What Do Tech Job Cuts Mean For The War For Talent And Hybrid Working? - Forbes

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Even allowing for his propensity for stirring up things, Elon Musk is certainly making waves with his acquisition of the social media site Twitter. Leave aside for a moment what the on-off-on-again deal means for free speech, Musk is creating headlines with reports that, in addition to announcing thousands of lay-offs, he is insisting that those that remain return to the office.

This apparent fightback against the trend towards remote or at least hybrid working might be dismissed as a quirk by a well-known maverick were it not accompanied by growing signs that he is not alone in wanting his employees where he can see them. David Solomon, chief executive of the investment bank Goldman Sachs, has long been an opponent of remote working, calling it an “aberration” even as rival financial businesses were preparing for a long-term future of hybrid working. More recently, though, Apple’s chief executive, Tim Cook, has tried to increase the number of days that employees are in the office. And reports that the iPhone maker and other technology companies have been acquiring space in Manhattan and elsewhere in anticipation of a return to more traditional working habits are seen as a sign of what could happen.

Hitherto, there has been something of a stalemate between workers and their bosses on this issue. There are undoubtedly some employees — especially more junior ones at the beginning of their careers — who favour being in the office, where they can learn from each other and develop the connections that are so important for development. But many others have seen the benefits of remote working in terms of gaining hours previously lost to long commutes that they can devote to family or other personal interests. Moreover, with inflation particularly affecting transport and food costs, they are keen to avoid travelling to work more often that they have to. With many studies indicating that productivity, if anything, improved with remote working, they have been in a strong position — as long as the war for talent continued.

But, suddenly, Twitter is not the only tech company announcing job losses. Meta, parent company of Facebook and Instagram, has announced it is cutting 11,000 positions, 13% of its workforce, while Amazon is said to be planning 10,000 redundancies, accounting for about 3% of its corporate workforce, and the payment processing platform Stripe said earlier this month that it would cut 1,000 jobs, or 14% of its headcount. Among the reasons cited were a decline in the digital advertising that the likes of Facebook rely on for revenue and an over-expansion in response to the rapid move to e-commerce during the pandemic.

So, will this development tip the balance in favour of employers? On the face of things, it might. There is nothing like the threat of losing what appears to be a dream job to make somebody consider whether having time for those extra-curricular activities they value so highly is so important. Where previously someone faced with being required to work more days in the office than they would like could have threatened to take their sought-after skills to a rival business more sympathetic to their needs, they now might have to do what employees in organizations under pressure have always done — turn up and knuckle down.

And there is a chance that the drive to get workers back in the office could spread to other sectors, on the grounds that, lately, what starts in tech quickly moves elsewhere. Executives in more traditional industries might think that if their tech counterparts can’t make this new-fangled approach work then how can they.

But, equally, this could just be one of those blips. A wide variety of organizations has seen the benefits of some sort of remote working in terms of not just productivity, but also retention and general happiness of staff. Tech companies appear to have become like the investment banks used to be — hoovering up all the people with a certain set of skills and offering them all sorts of rewards in return for them giving up their lives.

There is no doubt that the next few months are going to be tough for many businesses in the U.S., the U.K. and other major economies as the world grapples with what is effectively a delayed reaction to the effect of the pandemic made worse by the war in Ukraine. But if one of the effects is that tech companies lose some of their gloss (and people stop thinking that their founders have the answers to everything) that is probably no bad thing.

In the meantime, businesses that attract less attention than the likes of Meta, Twitter and Apple have probably been working out effective ways to work — and are unlikely to go back to the old ways just for the sake of it.

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