TECH’S SAD SACKS

16.8K axed in May

Technology companies in May axed employees at the highest rate in two years, as rising interest rates and a stock sell-off squeeze startups and Big Tech alike.

Sixty-six tech firms handed out 16,800 pink slips last month. That’s more than the 13,600 layoffs across 52 companies during the first four months of 2022 combined — and the most employees to get the ax in a single month since May 2020, according to tech jobs tracking site layoffs.fyi.

The news comes after tech companies hired aggressively and competed fiercely for talent in late 2020 and 2021 as they were buoyed by low interest rates and surging stock prices. The money has since largely stopped flowing, with tech-heavy Nasdaq down 23.2% this year and venture capital drying up.

Hired and fired

John, a tech worker who spoke to The Post under a pseudonym, left a longtime tech job in March to join Bolt, an unprofitable checkout-payments company that’s raised more than $1 billion in venture capital.

Less than a month into John’s time at Bolt, the company’s CEO told employees he was instituting a hiring freeze. Then last week, Bolt laid off John and hundreds of other employees through video calls, giving him six weeks of severance pay.

“I was barely there for two months,” John said. “I feel deceived.”

John and the thousands of other laid-off workers from companies including Netflix, PayPal, Getir, Klarna and Carvana could have a difficult time finding jobs.

Large tech firms including Facebook parent Meta and Twitter have both frozen hiring altogether for some departments, while other companies including Microsoft, Snap, Uber, Salesforce, Instacart and Coinbase have slowed hiring.

‘Prepare for worst’

On Blind, a forum for tech workers, the mood turned sour in May.

“Let’s prepare for the worst,” one Roku employee wrote last week, writing that it’s a “matter of time” until the tech “bloodbath” ramps up.

In another thread, an Amazon employee gave advice to other tech workers: “Please don’t go into depression. Don’t sell your homes. Don’t sell your car. Keep interviewing.”

In what’s likely distressing news for many tech workers, legendary venture capitalist and Meta board member Marc Andreessen wrote on Twitter in April that tech companies have more room to make cuts.

“The good big companies are overstaffed by 2x,” Andreessen said. “The bad big companies are overstaffed by 4x or more.”

Brian Kropp, chief of human resources research at the consulting firm Gartner, told The Post that unprofitable, venture capital-backed startups are more likely to make deep cuts than bigger, publicly traded firms.

“As VCs have less access to essentially free money, they’re expecting returns from companies,” Kropp said.