Beyond Layoff

This week, the US Labor Department reported an extraordinary rise in unemployment claims. The individuals seeking unemployment support March 15-April 4 surged to 16.8 million. According to  Politico , “the number of jobs lost in a mere three weeks now exceeds the 15 million that it took 18 months for the Great Recession to bulldoze from 2007 to 2009.” Tech jobs have been lost all over the country, and across a variety of sectors. And, one obvious area that has recently been hard hit is the startup community in the Bay Area and elsewhere. Layoff Tracker has done a super job of tracking the layoffs that have troubled both well-known and established companies like  Yelp ,  Groupon  and  Zenefits , and dozens of new businesses that were just starting up or had recently received angel funding. Layoff Tracker  has been a key go to site for anyone in recruiting, freelancing or HR tech. In a recent article in  Crunchbase , Mary Ann Azevedo tells how entrepreneur Roger Lee, co-founder of 

Response to this query from an online forum follows: No . Startups are not going to start layoffs for “the same reasons” as software services companies. This is the short answer. Now let us look at the differences with your two-part question. Let us start with the first with a recap of response to an earlier question “Up to 600,000 IT engineers are likely to be laid off in the next 3 years. Why is this happening?” There are a number of business reasons why IT services firms like CTS, TCS, Infosys, Wipro and others are handing out pink-slips to poor-performers (what the Indian media calls layoffs). Many articles are focused on Trump administration’s policies and restrictions on visa and immigration. Some are parroting claims by leaders of software services companies that productivity gains and automation of tools and processes needs a lesser number of people. Some analysts are also claiming the need to reskill on emerging technologies including big-data, AI, bots-and-robots