Business Big Tech Layoffs Megathread - Techbros... we got too cocky...

Since my previous thread kinda-sorta turned into a soft megathread, and the tech layoffs will continue until morale improves, I think it's better to group them all together.

For those who want a QRD:

Just this week we've had these going on:

https://www.theverge.com/24048636/ebay-layoffs-1000-employees-january-2024

https://arstechnica.com/google/2024/01/google-ceo-sundar-pichai-promises-another-year-of-google-layoffs/

https://edition.cnn.com/2024/01/24/tech/sap-restructuring-ai-jobs-intl-hnk/index.html

But it's not just Big Tech, the vidya industry is also cleaning house bigly:

https://www.brokentoys.org/ludum-mortuus-est/

All in all, rough seas ahead for the techbros.

 

[Ahriman]

I agree. I’ve interviewed and filled dozens of positions in my time for technical roles up to the PhD level, from junior roles up to director roles, and have found the numerous and extended interviews bizarre. You generally know what is bullshit and what isn’t with a few questions. Fortunately I’ve only ever had to fire one of those employees. I just have not seen the value in putting these applicants through the wringer and I’m completely opposed to the idea of the pain being a part of the process. I do agree that it’s better to not hire than have a bad hire but I’m not sure you’re going to know more about that with a take home assignment or a bunch of extra interviews. Maybe I’ve just been lucky.

Not only that,



It was thought up by these fuckers. Again, we technical people can tell apart when someone is bullshitting you or not, in 10 minutes or less.

"Oh no but you know what you guys need? a multi-stage interview process!!"
"And take-home assignments!"

It's a waste of time for both the candidate and the team who REALLY needs a new resource, really fast. Something that can be taken care of in 1 week, drags on for a month or more.

 

[Kane Lives]

Not only that,

View attachment 9046408

It was thought up by these fuckers. Again, we technical people can tell apart when someone is bullshitting you or not, in 10 minutes or less.

"Oh no but you know what you guys need? a multi-stage interview process!!"
"And take-home assignments!"

It's a waste of time for both the candidate and the team who REALLY needs a new resource, really fast. Something that can be taken care of in 1 week, drags on for a month or more.

Isn't all these interviews originally done because companies were not allowed to discriminate by IQ or race, so they had to find some other way to filter out the undesirables? Of course, HR bureaucracy bloated the process even more and perverse DEI incentives distorted the hiring incentives completely.

I honestly just hate the perverse idea that it's somehow okay to waste a job seeker's time purely because it's le bad for the company to suffer even the slightest inconvenience.

 

[Ahriman]

Isn't all these interviews originally done because companies were not allowed to discriminate by IQ or race, so they had to find some other way to filter out the undesirables? Of course, HR bureaucracy bloated the process even more and perverse DEI incentives distorted the hiring incentives completely.

I honestly just hate the perverse idea that it's somehow okay to waste a job seeker's time purely because it's le bad for the company to suffer even the slightest inconvenience.

That probably has played a big part of it, yea. And again, even as a technical lead looking to find the right candidate, sifting through hundreds of applications and going through several rounds of interviews, extending the whole thing for months, when you need a resouce as soon as possible, is the complete opposite of said interview process being effective.

I agree, no one wants to hire a retard, but at the same time, this alternative makes it much worse.

The key part in all of this is that the HR guy has to have a technical background as well, that will very easily streamline the process.

I guess I wouldn't mind trying my hand at doing HR myself.

EDIT: also,

 

[Lucas Silva #4903141]

https://www.techspot.com/news/112493-tech-layoffs-pass-100000-2026-tracker-points-ai.html

https://megalodon.jp/2026-0524-0027-19/https://www.techspot.com:443/news/112493-tech-layoffs-pass-100000-2026-tracker-points-ai.html

Tech layoffs have already passed 100,000 in 2026 as the industry cuts jobs to fund AI​

A hot potato: Tech sector job losses in early 2026 have already surged past 100,000, and the past month suggests the trend is not subsiding. While AI automation is likely not the sole cause, aggregated reports suggest it is the leading factor, with Meta's transition into an "AI-first" company headlining May's damage to the job market.

