Tech giants aren’t just cutting thousands of jobs — they’re making them extinct

Companies from Meta to Microsoft to Salesforce have cut jobs in recent months, often in the pursuit of efficiency and increased profit margins. By some estimates, more than 250,000 tech workers have been laid off since the start of 2022.

There have been many more roles that have gone unfilled as these industry giants slow down on hiring. Recent data from Indeed shows a more than 50% decline in software-development job postings compared to a year ago.

As my colleague Hasan Chowdhury has written, that strategy is working financially, with Salesforce, Meta, and Microsoft recently reporting stronger-than-expected earning results.

thanks to the rise of AI, many of those jobs may be permanently lost, even as these companies get back to growth.

In a recent note by Morgan Stanley analysts led by Brian Nowak, the bank said “AI based productivity drivers are coming.”

The note reads:

We have seen headcount reductions across the tech landscape. But part of this (in particular META, GOOGL, AMZN) has been a counter-measure to above-average hiring levels in ’21/’22. Looking ahead, we are most focused on how companies plan/speak to forward hiring growth. Forward hiring levels should arguably be smaller and more targeted due to rapidly-emerging AI productivity drivers.