Open Source: NC Triangle layoffs erase pandemic overhiring. But by how much?
I’m Brian Gordon, reporter for The News & Observer, and this is Open Source, a weekly newsletter discussing business, labor and technology in North Carolina.
Tech companies couldn’t stop hiring in 2020 and 2021. Their pandemic-era employment blitz was fueled by heightened demand for virtual services and historically low interest rates. It’s now clear some overhiring occurred.
In the latest layoffs to hit the Triangle, the software provider Pendo cut about 12% of its staff on Monday, including 42 employees at the firm’s downtown Raleigh headquarters. It was the second round of layoffs the company has conducted in the past nine months.
It hasn’t been alone.
Since the fall, big tech companies like Lenovo, Cisco, Google and Red Hat have all made cuts that left at least some local employees needing new jobs (the companies themselves didn’t always confirm how many Triangle-area workers were impacted.)
To what extent have these cuts erased the headcount growth seen during the pandemic? It appears the answer is some, but definitely not all.
After eliminating 45 positions in September and another 100 this week, Pendo spokesperson Laura Baverman says the company’s global headcount is now above 750. For context, Baverman said Pendo had “just surpassed 400 employees,” prior to the pandemic.
Red Hat told The News & Observer that at the end of March 2020, it had around 14,950 employees. The current staff, the company says, is approximately 22,000.
Another example: Alphabet, the parent company of Google, entered 2020 with 118,900 employees according to its public filings. At the start of this year, the company employed more than 190,000 people.
In January, Alphabet announced it would lay off approximately 12,000 employees worldwide. Some of these cuts hit the Google Cloud engineering hub in downtown Durham. But even after the reductions, Alphabet’s workforce, like Pendo’s workforce, remains markedly higher than it was before the term “social distancing” entered our collective vocabulary.
And if an anecdote is illustrative, a friend of mine in Durham told me just last night that his software startup, which is based outside North Carolina, entered the pandemic with around 40 employees, then saw its staff balloon to 300, before subsequent layoffs shaved its workforce down to about 150 people today.
So, depending on your time of reference, his company’s headcount has either nearly quadrupled in three years or shrunk by half in less than two.
For those who’ve recently lost their jobs, this context might not matter much. But it’s something to keep in mind the next time you see a headline about tech layoffs.
Raleigh Reddit is back
You might not use Reddit, but a lot of people do.
The North Carolina subreddit (called r/NorthCarolina) has 394,000 members while the Raleigh-focused subreddit has 142,000.
This week, both communities “went dark,” joining thousands of other subreddit communities in protest of Reddit’s plan to charge third-party apps access to the platform. Apparently, many users and moderators find Reddit’s app clunky and much prefer to access the platform through third-party avenues.
“It is crucial to acknowledge that the site’s existence heavily relies on its user base and the contributions of volunteers, such as moderators and third-party developers,” one of the moderators of the Durham-focused subreddit r/BullCity told me.
As of Thursday, both the North Carolina and Raleigh communities were back. Well, mostly. In a post on Thursday, r/NorthCarolina moderators said the group “will remain in restricted mode until future notice” as a sign of protest.
Short Stuff: NC conservatives clash on innovation funding
John Locke Foundation, a conservative think tank based in North Carolina, released six ways the Republican-controlled state Senate should adjust its budget proposal, which would give the nonprofit NCInnovation an eye-opening $1.425 billion.
ProKidney, a biotech company based in Winston-Salem, is expanding in nearby Greensboro with a pledge to add 330 jobs and build a 210,000-square-foot production plant.
Duke University is one of the few universities in the country with a smart toilet lab. Its researchers have developed a toilet that can help analyze your stool.
National Tech Happenings
The minimum age for using social media platforms like Instagram and TikTok should be 16, writes a Wall Street Journal columnist.
Amazon says its AWS cloud services are back to normal after a midweek outage disrupted websites and apps of several major companies, including Southwest Airlines, Taco Bell and The Boston Globe.
VinFast, the Vietnamese automaker with plans to open a massive assembly plant near the Triangle, has introduced a new mini electric vehicle in its home market. U.S. auto journalists seem interested in its potential to sell abroad, though they’re still wary after the initial VinFast SUV was a seen as a disaster.
Thanks for reading!
This story was produced with financial support from a coalition of partners led by Innovate Raleigh as part of an independent journalism fellowship program. The N&O maintains full editorial control of the work.
This story was originally published June 16, 2023 at 9:01 AM.
