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Bidding farewell to the magical 2021, we usher in the more "bizarre" 2022. Black swan events such as the Russian-Ukrainian war and the assassination of Abe have sounded the thrilling theme of the world situation. The overtone is the downturn of the global economy.
The economic malaise has affected all walks of life. With growth falling short of expectations and performance declining, layoffs are imminent. Internet giants at the top of the food chain are "graduating" and "slimming down" and heading east, while small and medium-sized enterprises are also floating in the tide of the times, with no choice. A grain of sand of the times becomes a mountain when it falls on anyone. Looking at the cross-border industry, after the peak of "digging for gold everywhere" under the epidemic in 2020, it has now entered a painful period after returning to rationality. Countless cross-border companies that followed the trend have become the most conspicuous targets under the sudden drop in demand and economic downturn. Under multiple tortures, some have fallen silently, while others have laid off employees and reduced their operations to survive. A survey in the first half of the year showed that 55.3% of cross-border companies had laid off employees, which is just a small microcosm of the overall environment. Layoffs are like a signal that winter is coming, and behind it is the chill of the economy.
American tech giants violently lay off employees, and employees are forced to work 996 to "save their lives"? For cross-border merchants, social media such as Twitter and Facebook are important tools for attracting traffic from outside the site. However, recently, an unprecedented wave of layoffs is sweeping these social media giants. After more than half a year of tug-of-war, Musk's acquisition of Twitter finally came to an end. However, the first thing Musk did when he took office was to attack Twitter employees. After taking over Twitter, Musk kicked out the CEO, CFO and other senior executives, and launched a massive layoff operation, planning to lay off about 50% of Twitter employees, or about 3,700 people. Twitter's method of firing employees was also very simple and crude, directly sending an internal email to decide whether all employees would stay or leave. Faced with the sword of Damocles hanging over their heads and possibly falling at any time, Twitter triggered the "Double 12 Incident" internally, and in order to keep their jobs, employees had to work 7 consecutive days, 12 hours a day in shifts. The layoffs did not stop as public opinion fermented, and Twitter continued to implement drastic "downsizing" measures. As of November 14, about 80% of Twitter's 5,500 contract workers had been laid off, totaling 4,400 people. And these contract workers did not even receive any internal notification. On November 9, Facebook's parent company Meta also laid off employees. Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced that the layoffs would reach 11,000 people, about 13% of the total number of employees, including recruitment and business teams. It is reported that Meta's large-scale layoffs will be the first large-scale layoffs in its 18-year history, and it is likely to be the largest layoffs in the technology industry this year. Why has Silicon Valley, once a pilgrimage site for workers, become a bloody sea of layoffs? Musk explained the layoffs as follows: “When the company was losing more than $4 million a day, we had no choice.” Zuckerberg also said that Meta's decision-making mistakes led to the massive layoffs. Due to the sluggish macroeconomic situation, increased competition and loss of advertising share, Meta's revenue was far below expectations. The epidemic has hit the real economy hard, but it has also created a high-growth bubble in the Internet technology industry, with many industry giants caught in a carnival of explosive growth and expansion. As the epidemic enters the normal stage and inflationary pressure sweeps across the country, the technology giants who burst the bubble suddenly realized that their future performance would be sluggish, and even returned to the pre-liberation era. This round of layoffs in US technology companies is more like sending a signal that the leading giants are the first to notice the changes in the macro environment. The United States plays an indispensable role in global trade, and as its economy slows down, the sluggish consumer demand will directly have a negative impact on the export trade of various countries, further impacting the global economy. From the perspective of those going overseas, the trend of declining demand and sluggish foreign trade is obviously not something that the general public would like to see. In fact, under multiple rounds of shocks such as the Russia-Ukraine war, supply chain crisis and inflationary pressure, the overseas consumer market has continued to be weak this year. Cross-border people, who are the first to be hit, are experiencing the dilemma of falling sales and shrinking profits. The market is now in a state of chill, and the cross-border e-commerce industry is no exception.
