[Paragraph 2]

Meta is not alone. On March 20th Amazon, another tech behemoth, said it would cut a further 9,000 corporate employees, having already sacked 18,000 white-collar types.

無獨(dú)有偶，3月20日，亞馬遜也宣布將再裁掉9000名員工，此前已經(jīng)裁掉了1.8萬名白領(lǐng)員工。

So far this year American tech firms have announced 118,000 sackings, according to Crunchbase, a data provider, adding to the 140,000 jobs cut last year.
根據(jù)數(shù)據(jù)提供商Crunchbase的數(shù)據(jù)，今年迄今為止，美國(guó)科技公司已經(jīng)宣布裁員11.8萬人，去年已經(jīng)裁去了14萬個(gè)崗位。

[Paragraph 3]

Investors have cheered tech’s new-found cost-consciousness. The technology-heavy NASDAQ index is up by 17% from its recent low point in late December.

投資者對(duì)科技行業(yè)新的成本意識(shí)感到高興。以科技為權(quán)重的納斯達(dá)克指數(shù)自去年12月末的低點(diǎn)以來已經(jīng)上漲了17%。

The companies are hearing the market’s message loud and clear. On March 24th the chief operating officer of Salesforce, a business-software firm, hinted that the company would soon add to the 8,000 lay-offs it announced in January.

這些公司聽到了市場(chǎng)的聲音。3月24日，企業(yè)軟件公司Salesforce的首席運(yùn)營(yíng)官暗示，公司將啟動(dòng)新一輪裁員，此前1月份宣布裁掉8,000人。

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They have a way to go: firings since the start of 2022 represent only 6% of the American tech industry’s workforce.
他們還有很長(zhǎng)的路要走：自2022年初以來的裁員僅占美國(guó)科技行業(yè)勞動(dòng)力的6％。

Because tech companies continued to hire throughout 2022, lay-offs have only just begun to reduce total industry employment (see chart 1).
由于科技公司在2022年持續(xù)招聘，裁員才剛剛開始減少整個(gè)行業(yè)的就業(yè)人數(shù)（見圖表1）。

By comparison, between the peak of the dotcom boom at the start of the 2000s and its nadir at the end of 2003, America’s overall tech workforce declined by 23%, or 685,000 jobs.
相比之下，在本世紀(jì)初的互聯(lián)網(wǎng)顛覆時(shí)期到2003年底的低谷期間，美國(guó)整個(gè)科技就業(yè)人數(shù)量減少了23%，即68.5萬個(gè)崗位。

[Paragraph 5]
Still, the recent lay-offs have already been widespread and deep enough to warrant two questions.
盡管如此，近期的裁員如此普遍且深刻，以致于引發(fā)了2個(gè)問題。

First, who is getting the chop? And second, where are the laid-off workers going?
第一，被裁員的是誰？第二，被裁的人去哪里了？

[Paragraph 6]
So far techies themselves have been mostly spared, observes Tim Herbert of the Computing Technology Industry Association, a trade body.
計(jì)算技術(shù)行業(yè)協(xié)會(huì)的蒂姆·赫伯特指出，迄今為止，大多數(shù)技術(shù)部的人幸免被裁。

Instead, the axe has fallen mainly on business functions such as sales and recruitment.
相反，裁員主要集中在銷售和招聘等業(yè)務(wù)部門上。

These had grown steadily as a share of technology-industry employment in recent years, a telltale sign of bloat (see chart 2).
近年來，這些業(yè)務(wù)部門在科技行業(yè)就業(yè)中所占比例穩(wěn)步增長(zhǎng)，這是膨脹的一個(gè)標(biāo)志（見圖2）。

[Paragraph 7]
Between the depths of the pandemic in the spring of 2020 and peak employment at the start of 2023, the tech sector added around 1m workers.
從2020年春季疫情最嚴(yán)重時(shí)期到2023年初就業(yè)高峰期之間，科技行業(yè)新增加了100萬名從業(yè)者。

Simply enlisting such numbers required hiring plenty of recruiters; as a headhunting rule of thumb, one recruiter can hire 25 new employees a year. Many of those same recruiters may now be surplus to requirements.
要招募這么多人，就需要雇傭大量的招聘專員；按照獵頭的經(jīng)驗(yàn)法則，一個(gè)招聘專員每年可以招聘25名新員工?，F(xiàn)在，許多招聘專員已經(jīng)多余了。

[Paragraph 8]
But the specialists are not immune to the efficiency drive. As part of its lay-offs, Meta will restructure its tech functions in April.
然而，專業(yè)人員也難逃被裁的命運(yùn)。作為裁員的一部分，Meta將于4月重組技術(shù)部門。

Releasing talented tech workers back into the wild could be a boon for other sectors wrestling with digital reinvention.
釋放才華橫溢的技術(shù)人員到市場(chǎng)上，可能有利于其他正在進(jìn)行數(shù)字化改革的行業(yè)。

For years unsexy industries like industrial goods have struggled to compete with the tech industry for talent. Now they are pouncing.
多年來，一些不起眼行業(yè)（如工業(yè)制品）一直在與科技行業(yè)爭(zhēng)奪人才?，F(xiàn)在他們正在抓住機(jī)會(huì)。

