The Great Tech-xodus: Why Meta, Microsoft and Amazon have had to fire a quarter of a MILLION staff

With the boom in artificial intelligence (AI), robots and'smart' everything, it would be fair to assume that life in Silicon Valley is pretty sweet right now. Only last year, tech workers were posting enviable'Day In The Life' videos showing off buffet lunches, happy hours and arcade games in their offices. But fast forward 12 months and things have turned sour. In the first 33 days of 2023 alone, the likes of Paypal, Microsoft, Amazon, and Google's parent company Alphabet have announced a total of 42,000 lay-offs. Add that to 40,000 from other tech companies – plus the 160,000 employees who were let go last year – and the mass exodus nears a purge of some quarter of a million staff.