E-commerce layoffs are rolling in, and Amazon, the expansionist, is slamming on the brakes The wave of layoffs among e-commerce giants has already begun. Shopee has carried out three rounds of layoffs so far. In June, it laid off dozens of employees at its Singapore headquarters and dismissed the ShopeeFood and ShopeePay departments. In September, Shopee once again "cut the knife" on human resources, regional operations, marketing and other businesses. On November 14, Shopee, which encountered a performance bottleneck, launched another round of layoffs. Shopify, a giant independent website that has risen in the past two years, announced at the end of July that it would lay off 1,000 employees worldwide, accounting for 10% of its total employees. In addition, the team size will be further reduced. In early August, Walmart announced plans to lay off 200 employees after lowering its earnings forecast. As a sign that U.S. holiday sales may be sluggish, it laid off nearly 1,500 employees at a distribution center in Atlanta on the eve of the peak season. When the nest is overturned, the eggs will be broken. Amazon, which used to expand without stopping, was also involved in this "graduation" craze. Recently, Amazon announced plans to lay off 10,000 employees starting this week, equivalent to 13% of Amazon's US employees. This will be the largest layoff in Amazon's history. According to internal documents, Amazon also issued a "voluntary resignation" proposal to some employees and provided three months' salary plus severance pay to employees who joined the agreement. Amazon stated in the document: The voluntary resignation proposal is the first step in Amazon's reorganization of its internal business. In fact, as the aftereffects of its aggressive expansion are revealed, Amazon is gradually entering a cooling-off period. In April this year, Amazon suspended its plan to add more than 1,500 jobs in its retail business. In July, the number of employees in Amazon's warehouses and distribution centers was reduced by nearly 99,000. Due to weak consumer demand and rising operating costs, Amazon's peak season hiring has slowed down, with only 21,000 employees added in the third quarter of this year, a significant reduction from 133,000 in the same period last year. Recently, according to a report in the New York Times, Amazon may freeze corporate hiring in its retail business until early 2023. However, this is just the beginning. Amazon CEO Andy said layoffs will continue until next year. The joys and sorrows of e-commerce giants are the same. The epidemic has revitalized the online economy and spawned an online shopping boom. With the right timing and location, e-commerce giants have been able to take advantage of the fast train and advance triumphantly. At the same time, the unprecedented growth rate brought about by the epidemic has also made the giants blindly confident, recruiting employees to expand departments, expanding their businesses madly, and entering emerging markets to expand their territory. For example, Amazon massively expanded its warehouse and logistics network and significantly increased its production capacity during the pandemic. From the beginning of the pandemic to the end of 2021, Amazon recruited more than 800,000 employees worldwide and developed a number of businesses, including telemedicine, warehouse robots, and online travel products. Now that growth has slowed, Amazon is inevitably caught in a crisis of overcapacity and soaring costs. It can be seen that as the dividends fade, the giants gradually enter the slow lane of growth and are forced to taste the bitter fruit of aggressive expansion strategies. Foreign exchange headwinds, inflation, cost increases and other macro-adverse factors are impacting the global trade environment, further leading to a sluggish consumer market and stagnant business growth. To this end , words such as "misjudgment of consumption trends" , "growth below expectations" or "macroeconomic recession" have become key words for launching layoffs and contraction plans. Of course, this does not mean that the giants are in a survival crisis. As the sequelae of crazy expansion emerge, e-commerce giants realize the potential risks brought about by the uncertainty of the macro environment, and have slowed down their pace, laid off employees, and gradually returned to rationality.
