Tech companies slash more than 3,900 Bay Area jobs in 2024 as layoffs widen

Tech companies have revealed decisions to slash more than 3,900 jobs in the Bay Area so far in 2024, cutbacks fueled by hundreds of staffing reductions in February that hint at a forbidding year for the crucial industry.

Salesforce, Snap, Maxar Space and Activision Blizzard are among the high-profile companies that have disclosed plans for job cuts affecting their employees in the Bay Area, according to official filings with the state Employment Development Department.

All told, tech companies have disclosed plans to eliminate 3,950 jobs in the Bay Area in 2024, according to this news organization's review of WARN notices posted by the state EDD.

Here are the details of the most recent layoff notices by tech companies and their impact in the Bay Area. All of these disclosures of job cuts were posted in February by the EDD.

• Activision Blizzard, 162 job cuts, affecting workers in Novato and San Mateo. The layoffs are due to occur March 30, the video game company reported.
• Flexport, 99 layoffs in San Francisco. The web-based logistics company's staffing reductions occurred on Feb. 5.
• Okta, 83 staff cutbacks in San Francisco. The cloud software services firm plans to make its layoffs effective April 4.
• Wayfair, 72 job cuts in Mountain View. The online home goods and home accessories retailer plans to make its cutbacks effective on March 19.
• Maxar Space, 63 layoffs in Palo Alto and Mountain View. These cutbacks occurred on Feb. 2, the maker of aerospace systems and technology products reported.
• Snap, 52 staff reductions in Palo Alto. The owner of the Snapchat app and maker of a wearable camera said its cutbacks occurred on Feb. 6.
• Salesforce, 51 job cuts in San Francisco. The cloud-based software titan is slated to conduct these job cuts on April 23.
• SMTC, one job loss in Milpitas. The provider of electronics manufacturing services said the layoff will occur on March 22.

Combined, these layoffs posted in February on the EDD site totaled 583 job losses, a review of the EDD WARN notices shows.

The companies described the respective layoffs as permanent, the WARN notices show.

In 2023, tech companies revealed plans for nearly 21,600 job cuts in the Bay area, according to the EDD WARN notices. That amount greatly exceeded the more than 10,300 layoffs of tech workers in the Bay Area during 2022.

After slightly more than five weeks—or about 10% of the 52 weeks in 2024—the tech layoffs so far this year in the Bay Area equate to 18% of the tech job cuts in the nine-county region for all of 2023, a review of the current pace of WARN notices shows.