Tencent starts firing employees from video streaming, gaming departments

The layoff season is far from over in the tech industry. After Twitter, Meta, Tencent holdings has announced a second round of layoffs in the company. Tencent had previously conducted layoffs in the month of August this year. As per Reuters report, the layoffs are being carried out in the video streaming, gaming and cloud businesses. It is unclear how many people will be impacted in the current layoffs. Earlier, the company had fired close to 5500 employees.

The Reuters report reveals that Tencent has started trimming the workforce yet again. The sources informed the news agency that the said layoffs will affect three out of Tencent's six business divisions - platform and content (PCG), which comprises its video and news platforms, its gaming-focused interactive entertainment department (IEG) and cloud and smart industries group (CSIG). The sources told the agency that some of the staff at IEG were informed about the layoffs last month.

Tencent had cut jobs back in August. The company had cited cost cutting as the reason behind the layoffs. In August, Tencent revealed that its employee count fell to 110,715 by the end of June from 116,213 in March. Tencent, however, has refused to comment on the fresh round of layoffs.

"Tencent management have said they are focused on cutting costs and have shuttered non-core businesses in certain areas, including online education, e-commerce and game live-streaming", as per Reuters. The Chinese tech company had previously frozen hirings for the first time in a decade to cut costs.

Layoffs have grappled with the tech industry. Only a week ago, Twitter fired close to 3500 employees and Meta fired around 11,000 employees. Now tech giant Amazon is also expected to part ways with around 10,000 employees.

As per a New York Times report, Amazon is set to conduct its biggest layoffs ever. The e-commerce giant will affect its retail division and human resource department. Amazon may part ways with close to 10,000, which represents up tp 3 per cent of Amazon's corporate employees and 1 per cent of the global workforce.

The post by Beth Galetti, Amazon's senior vice president, notes, "We anticipate keeping this pause in place for the next few months and will continue to monitor what we're seeing in the economy and the business to adjust as we think makes sense".