Explained | What does the recent wave of tech layoffs mean?

The story so far: The New York-headquartered International Business Machines Corp. last week became the latest to join the list of tech companies that have made large-scale layoffs since late 2022. This comes on the heels of what has been described as Big Tech’s “midlife crisis” or the clock striking “midnight” on its hyper-growth; technology giants Alphabet, Amazon, Meta, and Microsoft have announced the slashing of thousands from their workforce in the last couple of months. Four of the biggest tech companies in the U.S.- Google-parent Alphabet, Amazon, Microsoft, and Facebook-owner Meta accounted for 51,000 of the total tech layoffs announced in the last few months. Analysts are near-unanimous while saying that big tech companies are “rightsizing” their growth, instead of downsizing, as pointed out to NPR by Columbia Business School professor Daniel Klum.