and in the west from Walter
Cronkite school of journalism at
Arizona state university.
>> The job cuts in big tech are
piling up.
Microsoft said today it is
laying off 10,000 employees, and
Amazon started a fresh round of
job cuts in what is expected to
become the largest workforce
reduction in its 28-year
history.
It follows recent reductions by
Twitter, meta, Lyft, and
salesforce.
It comes during a period of
slowing growth and fears of a
possible recession on the
horizon.
The host of public media's "Full
disclosure" podcast joins us to
discuss the news.
It is great to see you.
Amazon went on a hiring spree
during the pandemic.
Microsoft appears to be bracing
for slower growth.
What accounts for these latest
job cuts?
>> They all got really ahead of
themselves.
Believe it or not, there was
euphoric thinking at the end of
2020.
Let me take you back -- we were
slathering everything in purell.
We were not touching salad bars.
Suddenly filling that vacuum in
this time of panic, all these
tech players were saying there's
a whole new normal.
We will be working from home
exclusively.
There will be never ending
demand for cloud services and
software.
These companies went on spending
sprees as their stocks soared to
record highs.
As a lot of that thinking has
come undone, you realize that
the economy matters and
cyclicality matters.
They are starting to prune at
the margins.
They have massive workforces.
Microsoft has 250 thousand
people, so when you see 10,000
or 15,000 people reduced, that's
a big number, but when you see
Microsoft, it is kind of pruning
for them.
>> Is the big tech boom over?
>> We have seen many players out
there saying we really thought
it was going to be far bigger
than it was.
We mentioned Amazon, Microsoft,
meta.
Netflix came out and said we are
just not having this period of
never growth.
That caused dominoes to fall, so
this is a broad re-think, and it
happens in bull markets.
We are seeing the largest number
of layoffs since 2002.2.
The salesforce CEO saying he is
just not seeing the
productivity.
We have not faced that reckoning
where people are coming back to
the office.
I think a lot of companies are
kind of looking for an excuse to
trim and maybe provide for some
margin stability for wall
Street's sake.
>> Is what is happening in the
tech sector, this pruning as you
call it -- is that set to happen
in other sectors of the labor
market?
>> It is uneven.
You have seen it in media, and
that has been a constant for
many years.
If you talk to any diner owner,
any hotel right now, resorts,
they cannot hire people fast
enough.
We still have difficult
inflation, but there's still a
near record number of job
openings that many sectors and
many employers want to fill, and
it's not necessarily
across-the-board case in tech.
For example, you really want to
hold onto programmers and
engineers.
They are hard to hire and hard
to retain, but when it comes to
general administrative marketing
-- when it comes to selling,
general administrative,
marketing, you have to look at
that carefully.
>> What does this say about the
strength of the economy overall?
There are people concerned about
that R word, recession.
>> Recession can be a big
function of self-fulfilling
prophecy.
If companies see order
pullbacks, if everybody is
nervous, they can start pruning
payrolls accordingly.
They don't have to wait for the
official capital R declaration
from Washington.
That might well happen in 2023
or 2024 hour might not happen at
all.
>> Great to see you as always.
Thank you as always.
Thank you very much.