Meta's decision to lay off 8,000 workers to offset AI investments while potentially redirecting another 7,000 toward AI-related roles is the largest in a brutal series of tech company layoffs over the past month. Layoffs have exceeded 20,000 in every month of 2026 so far except April.

The figures come from TrueUp, which aggregates layoff reports from tech companies and estimates totals for each month. May is shaping up to be one of the worst months of the past year, a high threshold.

Meta is attempting to reduce labor costs as it prepares to spend over $100 billion in 2026 on AI data centers and related hardware. At the same time, the company aims to train its AI systems by monitoring employees' workstation activity, which some of them have described as "incredibly demoralizing."

Although TrueUp's graph also shows a large block of layoffs from PayPal, it remains unclear how many, if any, will occur in May. Sources recently told the Wall Street Journal that, like Meta, PayPal aims to eliminate about 20% of its workforce over the next two to three years, which could amount to 4,760 workers.

Cisco also recently announced around 4,000 layoffs. CEO Chuck Robbins framed the number as optimistically low, stating that the company is investing in AI infrastructure to avoid being left behind in the rush to adopt the technology.

Meanwhile, Intuit cut 3,000 jobs – 17% of its global workforce – to streamline its operations as it adopts AI, though it claims the layoffs are "not about AI." Affected employees will receive 16-week severance packages and other benefits.

While AI appears to be behind most of the job losses, industry insiders suggest that overhiring and resizing are also significant factors. Some of the latest reports, which do not yet contain solid numbers, also indicate that difficulties in video game development are contributing to the current wave.

Quantic Dream recently announced around 95 layoffs following the cancellation of Spellcaster Chronicles, a failed MOBA whose servers will shut down on June 19. Bungie might also be planning significant layoffs after confirming that Destiny 2's June 9 update will be the game's last. Destiny 3 is not currently in development.

TrueUp projects that tech sector layoffs in 2026 could reach 370,000, significantly exceeding the previous two years. Layoffs reached 430,000 in 2023.

 

[Aidan]

Isn't all these interviews originally done because companies were not allowed to discriminate by IQ or race, so they had to find some other way to filter out the undesirables? Of course, HR bureaucracy bloated the process even more and perverse DEI incentives distorted the hiring incentives completely.

Google became known for doing it so small startups, HR and executives thought "Well if Google does it, there must be something to it" and did it without understanding the "Why."
It hit critical mass where it became "industry standard" after enough time.

 

[AbendCode12]

Isn't all these interviews originally done because companies were not allowed to discriminate by IQ or race, so they had to find some other way to filter out the undesirables? Of course, HR bureaucracy bloated the process even more and perverse DEI incentives distorted the hiring incentives completely.

I honestly just hate the perverse idea that it's somehow okay to waste a job seeker's time purely because it's le bad for the company to suffer even the slightest inconvenience.

Maybe its better to be productive and busy than it is to complain into the ether. Some people keep busy designing autonomous, self-replicating kill-bots to one day let loose and loot their enemies. Others would ask, why all the extra steps?

 

[Ahriman]

Google became known for doing it so small startups, HR and executives thought "Well if Google does it, there must be something to it" and did it without understanding the "Why."
It hit critical mass where it became "industry standard" after enough time.

Maybe its better to be productive and busy than it is to complain into the ether. Some people keep busy designing autonomous, self-replicating kill-bots to one day let loose and loot their enemies. Others would ask, why all the extra steps?

My thoughts exactly. That long-ass process may have worked for Facebook and Google back in 2008-2010, but it spread out all over the place unnecessarily.

It bears repeating:

0:19

Women in the workplace were a mistake.

I once read about five monkeys that were placed in a room with a banana at the top of a set of stairs. As one monkey attempted to climb the stairs, all of the monkeys were sprayed with jets of cold water. A second monkey made an attempt and again the monkeys were sprayed. No more monkeys attempted to climb the stairs. One of the monkeys was then removed from the room and replaced with a new monkey. New monkey saw the banana and started to climb the stairs but to its surprise, it was attacked by the other monkeys. Another of the original monkeys was replaced and the newcomer was also attacked when he attempted to climb the stairs. The previous newcomer took part in the punishment with enthusiasm. Replacing a third original monkey with a new one, it headed for the stairs and was attacked as well. Half of the monkeys that attacked him had no idea why. After replacing the fourth and fifth original monkeys, none had ever been sprayed with cold water but all stayed the fuck away from the stairs.

