In recent chatter, a lot of the topics being talked about are around layoffs – it seems every tech company, somehow, is laying off employees:
Firings & firings
Last week, Bloomberg reported that OYO was firing thousands of employees. Interesting, Bloomberg a month ago featured an interview with founder Ritesh Agarwal with the headline “The amazingly ambitious hotelier”.
Last week, e-scooter startup Lime reduced the headcount by 14%, and exited 12 markets.
OYO and Lime are not the only Softbank portfolio companies that reduced the workforce. Someone even wrote a summary about the firings that happened almost simultaneously on Crunchbase. TechCrunch joined the fray too (not to layoff employees, but to report layoffs).
Walmart India, which operates Flipkart, also announced layoffs around the same time.
Meanwhile, Bitmain is doing a reorg which might see 50% of the staff gone.
And just this morning, TechinAsia reported that TrackGecko had trimmed a quarter of its headcount.
Not a big deal
However, anyone who is in tech or startups long enough would know that – hey it happens.
Even those in corporates would know that reorgs and layoff happen regularly – just at a lower frequency than startups, and people are properly compensated (in most cases).
And layoffs are certainly not the reason that a company should be written off – more often than not (well maybe someone can do some research about it), it makes the company more efficient and better equipped to weather through tough times.
Ultimately, investor sentiment (in any sector) goes by cycles.
Every winter (probably since 2014), mass layoffs happen in China’s tech sector. Many remain optimistic, as winter is always followed by spring.
How to handle layoffs yourself? Well, Jack Ma has some good tips, as usual.
For more fun, you can read thelayoff.com. And anyone has seen this?: