Another day, another job cut announced!! The Tech Industry is facing one of the most turbulent times, courtesy of the rise of advanced artificial intelligence LLM models. Big Tech companies across US are announcing job cuts and mass layoffs, due to automation of jobs and the rest of the jobs now redundant. Oracle and Salesforce are two such companies that have announced job cuts recently.
Oracle recently confirmed it will be eliminating more than 250 roles across Redwood City, Pleasanton, and Santa Clara. Further north in Seattle, another 101 employees will soon exit. Salesforce, too, is also reportedly reducing its workforce, with plans to cut over 260 roles in San Francisco and nearly 100 more in the Seattle region. These job cuts are set to take effect from 3 November.
Why sudden job cuts?
The reason behind these latest cuts is familiar, restructuring and efficiency. In fact, for Salesforce, the plans are also directly tied to its AI platform Agentforce. The company has revealed that its new AI platform, which was deployed last year, is already handling a huge chunk of customer support queries. With automation resolving millions of cases, Salesforce says it no longer requires as many human engineers in that division. “At the start of this year we deployed help.agentforce.com. Because of the benefits and efficiencies of Agentforce, we’ve seen the number of support cases we handle decline, and we no longer need to actively backfill support engineer roles. We’ve successfully redeployed hundreds of employees into other areas like professional services, sales, and customer success,” a Salesforce spokesperson explained.
Indian IT Firms aren’t sheltered from AI!
While the 2025 layoffs largely shook Silicon Valley, the tremors have now spread to the Indian IT sector, which once seemed immune. In July, Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) shocked employees when it confirmed that it will be cutting down around 12,000 roles, that is roughly 2 per cent of its workforce. The company said that it is preparing for a “future-ready organisation,” investing in AI, next-gen infrastructure, and new markets. However, the company also has its controversial “bench policy,” which limits how long employees can remain unassigned to projects.
Industry-wide Trend?
Intel, Meta, and Google also cutting jobs while restructuring. Intel is also in the midst of one of the deepest cuts of the year. The chipmaker has announced plans to reduce its global headcount by as many as 25,000 employees by the end of 2025. Meta, which is investing heavily in AI, is also trimming down. The company let go of around 3,600 employees this year, many labelled as “low performers.” Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg has openly said he wants to raise the bar on output and achieve “non-regrettable attrition.” Google, too, has continued trimming. Several rounds of layoffs, along with voluntary exit programmes, have affected teams across Search, Ads, Engineering, and Marketing, as the company refocuses on AI-first initiatives.
Joining the big techs, Scale AI also let go of 200 full-time staff and 500 contractors in July, while cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike axed around 500 roles to streamline costs.