Being here longer than me doesn't make your adherence to a rule, or the rule itself, right. It makes you the fifth replacement monkey.

Don't be the fifth replacement monkey, frens.

 

[sadrefrigerator]

Not only that,

View attachment 9046408

It was thought up by these fuckers. Again, we technical people can tell apart when someone is bullshitting you or not, in 10 minutes or less.

"Oh no but you know what you guys need? a multi-stage interview process!!"
"And take-home assignments!"

It's a waste of time for both the candidate and the team who REALLY needs a new resource, really fast. Something that can be taken care of in 1 week, drags on for a month or more.

Lmao hr have no control over technical interviews. They literally don't know anything past buzzwords. The most they are allowed to test is prescripted questions given to them by the hiring manager.
Tech interviews and take homes are defined by the engineering team. You'd know if an interview process for engineers was defined by someone outside of engineering because it would be extremely bizarre and filled with non technical rounds.

Isn't all these interviews originally done because companies were not allowed to discriminate by IQ or race, so they had to find some other way to filter out the undesirables? Of course, HR bureaucracy bloated the process even more and perverse DEI incentives distorted the hiring incentives completely.

This was more true for pure leetcode type questions. It was more memorizing certain tricks to solve problems optimally.
I've noticed that no one outside super big tech does pure leetcode anymore. Coding interviews are more practical nowadays. A lot of them are based of actual work or problems the team faced.

 

[Aidan]

Lmao hr have no control over technical interviews

Not every company is the same.

 

[sadrefrigerator]

Not every company is the same.

Sure but I guarantee you hr isn't chosing between take homes vs live coding rounds, and what level engineers are going to do a system design round.

Hr/non engineer designed interview processes have stuff like actual IQ tests, random talks with random unrelated people in the company and other stupid shit.

 

[Aidan]

You seem to be blissfully unaware how often HR gets the first pass on applications in many companies, not to mention the systems they use that auto-filter people such that the teams and managers never even see the application. HR doing initial interviews is not unusual and there are tens of thousands of students out there right now with various degrees running into that wall over and over, if they get a reply at all.

 

[blargenheimer]

It was thought up by these fuckers. Again, we technical people can tell apart when someone is bullshitting you or not, in 10 minutes or less.

Lmao hr have no control over technical interviews. They literally don't know anything past buzzwords. The most they are allowed to test is prescripted questions given to them by the hiring manager.

You seem to be blissfully unaware how often HR gets the first pass on applications in many companies, not to mention the systems they use that auto-filter people such that the teams and managers never even see the application.

One of my last interviews ended after the phone screen stage. It happens, but this time it felt particularly odd. She openly acknowledged it was a niche role and that they weren't expecting someone perfect, just related experience, which my unconventional resume should have been perfect for and may have been why I was selected at all. She then asked questions along the lines of the technical duties in the description and I shared how my past experience was directly applicable to each of them, yet she responded coldly through the entire rest of the call. Did I not hit enough keywords and buzzwords? I looked her up afterward; she studied film at University of California. This is the gatekeeper they selected at an extremely well-known company with incredibly high standards for its products. Several months later, the product that team worked on, after a history of challenges, is now being cut back if not shut down entirely. Makes you think.

 

[sadrefrigerator]

You seem to be blissfully unaware how often HR gets the first pass on applications in many companies, not to mention the systems they use that auto-filter people such that the teams and managers never even see the application. HR doing initial interviews is not unusual and there are tens of thousands of students out there right now with various degrees running into that wall over and over, if they get a reply at all.

I know hr filters out resumes first. That wasn't what I was talking about. Hr doesn't determine how the entire interview process goes. Someone above was saying that having coding and system design interviews were because of hr, which is just not true.

