Luckily January is over. It couldn’t get worse in Silicon Valley.
Ninety-nine thousand 949 layoffs, including the last two thousand two hundred a PayPal, 7 percent of total employees, with the usual icy statement from the boss entitled “updates on our transformation”. Maybe alone Amazon it had done worse in headlines: “CEO Updates on Job Elimination.” Like a video game.
One hundred thousand layoffs in one month they are more than the sum of the layoffs in November (fifty thousand) and December (forty thousand). In all, there are almost two hundred thousand people suddenly left without a job; you go from the illusion of being in paradise, professionally speaking – successful and admired companies, high salaries, endless benefits to grab the best talents – to purgatory (hell is something else).
Many say that this is Silicon Valley’s funeralthat something is jammed, that the crisis is just beginning. But it’s a mistake. Meanwhile why none of the companies he fired is really in crisis, or on the verge of bankruptcy: the profit/employee ratio had simply worsened as profits are declining due to the economic crisis, and to keep the shareholders happy, employees have been reduced. Brutal and even a little short-sighted capitalism.
And then why Silicon Valley is so much more. It is the place where the future is still being built today, the way we will live. It is the place, so to speak, where ChatGPT was developed, the generative artificial intelligence that everyone is now talking about.
Silicon Valley is not only made of bits or dollars but of people who share a way of looking at the worldnot to be frightened by the problems that exist, but to get excited about the solutions that technology and innovation can bring.