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

According to Reuters, Meta is looking to offset spending on AI and data centers with a massive round of layoffs. Sources familiar with the matter say the company could lay off as much as 20 percent of its staff, eliminating roughly 15,800 positions. That would be the largest series of layoffs at the company since it terminated 22,000 workers over just a few months between November 2022 and early 2023.

Word of the potential downsizing comes after Meta signaled that it was all but giving up on VR and the Metaverse, slashing budgets and closing studios. Instead, the company has been spending big to attract AI talent, build data centers, and acquire companies like Moltbook.

Amazon is planning to axe around 14,000 corporate jobs. The mass layoffs were expected as part of the company’s cost-cutting drive, but are smaller than the 30,000 job losses previous reports had indicated.

Beth Galetti, a senior executive at the e-commerce giant, broke the news to employees in a message on Tuesday. “The reductions we’re sharing today are a continuation of this work to get even stronger by further reducing bureaucracy, removing layers, and shifting resources to ensure we’re investing in our biggest bets and what matters most to our customers’ current and future needs,” Galetti said.

Microsoft confirmed that it’s laying off as many as 9,100 employees, or about 4 percent of its workforce, in yet another round of cuts this year, reports The Seattle Times. Employees in Microsoft’s Xbox division, known as Microsoft Gaming, are being hit hard by these layoffs, although exact numbers and divisions are not yet known.

Xbox leader Phil Spencer said in a message to the team, “To position Gaming for enduring success and allow us to focus on strategic growth areas, we will end or decrease work in certain areas of the business and follow Microsoft’s lead in removing layers of management to increase agility and effectiveness.”

Microsoft announced on Tuesday that it’s laying off more than 6,000 employees, around three percent of the company’s entire workforce. These are the biggest job cuts at Microsoft since it laid off 10,000 employees in 2023, and will impact employees across Microsoft’s businesses.

“We continue to implement organizational changes necessary to best position the company for success in a dynamic marketplace,” says Microsoft spokesperson Pete Wootton in a statement to The Verge.

Meta has laid off an unspecified number of employees in its Reality Labs division, a company spokesperson confirmed.

The cuts affected teams working in Oculus Studios, Meta’s in-house games division for Quest headsets, as well as some employees involved in the company’s hardware efforts, according to people familiar with the matter. Specific titles impacted by the layoffs include Supernatural, the VR fitness game that Meta acquired for over $400 million and successfully defended from a government antitrust lawsuit attempting to block the sale. A note on the official Supernatural Facebook group states that “these changes are meant to help us work more efficiently on what the future of fitness could be.”

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.”

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.

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.

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.

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.”

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.