John Deere, an American tractor-maker, has been snapping up fired tech workers to help it make smarter farm machinery.Last year the firm opened an office in Austin, a thriving tech hub in Texas.
美國(guó)拖拉機(jī)制造商約翰迪爾正在爭(zhēng)搶被解雇的技術(shù)人才，來幫助它制造更智能的農(nóng)業(yè)機(jī)械。去年，該公司在得克薩斯州蓬勃發(fā)展的科技中心奧斯汀開設(shè)了一家辦事處。

Carmakers, increasingly focused on software, are also hungry for technologists. So are banks, health insurers and retailers.
汽車制造商越來越注重軟件，也渴望招聘技術(shù)人才。銀行、醫(yī)療保險(xiǎn)公司和零售商也是如此。

[Paragraph 9]
Some of the laid-off techies are helping fuel a new generation of startups.
一些被裁的技術(shù)人才正在推動(dòng)新一代創(chuàng)業(yè)公司的崛起。

Applications in January to Y Combinator, a startup school in Silicon Valley, were up five-fold on the previous year.
硅谷的創(chuàng)業(yè)孵化器Y Combinator1月份的申請(qǐng)量是去年同期的5倍。

Excitement is particularly strong in the buzzy field of ChatGPT-like “generative” artificial intelligence (AI), which uses complex algorithms and oodles of data to produce everything from essays to artworks—so much so that even big tech continues to hire enthusiastically in the area.
ChatGPT這樣的“生成式”人工智能（AI）領(lǐng)域的激動(dòng)情緒尤為強(qiáng)烈，它使用復(fù)雜算法和海量數(shù)據(jù)生成文章、藝術(shù)品等各種內(nèi)容，以至于大型科技公司仍在積極招聘該領(lǐng)域的人才。

[Paragraph 10]
Optimists hope that this technology will, like the smartphone before it, unlock a new wave of creative destruction, as AI entrepreneurs conjure up a variety of clever applications.
樂觀主義者希望，這種技術(shù)將像智能手機(jī)一樣，開啟一波新的創(chuàng)新熱潮，因?yàn)锳I企業(yè)家將創(chuàng)造各種各樣聰明的應(yīng)用程序。

The new AIs may in time mean even less need for, say, human marketers. But they could, like other breakthroughs before them, create entirely new job categories—not least in the technology industry itself.
新的人工智能可能會(huì)逐漸減少面向人類的市場(chǎng)營(yíng)銷等崗位的需求。但是，它們可能像以前的其他科技突破一樣，會(huì)創(chuàng)造出全新的工作崗位，尤其是在科技行業(yè)本身的崗位。

（恭喜讀完，本篇英語詞匯量688左右）
原文出自：2023年4月1日《The Economist》Business版塊。

精讀筆記來源于：自由英語之路

本文翻譯整理: Irene本文編輯校對(duì): Irene
僅供個(gè)人英語學(xué)習(xí)交流使用。

【補(bǔ)充資料】（來自于網(wǎng)絡(luò)）
Salesforce是創(chuàng)建于1999年3月的一家客戶關(guān)系管理(CRM) 軟件服務(wù)提供商，總部設(shè)于美國(guó)舊金山，可提供隨需應(yīng)用的客戶關(guān)系管理平臺(tái)。Salesforce允許客戶與獨(dú)立軟件供應(yīng)商定制并整合其產(chǎn)品，同時(shí)建立他們各自所需的應(yīng)用軟件。對(duì)于用戶而言，則可以避免購(gòu)買硬件、開發(fā)軟件等前期投資以及復(fù)雜的后臺(tái)管理問題。因其口號(hào)“軟件的終結(jié)”，故在業(yè)內(nèi)常被稱作“軟件終結(jié)者”。

約翰迪爾John Deere是世界領(lǐng)先的農(nóng)業(yè)和林業(yè)領(lǐng)域先進(jìn)產(chǎn)品和服務(wù)供應(yīng)商，是主要的建筑、草坪和場(chǎng)地養(yǎng)護(hù)、景觀工程和灌溉領(lǐng)域先進(jìn)產(chǎn)品和服務(wù)供應(yīng)商。約翰迪爾也在全球提供金融服務(wù)，并制造、銷售重型設(shè)備發(fā)動(dòng)機(jī)。

Y Combinator成立于2005年，是美國(guó)著名創(chuàng)業(yè)孵化器，Y Combinator扶持初創(chuàng)企業(yè)并為其提供創(chuàng)業(yè)指南。

【重點(diǎn)句子】（3?個(gè)）
Instead, the axe has fallen mainly on business functions such as sales and recruitment.
相反，裁員主要集中在銷售和招聘等業(yè)務(wù)部門上。

Releasing talented tech workers back into the wild could be a boon for other sectors wrestling with digital reinvention.
釋放才華橫溢的技術(shù)人員到市場(chǎng)上，可能有利于其他正在進(jìn)行數(shù)字化改革的行業(yè)。

Some of the laid-off techies are helping fuel a new generation of startups.
一些被裁的技術(shù)人才正在推動(dòng)新一代創(chuàng)業(yè)公司的崛起。