貓哭耗子？硅谷裁員潮後，大廠員工何去何從？ | 經濟學人商業_風聞
大眼联盟-04-09 09:40
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Where have all the laid-off tech workers gone_音頻：00:0005:35
Business | The sack of Silicon Valley
商業 | 硅谷裁員潮
英文部分選自經濟學人20230401商業版塊
Business | The sack of Silicon Valley
商業 | 硅谷裁員潮
Where have all the sacked tech workers gone?
被裁之後，大廠員工何去何從？
Employment in the technology industry has reached an inflection point
科技行業就業已達拐點
註釋（參見Cambridge Dictionary）：
1. sack：remove sb. from job/a situation in which sb. is removed from the job. 解僱
2. inflection: change in a word (grammar) or change in voice (speech). 變化
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.
要想了解最近幾個月硅谷的基調轉變，只需看向馬克·扎克伯格（Mark Zuckerberg）今年2月的宣言：2023將是“效率之年”。這番宣言平平無奇，很難讓人心跳加速——可如果你是扎克伯格手下的員工，情況就不一樣了。3月14日，扎克伯格掌管的科技巨頭Meta宣佈，將在去年11月裁員1.1萬人的基礎上再解僱1萬名員工。
註釋：
1. pulse: the regular beating of the heart, especially when it is felt at the wrist or side of the neck. (Cambridge Dictionary) 脈搏
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. And more may lie ahead. 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.
宣佈裁員計劃的不止Meta一家。3月20日，另一家科技巨頭亞馬遜也宣稱將再裁員9000人，此前亞馬遜已辭退了1.8萬名白領。據數據公司Crunchbase統計，在去年削減14萬個職位的基礎上，今年到目前為止，美國科技公司宣佈的裁員人數已達11.8萬人。後續可能還有更多人被裁。商業軟件公司Salesforce今年1月宣佈裁員8000人，3月24日，其首席運營官暗示很快將進行下一波裁員。
註釋：
1. behemonth: something that is extremely large and often extremely powerful. (Cambridge Dictionary) 龐然大物
Investors have cheered tech’s new-found cost-consciousness. The tech-heavy NASDAQ index is up 16% on its recent low point in late December. And there is more to come. 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.
投資者們卻為科技公司最近形成的成本意識而歡呼。以科技股為主的納斯達克指數較最近的低位（去年12月底）上漲了16%，而這還僅僅只是開始。自2022年初以來的被裁人數僅佔美國科技行業勞動力的6%。因為科技公司2022一整年都在持續招人，裁員風波才剛剛開始引起行業總就業人數的下降（見圖1）。反觀本世紀初，美國科技行業勞動力規模從互聯網繁榮期的峯值下跌了23%，於2003年年底抵達低谷，工作崗位鋭減68.5萬個。
註釋：
1. nadir: the worst moment or the lowest point. 最低點（參見Cambridge Dictionary）
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?
儘管如此，最近的裁員風波範圍之廣、影響之深引發了兩個問題：哪些崗位會被裁掉？被裁員工該去往何方？
註釋：
1.warrant: (make necessary) to make a particular action necessary or correct, or to be a reason to do something. (Cambridge Dictionary)
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). 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.
美國計算機行業協會（CompTIA）首席研究官蒂姆·郝伯特（Tim Herbert）表示，目前為止技術人員大多數都“倖免於難”，而裁員之斧主要落在了銷售和招聘等業務部門上。近年來，銷售和招聘部門在科技行業勞動力所佔的比例持續上升，説明這一領域也出現人員冗餘的現象（見圖2）。從2020年春季疫情最嚴重時開始，到2023年年初就業人數達到峯值，這期間科技行業新增就業約一百萬人左右。單單招入數量如此龐大的人員就需要招入大量的招聘人員；獵頭圈的經驗是：一名招聘人員一年能招聘25人。如今，許多招聘人員已經不再需要了。
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.
然而，技術人員也難逃裁員之斧。Meta將在4月重組技術職能部門，這也是裁員計劃的一部分。技術人才重返就業市場，對那些正竭力實現數字化轉型的行業來説可謂是一大福音。多年來，工業產品等傳統行業與科技行業相比，吸引力不足，難以與之爭奪人才，現如今他們終於可以一撲而上。美國拖拉機製造商迪爾公司（John Deere）一直在招兵買馬，僱傭下崗技術人員設計製造更加智能的農用機械產品。去年，迪爾公司在德克薩斯州的科技中心奧斯丁設立辦事處。汽車廠商越來越注重軟件，對技術人才也是求賢若渴。銀行、醫療保險公司、零售商亦是如此。
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 artworks (indeed, this is one area where big tech continues to hire enthusiastically).
下崗技術人員也為新一代初創企業注入新鮮血液。今年一月，位於硅谷的創業孵化器Y Combinator收到的申請數量同比增長了5倍。ChatGPT這類“生成式”人工智能領域正是時下的熱門風口。“生成式”人工智能利用複雜算法和海量數據，生成各種各樣的“產品”，如論文或藝術品。事實上，科技巨頭也一直在該領域積極地招賢納才。
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.
樂天派希望，隨着企業家“變出”五花八門的神奇應用程序，該項技術能和先前的智能手機一樣，掀起新一波創造性顛覆之潮。有朝一日，新型AI甚至有可能取代市場營銷人員的工作。但它們也能像先前的其他技術突破一樣，創造出全新的工作類別——尤其是在科技行業本身。
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