Last week’s heavy-handed layoffs at Amazon, Microsoft and Google cut close to the heart of cloud. Former employees ranging from software and data engineers to product solutions program managers and recruiters in the companies’ cloud divisions are telling stories of their job losses on LinkedIn in an effort to find new positions quickly.
The tight-knit cloud community is rallying around those laid off, offering advice and pointing them toward potential new roles and companies. In fact, one former Microsoft software engineer who stands to lose her HB1 visa received 1,203 comments offering consolation and job search recommendations, and 2,333 repostings of her plight as of the time of publication (read her story here). A former cloud infrastructure engineer at Google who posted that she was open to work received similar advice and assistance (see below).
Cloud turbulence ahead of earnings
Amazon, Microsoft and Google parent company Alphabet announced layoffs last week amid global economic turbulence that’s forced them to dial back workforce numbers that ballooned during the peaks of the coronavirus pandemic.
Microsoft on Jan. 18 said it would cut approximately 10,000 employees through March 31. The layoffs represent less than 5% of its total workforce. That same day, Amazon, which earlier this month said it would cut 18,000-plus jobs, began notifying employees that they were losing their positions.
Silverlinings reached out to all three companies to ask if the job cuts hit their cloud divisions, but they declined comment.
Despite the layoffs, Dan Ives, managing director and senior equity analyst at Wedbush Securities, said while cloud may not be bulletproof, it is “the Rock of Gibraltar” and a “pillar of strength” and he expects growth to remain strong.
Similarly, Hyoun Park, CEO and chief analyst at Amalgam Insights, told Silverlinings last week that Amazon and Microsoft have no real reason to slow down their cloud investments.
“Amazon will continue growing their most profitable division, and Microsoft’s [reported plans for a] $10 billion OpenAI investment speaks to its commitment to cloud service investment,” Park said.
Microsoft reports earnings on Jan. 24, while AWS and Google report earnings on Feb. 2.
Were you impacted by the layoffs at AWS, Microsoft or Google Cloud? Let us know by sending us a letter here.