mass layoffs announced in tech sector: Meta (10%), Intuit (17%), Linkedin 500 jobs, Cisco (5%), Amazon

[BlueWaveNeverEnd]

https://www.nbcbayarea.com/news/local/silicon-valley-tech-layoffs-2/4087606/

Thousands of Silicon Valley tech layoffs were announced Wednesday as more companies embrace artificial intelligence.

Meta slashed 8,000 jobs, Intuit cut 3,000 and LinkedIn revealed 500 planned layoffs.

"We're on the cusp of a fundamental restructuring," Joint Venture Silicon Valley CEO Russell Hancock said.

Hancock said bots are indeed taking tech jobs.

"Now they're saying explicitly we're laying people off and the reason is because we have less need of human capital," Hancock said. "AI is making us far more efficient."

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https://www.al.com/news/2026/05/some-of-americas-biggest-companies-are-cutting-jobs-by-the-1000s-in-latest-round-of-tech-layoffs.html

On Wednesday, April 13, Cisco Systems announced cutting roughly 4,000 jobs—less than 5% of its total workforce—alongside record revenue of $15.8 billion.

[william clinton]

1. This makes me very anxious.

I'm in China, where the job market is extremely competitive, especially for someone who has just graduated from university.

[ajie]

4. I understand you very well

[LetMyPeopleVote]

13. Welcome to DU

[LetMyPeopleVote]

14. Welcome to DU

[OAITW r.2.0]

2. A coincidence that these same companies are investing big time in AI and datacenters?

They want to digitize their operations and do away with their entire workforce. Stockholders are gonna love it. Hell, they won't need pesky coders anymore if they can interface directly with the software.

[Amishman]

18. it's complicated, but no coincidence that all three are making big investments in AI (directly or indirectly)

The infrastructure for these data centers has become insanely expensive. Tech spending for these buildouts is absolutely bonkers.

For various reasons, companies feel compelled to make that leap or otherwise spend wildly to try to acquire AI features for their products.

The first two companies mentioned are desperate to find some new avenue for the revenue growth that Wall Street expects.

Meta is stagnating, and Facebook is increasingly viewed as the social media platform for old people. They are going all in on their own in house AI data center (hyperion), trying to build out now chapters to their growth model. (I think they are going to fail and be in serious trouble in five years).

LinkedIn is largely in the same boat - their user base is mature and not growing much. They aren't building their own AI, but are a huge consumer of OpenAI's offerings. The massive costs of AI get passed along even though LinkedIn isn't doing it themselves.

Intuit is a different story. Many of their products lines are tax and finance related, rules based disciplines where AI does better. Like LinkedIn, they are indirect consumers (they partner with OpenAI and Anthropic) but are trying to use AI to build out more powerful and less user intensive tools. Again, the bill for the tech and hardware gets passed along to them.

[RandySF]

3. Eaten alive by their own creation.

[eppur_se_muova]

5. Intuit, not Inuit.

[mr715]

6. LOL

[BlueWaveNeverEnd]

12. thank you... I will correct

[Melon]

7. Software engineer was hard to get in at A&M 5 years ago

It was very high paying and ultra competitive. Now salaries are dropping and students are switching majors. AI is being used extensively in coding.

[fujiyamasan]

8. Many of these companies don't have a clue what they're doing

Some of the layoffs were due to overhiring during COVID (many were hired and not given clear job functions) and SaaS stock prices have been getting hammered for months (finally starting to make a bit of a recovery), prompting simple and lazy fixes like layoffs hoping to stem the bleeding. Intuit, for example just posted earnings earlier today and tanked after hours. Meta is spending billions in capex with little to show for it. LinkedIn is an absolute cesspool of AI generated slop and inauthenticity.

Anthropic has shown where the real value lies with Gen AI, and that’s definitely with code generation. While some of this is overblown (Anthropic ‘vibe coded’ apps aren’t going to destroy every software company out there), there’s no doubt that not as many coders will be needed. This isn’t to say vibe coding is perfect, but it’s constantly improving and it completely changes how the job is done.

Look, a lot of these folks were coasting making $300k plus a year. In capitalism everyone is expendable. That why my sympathy for these Silicon Valley layoffs is well…limited. They knew the future they were building.

I’m from the Midwest and I saw rounds of layoff after layoff form one industry to another — steel, automotive, etc. I saw a lot of bitching from the same people out west at the time about bailouts too.

[C Moon]

11. COVID was 6 years ago.

[Johonny]

19. But the recovery last much of 2022 and into 2023

As different countries achieved vaccine rates at different time, the supply chain issues worked itself out and the baby boomers slowly left the work force.

[C Moon]

20. Yes, I thought about that possiblilty after I replied. Thanks!

[C Moon]

9. I've been depositing checks via my phone, and every other check has issues...

"cannot read the date" "cannot read the name" on and on.
Never had this problem before. I'm pretty sure it's AI.
One check was even refused by the source bank. I'll bet that was their AI setup.

I guess this is how it will be for a while.

Watch your bills and get receipts for EVERYTHING.

[Wounded Bear]

16. I refuse to use my phone for any banking operations...nt

[nuxvomica]

10. Is it really AI or is that just a pretext?

The company I worked for had several rounds of tech layoffs in the past few years (including my layoff) that they claimed was due to AI but they actually off-shored all the jobs to India, Mexico and Poland. We knew what they were doing because we trained the off-shore personnel. Supposedly, Apple, Google, et al. did the same. It just seems that AI isn't yet advanced enough to take over so much human work.

[wiggs]

15. With tech layoffs, tariff-related farm problems, deportations, safety net cuts, fed govt layoffs,

cuts to fed research programs, cuts to alternative energy industries, loss of tourism travel here, increases in credit card spending....how would it be possible to avoid an economic downturn?

Seems to me there is almost no good economic news

[Wounded Bear]

17. Obviously listening to the wrong sources...

trump and his cabinet clowns say everything is hunky dory.