Tech startups are cutting back
Bird, the company most famous for its electric scooters and bikes, is laying off 23% of its workforce this week according to an internal memo. With 572 employees as of the end of 2021, that suggests around 130 jobs are being cut, as the company cited macroeconomic trends and a need to reduce its cost base.
Although notable, Bird is only the latest in a long list of tech layoffs. The site Layoffs.fyi has been tracking tech startup job losses since the pandemic started, and it's starting to show a marked increase in layoffs in the last few months. In May the site tracked 16,935 jobs lost, the highest monthly reading for 24 months, only behind the ~26,000 tech startup jobs that were lost during the early months of the pandemic.
Funding doesn't grow on trees
Falling share prices can sometimes feel like an abstraction, only affecting the paper wealth of shareholders. But the tech sell-off that we've discussed at length this year was always going to filter through into real economic decisions. Startups burning cash to chase growth have been in vogue — now they couldn't be further from it. Business models that promised much once they got to a certain scale now just don't have the time to get there — and the record venture funding that was happy to bankroll that expansion has evaporated. Layoffs, unfortunately, could continue.
