Apple, Amazon and Alphabet all posted disappointing quarterly results this week, while Facebook parent Meta bucked the gloomy trend in technology with better-than-expected revenue. Apple reported its first revenue drop in nearly four years after COVID-19 restrictions on its factories in China curtailed iPhone sales during the crucial Christmas holiday season.

Tech CEOs at companies like Facebook, Google, and Amazon screwed up — but it's the laid-off employees who are paying the price.

Computer manufacturer Dell is set to cut about 6,650 jobs representing 5 percent of its global workforce, according to a report from Bloomberg. Announced in a memo on Monday, Dell Co-Chief Operating Officer Jeff Clarke said that the company’s previous cost-cutting measures, such as a pause on hiring and limitations on travel, have proved insufficient, and that the company is experiencing market conditions that “continue to erode with an uncertain future.”

Dutch health technology company Philips (PHG.AS) will scrap another 6,000 jobs worldwide as it tries to restore its profitability and improve the safety of its products following a recall of respiratory devices that knocked off 70% of its market value. Half of the job cuts will be made this year, the company said on Monday, adding that the other half will be realised by 2025.

The first month of 2023 has brought brutal layoffs from Big Tech(new window), a potential ban of TikTok in the US(new window), and another Twitter breach(new window). But the biggest development of this new year has to be the ascent of ChatGPT(new window). The chatbot can produce remarkably human-sounding text and, depending on the prompt, even generate creative responses that sound like they could not possibly have come from a computer:

Working from home often pays more than working in an office for jobs in the tech industry, new research has claimed. HR company Remote collected data on more than six million jobs ads from 2022 from employee resource Glassdoor and found that web developer and software engineering roles had the most amount of remote opportunities compared to other professions, making up 37% and 36% of the total remote job market respectively.

Amazon maintains that employees and robots will continue to collaborate within its warehouses, however, according to specialists in robotics, the business may eventually be able to rely on robots to carry out much of the jobs that it currently delegates to human workers.

Amazon.com Inc. is set to begin a round of layoffs ultimately affecting more than 18,000 employees in the largest job cull in its history, which it announced earlier this month. The cuts come as the retailer grapples with slowing online sales growth and braces for a possible recession affecting the spending power of its customers. The eliminations started last year and initially fell hardest on Amazon's Devices and Services group, which builds the Alexa digital assistant and Echo smart speakers. The latest round, scheduled to commence Wednesday, will mostly affect the retail division and human resources.

The internet has come a long way since Tim Berners-Lee invented the world wide web in 1989. Now, in an era of growing concern over privacy, he believes it’s time for us to reclaim our personal data. Through their startup Inrupt, Berners-Lee and CEO John Bruce have created the “Solid Pod” — or Personal Online Data Store.

Amazon announced 18,000 job cuts, Apple’s share price fell below $2tn (£1.7tn) and there was more bad news from Tesla: it has been another tough week for big US tech firms. But this has not been a one-off. The ongoing drama at Twitter since its takeover by Elon Musk in October has taken place against a backdrop of global economic uncertainty, retrenchment from aggressive expansion plans and China’s disruptive transition from Covid lockdowns to rocketing case numbers as restrictions ease.

This was not a great year for Big Tech. In 2022, the economy slumped, stocks fell, inflation skyrocketed, and belts tightened. Silicon Valley was one of the hardest-hit places, partly because some of its companies had experienced such explosive and sustained growth for so long that it almost didn’t seem possible for that growth to stop or even slow down. And yet, here we are.

The document, a copy of which was obtained by Insider, paints a grim view of the company's internal culture and stresses the urgency for change.

Atal Agarwal first came to the US from India five years ago as a graduate student, eventually finding his way into the healthtech sector as a project manager. His employer sponsored his stay in the country, making him a holder of one of the United States' coveted H-1B work visas. But when the tidal wave of layoffs in the tech industry hit his employer, Agarwal found himself without a job — setting off a stressful 60-day timer to either find a new one that would come with visa sponsorship, or return to India.

Apple's rumoured electric car keeps is getting closer to being a reality, but don't expect to pick one up at the Apple Store any time soon, and maybe get your Apple Pay in good shape first, because it'll cost a lot and may not have all the tech you expect.

The ax fell suddenly and out of the blue for technology worker Nitesh Donti. Less than a year ago on the networking platform LinkedIn, he’d expressed excitement over his new job as an engineering manager at robot-vehicle company Nuro. Then last month, Nuro laid off Donti and around 300 others as it slashed 20% of its workforce.

Meta's head of people also said the company will no longer take a public stance on political issues unless the issue is "core" to Meta's business.

Apple Inc is preparing to begin sourcing chips for its devices from a plant under construction in Arizona in the United States, Bloomberg News reported on Tuesday.

In a call with workers at Meta on Wednesday, founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg told employees, “You’ve really put your heart and soul into this place,” before laying off roughly 11,000 people. Meta is joined by a number of other tech companies doing massive layoffs this year, and the trend serves as a stark reminder that your company, no matter how much you give, won’t always love you back.

Looks like no one is safe in this economy, including Amazon's Alexa. Amazon is joining other tech giants like Meta, Twitter, and Microsoft and taking a long, hard look at its least profitable businesses, the Wall Street Journal reported Thursday. Amazon's stock has already plunged 45% this year compared to last year.

Facebook parent Meta is laying off 11,000 people, about 13% of its workforce, as it contends with faltering revenue and broader tech industry woes, CEO Mark Zuckerberg said in a letter to employees Wednesday. The job cuts come just a week after widespread layoffs at Twitter under its new owner, billionaire Elon Musk. There have been numerous job cuts at other tech companies that hired rapidly during the pandemic.