TikTo takes in heartbroken laid-off employees, seeking protection under the umbrella of e-commerce? While giants are struggling in the wave of layoffs, TikTok is doing the opposite and actively recruiting, even taking in Meta's heartbroken laid-off employees. According to foreign media reports, after Meta announced a layoff of 11,000 employees on November 9, these laid-off employees are becoming the "hot cakes" in the eyes of TikTok. From a job information sharing table, we can see that TikTok's vacant positions include data engineers, e-commerce workers, data privacy management, machine learning, AR, etc. On the career consulting and social platform Blind, there are also many posts showing that TikTok is recruiting laid-off employees from Meta. If the interviewer knows that the applicant is from Meta, the chances of passing the interview will be greatly increased. Why did TikTok become the "rebel army" in the wave of layoffs? This can be traced back to its e-commerce business. In fact, TikTok has also been in a difficult time of layoffs and restructuring. The macroeconomic downturn, the European e-commerce business hit a wall, and long-term data privacy accusations from various countries have forced TikTok to shelve its expansion plans, lay off employees and reduce recruitment in Europe and the United States, and restructure its business. In the past four months, TikTok has laid off nearly 100 employees, including more than 20 senior executives. Some other executives have been transferred to new businesses, such as Hawkins, the general manager who was previously responsible for business operations, sales and marketing in North America, who was transferred to the TikTok Shop business in the US e-commerce channel. From these structural adjustments, we can see that TikTok's business focus is gradually shifting to e-commerce. Recently, the US government has become increasingly strict in its review of TikTok, and even FCC commissioners and Republicans have called for its ban. On the other hand, TikTok is also facing the dilemma of declining advertising business. Under such circumstances, TikTok chose to continuously increase its e-commerce business by opening e-commerce sales channels to American merchants and supporting the growth of local businesses in order to maintain the long-term healthy development of its business. Not only is it based on the need to survive under the siege of many countries, TikTok, which has rapidly taken off to become a social media giant, is no longer satisfied with being a traffic entrance for e-commerce. At the same time, after the frenetic growth has cooled down, TikTok also needs to seek a new growth curve. Therefore, breaking through and reconstructing its business and building an e-commerce system has become its biggest breakthrough. Now, after months of layoffs and restructuring, TikTok's US small store has officially landed on the market. In order to create a more complete and mature e-commerce ecosystem, TikTok has built its own logistics center on the one hand, and on the other hand, it has cooperated with American Express to launch the #ShopSmall accelerator program to further reach consumers. The expansion of TikTok's e-commerce business has also created a large number of job demands. In the United States, TikTok has posted more than a dozen logistics and distribution-related positions on LinkedIn, and is also actively recruiting e-commerce supporting service practitioners, targeting talents who have been displaced by the layoffs of technology giants. Not only that, TikTok Shop is also preparing to enter the Spanish market next. It has currently posted 12 job openings in Spain, including beauty category director, fashion category director and logistics operations director. TiKToK's e-commerce transformation also provides another way for us to interpret this round of layoffs by technology giants. Advertising revenue is an important part of revenue for Twitter, Meta, Google and even Amazon. However, with the intensification of market competition and the global economic recession, companies have to reduce marketing budgets in order to reduce costs, so that the advertising business of the giants has taken a sharp turn for the worse. Faced with the decline of advertising, a cash cow, the giants that once expanded aggressively could only quickly adjust their routes, promptly cut off less profitable businesses, and open up new growth points. Platforms such as Meta and Youtube have all invested heavily in social e-commerce businesses, and so has TikTok. The general crisis in the online advertising field has prompted TikTok to lay off and reorganize its U.S. advertising team, while accelerating the e-commerce process to build more development fulcrums. (For more TikTok information, please follow TT123 Cross-border E-commerce) TT123 Cross-border E-commerce TT123 Cross-border E-commerce is committed to providing first-hand information and practical knowledge to TikTok sellers. 26 original content Public Account When the bubble growth burst, the giants who fell back on track returned to rationality. Just as the epidemic brought about the sudden wealth of cross-border e-commerce, as the wind dissipated, the overseas entrepreneurs whose dreams of digging for gold were shattered were trapped in the industry's pain period and tried to explore new ways to survive. Behind the wave of layoffs are both the regrets of the brave and the efforts to resist the crisis and transform themselves. In the tide of the times, it is difficult for both cutting-edge giants and grassroots companies to remain unscathed.
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