Companies like Stripe and Lyft are cutting workers, and so are Coinbase and Robinhood.
"They're preparing for the worst. That's the underlying theme of everything going on," says Professor Ahmed Banafa of San Jose State University.And big players like Amazon and Apple have announced hiring freezes. "A lot of companies are looking at the possibility of a recession that we're going to see in 2023 and they don't want to be caught off guard by doing it after the fact," says Banafa.Excessive hiring during the pandemic is another.
"Right now there's just too much uncertainty on the economy for them to keep those numbers in place and keep their shareholders happy," says Tim Bajarin, tech analyst with Creative Strategies.But Banafa says unemployment is still low in Silicon Valley and plenty of companies, like Tik Tok, are hiring.Experts say this is not a burst tech bubble like Silicon Valley saw in 2000, and not a real estate bubble like 2008, but rather a belt tightening.
"Yes we're going to have some pain. Yes we're going to see layoffs. But we are eventually going to come out of it," says Bajarin. He adds, "To write Silicon Valley off I think would be a big mistake."that I have read and agree