One of my last interviews ended after the phone screen stage. It happens, but this time it felt particularly odd. She openly acknowledged it was a niche role and that they weren't expecting someone perfect, just related experience, which my unconventional resume should have been perfect for and may have been why I was selected at all. She then asked questions along the lines of the technical duties in the description and I shared how my past experience was directly applicable to each of them, yet she responded coldly through the entire rest of the call. Did I not hit enough keywords and buzzwords? I looked her up afterward; she studied film at University of California. This is the gatekeeper they selected at an extremely well-known company with incredibly high standards for its products. Several months later, the product that team worked on, after a history of challenges, is now being cut back if not shut down entirely. Makes you think.

Anything can happen during interviews and you can fail for whatever bullshit reason. My read is that you are correct. The HM probably gave her a list of buzzwords and you didn't collect them all.

 

[Aidan]

One of my last interviews ended after the phone screen stage. It happens, but this time it felt particularly odd. She openly acknowledged it was a niche role and that they weren't expecting someone perfect, just related experience, which my unconventional resume should have been perfect for and may have been why I was selected at all. She then asked questions along the lines of the technical duties in the description and I shared how my past experience was directly applicable to each of them, yet she responded coldly through the entire rest of the call. Did I not hit enough keywords and buzzwords? I looked her up afterward; she studied film at University of California. This is the gatekeeper they selected at an extremely well-known company with incredibly high standards for its products. Several months later, the product that team worked on, after a history of challenges, is now being cut back if not shut down entirely. Makes you think.

I have a similar experience except the role wasn't even niche. My first and only interview with a company I expected to be very competitive for was with HR in a video call where she asked the usual questions and said if I was a good candidate I would do an interview with the actual team. No reply for a week so I followed up and had to ultimately email her directly to get a canned reply, the HR email they gave me never got anything. They didn't fill that role for at least a year, then I stopped checking on it.

@sadrefrigerator This is what I mean but I didn't want to get anecdotal and drone on, a lot of people experience this type of HR nonsense. If anything, it's the norm now for HR to be far more involved than they need to be in the hiring process, everyone hates HR specifically right now because everyone looking for work is tired of dealing with them. Now that I think about it, HR may be overcompensating more than ever to justify their importance.

 

[Ahriman]

Lmao hr have no control over technical interviews. They literally don't know anything past buzzwords. The most they are allowed to test is prescripted questions given to them by the hiring manager.
Tech interviews and take homes are defined by the engineering team. You'd know if an interview process for engineers was defined by someone outside of engineering because it would be extremely bizarre and filled with non technical rounds.

Maybe it's born there, but it was conceived right here.

0:25

And I got the receipts: Laszlo Bock, who joined Google in 2006 as head of People Operations (Google’s rebranded HR function) overhauled their hiring practices using "people analytics" and turned into what it is today.

Of course these fuckheads could never come up with take-home assignments or coding interviews themselves, that's on the team lead and one of the guys from his team who will be assessing their results, taking on hiring activities on top of his current workload. But they played a role in validating, standardizing, and optimizing them during their early periods and slowly but surely, it trickled down to the IT sector copying them.

Smaller companies started emulating their multi-round structure that we all know (recruiter screen + 2–3 technical coding/phone screens + 3–5 onsite loops with whiteboard/algorithmic problems over the span of 6 weeks) to appear prestigious and filter rigorously; "if Google does it then it must be good". Even non-FAANG companies (including small startups) adopted similar loops to “raise the bar” or compete for the same talent pool (ha!). Whiteboard coding tests, take-homes, and system design questions ultimately became the norm.

And, as attested by the poster you are replying to:

Anything can happen during interviews and you can fail for whatever bullshit reason. My read is that you are correct. The HM probably gave her a list of buzzwords and you didn't collect them all.

Imagine this same problem, spread out across the entire industry. The OP you are replying to was very likely the exact fit that they were looking for but because he never got to interact with anyone from the tech team before (and the retard HR drone didn't consider keeping him for a second round to have the actually qualified people to better determine if he was the right fit or not), his application got dropped.



