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Nearly 25,000 tech workers were laid off in the first weeks of 2024. Why is that?

Silicon Valley executives have said the cuts are a result of pandemic over-hiring and still-historically high inflation. But others say something else may be behind the mass layoffs.

Yet, in the first four weeks of this year, nearly 100 tech companies, including Meta, Amazon, Microsoft, Google, TikTok and Salesforce have collectively let go of about 25,000 employees, according to layoffs.fyi, which tracks the technology sector. All of the major tech companies conducting another wave of layoffs this year are sitting atop mountains of cash and are wildly profitable, so the job-shedding is far from a matter of necessity or survival. If it appears as if an entire sector is experiencing a downward shift, Pfeffer argues, it takes the focus off of any single individual company — which provides cover for layoffs that are undertaken to make up for bad decisions that led to investments or strategies not paying off.

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