California, October 7: Silent or Stealth layoffs have been adopted by several tech companies in Silicon Valley to reduce employee headcounts. Many tech companies in the tech industry have adopted this practice to lay off the employees without making headlines or making official announcements. This year has witnessed several technology firms let their employees go.

As per a layoff tracking website, Layoffs.Fyi, so far, 457 tech companies laid off 1,39,534 employees since the start of 2024. The tech layoffs were implemented by several big names in the industry, such as Microsoft, Google, Northvolt, Apple, IBM, Intel, Dell, Luminar, and more. Hindustan Times reported that two of the employees who had been fired from big tech companies silently were looking for job opportunities. Amazon Workers ‘Strongly Dissatisfied’ by 5-Day Return-to-Office Mandate, Nearly 1,900 Employees Looking for Job Change: Report.

When layoffs are announced, they make headlines and affect the companies in multiple ways. The stakeholders of the tech companies, including share-owners, customers, and suppliers, among others, directly or indirectly affect these firms. The report mentioned that the companies in the tech industry adopted silent layoffs in 2023. The tech giant Google announced global layoffs and let go of employees overnight.

The report said Google had sent an email to the employees at 2 AM in the morning, which attracted terrible press. The employees who were unaware of this found that their badges stopped working. The report highlighted that the Google layoffs announced through the 2 AM email became a PR nightmare for the tech giant and attracted a lot of negative press internationally. Some affected employees wrote about their experiences on social media platforms.

Intel announced this year that it would be letting go of 15,000 employees. IBM announced it would cut 1,000 jobs, and Dell layoffs were estimated to affect over 12,500 employees. The tech giant Cisco made headlines when it announced job cuts that affected 5,600 employees. All of these were publicly available and available to the press. The report said the employee wouldn't talk to anyone about firing and finding another job in stealth layoffs. Tech Layoffs: Indian IT Sector Hit by Silent Layoffs With Employee Asked To Choose Voluntary Resignation or Termination, Affects Over 20,000 People, Says Report.

According to the report, silently laying off employees would not affect any company's remaining staff either. According to the report by Hindustan Times, the Return To Office (RTO) mandate is also a way for tech companies to initiate stealth or silent layoffs. The e-commerce giant recently announced a five-day work-at-the-office mandate, which caused the employees to re-consider the job and find something else. The report said some employees made their lives working remotely, and they were forced to adopt the work-from-office culture. 

(The above story first appeared on LatestLY on Oct 07, 2024 11:42 AM IST. For more news and updates on politics, world, sports, entertainment and lifestyle, log on to our website latestly.com).