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Hiring & firing

This Month

Approvals have slowed in home building and its fuelling retrenchments in the industry.

The industries making the most people redundant

Almost one in four people made redundant between November last year and August this year worked in construction or professional, scientific and technical services.

  • Euan Black
Spotify chief Daniel Ek has made a tough call on a third round of redundancies this year.

Spotify lays off 1500 staff after podcast spending spree

It’s a gloomy end to the year for employees at the music streaming giant, as 17 per cent of the company has been shown the door.

  • Adam Satariano

November

Edrolo co-founders Jeremy Cox, Ben Sze, and Duncan Anderson remain directors but are no longer running the company.

‘Large swaths’ of staff cut at heavily backed start-up

Education tech start-up Edrolo is in an industry threatened by disruption from the rise of generative artificial intelligence, big money backers have cause for concern.

  • Nick Bonyhady
As the labour market shifts, employers will start to make some decisions around who to retain and the circumstances under which they retain staff, says Innes Willox.

WFH employees may find themselves at the front of a redundancy queue

Employees who spend the vast majority of their time working from home may suffer from being “out of sight and out of mind”.

  • Sally Patten and Euan Black
Amir Ansari did a lot of networking and coffee catch ups to help land his current role.

‘Reality check’: Tech workers feel the pain of white-collar slowdown

Amir Ansari is a technology executive with more than 25 years of experience. In June, he was made redundant for the first time in his career. 

  • Euan Black
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Hilton is encouraging job candidates to apply for roles via TikTok.

Hilton wants job applicants to send a TikTok video, not their CV

The hotel operator says social-media videos are a better test for customer-service roles as AI increases doubts over the value of cover letters and resumes.

  • Euan Black

October

George Clooney as Ryan Bingham in the 2009 movie Up in the Air, who fired people for a job. Even he warned about firing people over the internet.

Downsizing by stealth: How not to lay off staff

Mass redundancies kicked up a gear this year as profits have been squeezed. But not all employers have been upfront about the cuts and some have done it better than others.

  • Euan Black

September

Slyp chief executive and co-founder Paul Weingarth said the cuts were one of the hardest decisions he had made.

Start-up backed by big four banks cuts 30pc of its staff

Slyp says it still has the banks’ backing, despite its technology only working in NAB’s app.

  • Nick Bonyhady
Tambla is drawing comparisons to IntelliHR.

Allier Capital hired to shop HR software biz Tambla

Tambla is expected to fetch $50 million to $100 million.

  • Sarah Thompson, Kanika Sood and Emma Rapaport

August

Richard White said WiseTech never bought into the “silliness” in the job market.

Tech workers take $20,000-plus pay cuts as fired talent floods market

Salaries exploded during the pandemic as cashed up companies threw money at skilled workers, but recruiters and CEOs say job cuts have made the job market tougher.

  • Tess Bennett
NAB boss Ross McEwan.

NAB prepares bank-wide job cuts; 60 in markets to go

National Australia Bank is preparing to hand down redundancies to about 10 per cent of the staff manning its markets division, Street Talk can reveal.

  • Sarah Thompson, Kanika Sood and Emma Rapaport

July

CBA boss Matt Comyn.

CBA swings the axe on staff; job cuts across the board

Commonwealth Bank is following in the footsteps of its peers, setting the wheels in motion for a big round of staff cuts.

  • Sarah Thompson, Kanika Sood and Emma Rapaport
Australian staff at Microsoft were hit with redundancies last week, along with their peers internationally.

Microsoft fires Australian staff in fresh global cull

Australian employees of the US tech giant have been shocked by a fresh redundancy hit that takes the number of local staff fired to close to 200 so far in 2023.

  • Paul Smith

June

Linktree Founders Nick Humphreys and brothers Anthony and Alex Zaccaria will remain based in its Collingwood offices, despite sacking a quarter of staff.

Linktree sacks a quarter of its staff

After its product was matched by Instagram, the venture capital favourite has made 60 employees redundant in a move it says will help it grow faster in the US.

  • Paul Smith

March

Goldman Sachs CEO David Solomon took a different, more drawn out approach to cutting staff.

Who to fire? How the biggest companies plan mass lay-offs

Employers such as Goldman Sachs, Meta and Ford have taken different approaches to laying off staff. Can they avoid lasting damage to morale?

  • Brooke Masters
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February

Kate Gundelach was laid off from Snap after 5 years and now has a new job.

Aussie tech workers brush off ‘brutal’ sackings as new jobs abound

Australian tech workers have faced the reality of learning about their sacking by email or calendar invite, but they say plenty of fresh opportunities exist.

  • Tess Bennett
Credit Suisse is raising $660 million in debt that will be converted to equity in the rebranded Credit Suisse First Boston investment bank.

Credit Suisse wins Jefferies banker, bonuses hinder First Boston reset

Joel Chalhoub joins the Swiss bank, which has snared a handful of rainmakers in the last two years, but the spectre of staggered bonuses hang over the Street.

  • Aaron Weinman
Federico Collarte, the founder and CEO of Baraja, says job losses have been necessary to enable the longer term prospects of the company.

Mass redundancies at $300m driverless car start-up Baraja

Baraja, a heavily backed Australian driverless technology start-up valued at $300 million in 2021, has laid off a large chunk of its workforce.

  • Paul Smith
Jefferies’ Australian business upped its employee expenses by some $20 million in 2021.

Jefferies doles out bumper bonuses as Wall Street tightens spending

The firm has rewarded its troops healthy compensation after logging about $100 million in investment banking revenue.

  • Aaron Weinman

January

JPMorgan boss Jamie Dimon said the economy faced headwinds from the war in Ukraine, inflation and quantitative tightening.

JPMorgan joins Wall Street’s bonus cutters

The largest bank in the US has softened its investment banking compensation pool by about 30 per cent from last year after a slump in dealmaking.

  • Aaron Weinman