And just like you said, they can fail you for whatever bullshit reason. "Eh, interviews are a crapshoot" is basically what it boils down to, these days. It's precisely why I see the whole process as a bigass farce.

 

[Lapsus of the bepsus]

I have a similar experience except the role wasn't even niche. My first and only interview with a company I expected to be very competitive for was with HR in a video call where she asked the usual questions and said if I was a good candidate I would do an interview with the actual team. No reply for a week so I followed up and had to ultimately email her directly to get a canned reply, the HR email they gave me never got anything. They didn't fill that role for at least a year, then I stopped checking on it.

@sadrefrigerator This is what I mean but I didn't want to get anecdotal and drone on, a lot of people experience this type of HR nonsense. If anything, it's the norm now for HR to be far more involved than they need to be in the hiring process, everyone hates HR specifically right now because everyone looking for work is tired of dealing with them. Now that I think about it, HR may be overcompensating more than ever to justify their importance.

the insane thing about hr interviews to me is that theyre supposed to take pressure off the engineering teams to let them do engineering work unless they find and vet a really serious and promising candidate, but the hr reps dont ever seem to actually fucking do anything besides thumb their own asses. how is it possible that they just fucking ghost you or string you around forever with no end in sight? what other mission critical brain taxing work do these fuckers even have? creating powerpoint presentations about how niggers make a company better for 6 hours a day every day?

 

[sadrefrigerator]

Imagine this same problem, spread out across the entire industry. The OP you are replying to was very likely the exact fit that they were looking for but because he never got to interact with anyone from the tech team before (and the retard HR drone didn't consider keeping him for a second round to have the actually qualified people to better determine if he was the right fit or not), his application got dropped.

And just like you said, they can fail you for whatever bullshit reason. "Eh, interviews are a crapshoot" is basically what it boils down to, these days. It's precisely why I see the whole process as a bigass farce

You know that every job listing gets blasted with x0,000 perfectly matched ai generated resumes right? Even before ai, people were sending fake resumes. There's no way a engineering manager has time to screen all of those. Unless you have a better way of doing a recruiter screen, karen from HR is the best you're going to get. In the case where hr isn't looking for buzzwords in the recruiter screen, your resume gets sent to the hm along with dozens others everyday and he has time to skim it. Unless you have a referral interviews are going to be a crapshoot.

 

[The Hardest R]

It really depends on the company but HR plays an outsized role at every medium and large company. Generally the bigger the company, the more they are involved with the process. They all follow trends and right now it is the multiple interviews with take home exam type of formats. Part of it is DEI but it’s mostly them just blindly following trends. They actively distrust hiring managers. They will chirp in their ear about who they think are the best candidates, which coincidentally all align with DEI targets unless it’s a nepo baby. They really think Dikshit Ramaswamy did the best in their prescreeners and did you know he has a masters degree in computer science from Poojwal Technical Institute? That’s like their equivalent of MIT! He said he’s willing to be paid at baseline too! What a catch, how soon can you interview him?

 

[Seething Troon Collector]

It really depends on the company but HR plays an outsized role at every medium and large company. Generally the bigger the company, the more they are involved with the process. They all follow trends and right now it is the multiple interviews with take home exam type of formats. Part of it is DEI but it’s mostly them just blindly following trends. They actively distrust hiring managers. They will chirp in their ear about who they think are the best candidates, which coincidentally all align with DEI targets unless it’s a nepo baby. They really think Dikshit Ramaswamy did the best in their prescreeners and did you know he has a masters degree in computer science from Poojwal Technical Institute? That’s like their equivalent of MIT! He said he’s willing to be paid at baseline too! What a catch, how soon can you interview him?

Can we put the Gen Z girl boss meme girls on a flight to Poojwal Techincal Instiute so they can confirm for themselves if it exits or not? With any luck they won’t come back.

 

[Kuritan Deplorable]

Generally the bigger the company, the more they are involved with the process.

What usually happens is that HR presents it as an efficiency and time-savings measure; The more they do, the less time of the precious, already under resourced senior talent we need to take up. Once the structure is in place, even if its not working per the senior talent, its defended as "we're the people experts and this is our field, don't tell us how to do our job".