roughly half of its staff in November 2022, according to media reports.

This guide gathers 10 major tech layoffs that are well documented in public reporting. It is a selection, not a ranking, and it does not claim to cover every large cut the industry has made. Each slide focuses on one company and its announced cuts or restructuring plan. It gives the announced figure and, where known, the share of the workforce and the executive who announced it.

Set side by side, the cases show how companies have framed their decisions. Mark Zuckerberg called 2023 Meta's "year of efficiency." Sundar Pichai announced Alphabet's 12,000 cuts in a memo to staff. Intel presented its reductions as part of a cost-reduction plan. Amazon and Meta each spread their cuts across more than one round. The slides that follow set out what each company announced, when it announced it and how large the cuts were.

Amazon cuts about 27,000 corporate jobs in two 2023 rounds

Amazon $AMZN announced about 27,000 corporate job cuts in two separate rounds in 2023. The first came in January, and the second followed in March.

CEO Andy Jassy disclosed the first round in January 2023. He put that reduction at 18,000 jobs.

That single announcement was larger than the January 2023 cuts at Alphabet $GOOGL or Microsoft $MSFT. It made Amazon's opening round the biggest of the cuts those companies announced that month.

Beth Galetti announced the second round in March 2023. She said Amazon would eliminate about 9,000 more roles. That second round was about half the size of the first.

Roughly two months separated the two announcements. Amazon did not disclose its 2023 reductions as one figure at the start of the year. It released them in stages, and the total rose with the second announcement.

Together, the two rounds came to about 27,000 jobs. That combined figure was widely reported at the time. The January round made up about two-thirds of it.

Both rounds applied to Amazon's corporate workforce. The 27,000 figure counts corporate positions only. It does not describe a reduction across the company's entire global headcount. It should not be read as a share of all Amazon employees.

Meta layoffs under Mark Zuckerberg's year of........

© Quartz