The Scoop #19: The Start of a Tech Winter?
More freezes across Big Tech and massive layoffs continue at formerly high-growth startups. How will this impact the rest of the industry?
This week has seen record heatwaves in Europe, both in London, UK, which I visited for the weekend, and Amsterdam in the Netherlands, where I live. Even if you don’t live here, you might have felt the impact, as this record-breaking heat took offline Oracle’s and Google’s data centers in London, and Salesforce’s in Paris. Neither data center was designed to withstand such extreme weather. It’s a reminder that the impact of climate change is very real.
1% of all revenue from this newsletter is going towards carbon removal funding, going forward. Carbon removal technologies are still in the early stages of development, and are not efficient enough. ‘Stripe Climate’ is an effort to get the cost curve down of this technology and to scale it up. It’s an initiative I joined. Learn more about this initiative and my pledge, here.
Now, on to The Scoop.
The Scoop is a bonus series, covering patterns and trends I observe and hear about within Big Tech and at high-growth startups. Have a scoop to share? Send me a message! - now over Signal as well!
Another eventful week across Big Tech and at high-growth startups. We have more topics than usual to cover in this issue, so buckle up!
The Big Tech hiring freeze. Google, GitHub and Azure put hiring freezes in place on almost the same day.
Apple slowing hiring. I previously shared how some of Apple’s organizations are slowing. More than two weeks later, Bloomberg reported the story.
Meta: midyear engineering calibrations from the front seat. Exclusive details from the inside on how the midyear PSC (performance summary cycle) is progressing. Do fears of a “more intense” performance cycle and the worry of more PIPs, hold up?
Bad news and internal controversy at Stripe. Stripe saw a valuation drop and a crackdown on large Slack rooms. I talked with software engineers at the company to get a handle on these.
Pay rises and back to the office at Adyen. The pay rises for software engineers are significant, though less than what was originally proposed. In return, it’s back to the office.
Painfully large layoffs at formerly high-growth tech startups and scaleups. The major downsizing rounds where more than 30% of staff are let go, just keep piling on. Details on Olive AI, InVision, Invitae, Capsule and others. Is there an end in sight?
Pollen on the verge of full bankruptcy. The company is unable to pay employees and has also not paid severance and pensions to laid-off software engineers. It also turned off the company Slack. Are we seeing this tech company going bankrupt?
Layoffs flying under the radar. An interesting scoop on invisible layoffs.