文章來源：《經(jīng)濟學(xué)人》Mar 27th 2023 期 Business 欄目 The sack of Silicon Valley

To understand the shift in tone that has taken place in Silicon Valley in recent months, look no further than Mark Zuckerberg’s declaration in February that 2023 would be the “year of efficiency”. It is hardly the kind of language to set the pulse racing—unless you are an employee on the receiving end of it. On March 14th Meta, the tech giant Mr Zuckerberg runs, announced it would fire 10,000 staff—on top of the 11,000 it laid off last November.

要了解硅谷近幾個月來基調(diào)的轉(zhuǎn)變，只需看看馬克·扎克伯格在今年2月宣布2023年將是“效率年”就行了。這種語言很難讓人興奮，除非你是接收端的員工。3月14日，扎克伯格經(jīng)營的科技巨頭Meta宣布將在去年11月裁員1.1萬人的基礎(chǔ)上再裁員1萬人。

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

Meta并非個例。3月20日，另一家科技巨頭亞馬遜宣布將在已經(jīng)裁掉1.8萬白領(lǐng)員工的基礎(chǔ)上，再裁掉9000名員工。根據(jù)數(shù)據(jù)提供商Crunchbase的數(shù)據(jù)，今年到目前為止，美國科技公司已經(jīng)宣布裁員11.8萬人，而去年已經(jīng)裁員14萬人。

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

投資者對科技公司新發(fā)現(xiàn)的成本意識表示歡迎。以科技股為主的納斯達克指數(shù)較去年12月底的近期低點上漲了17%。這些公司響亮而清晰地聽到了市場的信息。3月24日，商業(yè)軟件公司Salesforce的首席運營官暗示，該公司將在1月份宣布裁員8000人的基礎(chǔ)上，再裁員8000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. Because tech companies continued to hire throughout 2022, lay-offs have only just begun to reduce total industry employment (see chart 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.

他們還有很長的路要走:自2022年初以來解雇的員工只占美國科技行業(yè)勞動力的6%。由于科技公司在整個2022年都在繼續(xù)招聘，裁員才剛剛開始減少整個行業(yè)的就業(yè)人數(shù)(見圖1)。相比之下，從21世紀(jì)初互聯(lián)網(wǎng)繁榮的頂峰到2003年底的低谷，美國科技行業(yè)的整體勞動力下降了23%，即68.5萬個工作崗位。

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Still, the recent lay-offs have been widespread and deep enough to warrant two questions. First, who is getting the chop? And second, where are the laid-off workers going?

然而，最近大范圍、深層次的裁員，足以引起兩個問題。首先，誰將被解雇? 第二，被裁的員工都去哪里了?

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So far techies themselves have been mostly spared, observes Tim Herbert of the Computing Technology Industry Association (CompTIA), a trade body. Instead, the axe has fallen mainly on business functions like sales and recruitment. These had grown steadily as a share of tech-industry employment in recent years, a telltale sign of bloat (see chart 2).

在2020年春季疫情最嚴(yán)重時期到2023年初就業(yè)達到峰值期間，科技行業(yè)增加了約100萬名員工。僅僅是雇傭這些數(shù)字就需要雇傭大量的招聘人員; 根據(jù)獵頭的經(jīng)驗，一個招聘人員一年可以雇傭25名新員工。許多這樣的招聘人員現(xiàn)在可能是供過于求的。

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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. Simply hiring 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 recruiters may now be surplus to requirements.

美國計算機行業(yè)協(xié)會 CompTIA(一個行業(yè)組織)的蒂姆·赫伯特說，到目前為止，大多數(shù)技術(shù)人員本身都沒有受到影響。相反，裁員主要集中在銷售和招聘等業(yè)務(wù)部門。近年來，作為科技行業(yè)就業(yè)人數(shù)的一部分，這一比例穩(wěn)步增長，這是膨脹的跡象(見圖2)。

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But the specialists are not immune. As part of its lay-offs, Meta will restructure its tech functions in April. Releasing talented tech workers back into the wild could be a boon for other sectors wrestling with digital reinvention. For years unsexy industries like industrial goods have struggled to compete with the tech industry for talent. Now they are pouncing. 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. Carmakers, increasingly focused on software, are also hungry for tech talent. So are banks, health insurers and retailers.

但專家們也未能幸免。作為裁員的一部分，Meta將在4月份重組其技術(shù)部門。讓有才華的科技員工回歸社會，對于其他正在努力進行數(shù)字化重塑的行業(yè)來說，可能是一件好事。多年來，工業(yè)產(chǎn)品等平淡無奇的行業(yè)一直難以與科技行業(yè)爭奪人才?，F(xiàn)在他們正在突襲。美國拖拉機制造商約翰迪爾一直在搶奪被解雇的技術(shù)員工，以幫助其制造更智能的農(nóng)業(yè)機械。去年，該公司在德克薩斯州蓬勃發(fā)展的科技中心奧斯汀開設(shè)了辦事處。越來越關(guān)注軟件的汽車制造商也渴望科技人才。銀行、健康保險公司和零售商也是如此。

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Some of the laid-off techies are also helping fuel a new generation of startups. Applications in January to Y Combinator, a startup school in Silicon Valley, were up fivefold on the previous year. 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 artworkss—so?much?so?that?even?big?tech?continues?to?hire?enthusiastically?in?the?area?(see?earlier?article).

一些被解雇的技術(shù)人員也在為新一代創(chuàng)業(yè)公司提供動力。今年1月，硅谷創(chuàng)業(yè)孵化器Y Combinator的申請人數(shù)較前一年增長了5倍。在像ChatGPT一樣的“生成式”人工智能這一熱門領(lǐng)域，人們的興奮情緒尤其強烈。生成式AI使用復(fù)雜的算法和大量數(shù)據(jù)來生成從論文到藝術(shù)品的所有東西，因此，即使是大型科技公司也在該領(lǐng)域熱情地招聘。。

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Optimists hope that this technology will, like the smartphone before it, unlock a new wave of creative destruction, as entrepreneurs conjure up a variety of clever applications. 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 tech industry itself.

樂觀主義者希望這項技術(shù)能像之前的智能手機一樣，隨著企業(yè)家們想出各種聰明的應(yīng)用程序，開啟一波新的創(chuàng)造性破壞浪潮。隨著時間的推移，新的人工智能可能意味著對人類營銷人員的需求會更少。但它們可以像之前的其他突破一樣，創(chuàng)造全新的工作類別，尤其是在科技行業(yè)本身。