PayPal’s CEO has called for “mutual compassion” as peers lay off thousands of employees.
The digital payments company has announced it will cut about 7% of its workforce, leaving 2,000 people out of work.
PayPal CEO Dan Schulman said, “Change is difficult, especially when it involves the departure of a valued colleague or friend.”
PayPal joins a string of tech companies that have cut jobs this year. Amazon has announced it will cut 18,000 jobs and Google will cut 12,000. Microsoft announced it would lay off 10,000 people.
After aggressively hiring during the pandemic, tech companies are betting on a permanent digital boom to cut jobs. But the recession has forced them to scale back that target.
Shulman, 65, said retiring employees will be treated “with the utmost respect and empathy.” He added that he was “confident that together, with mutual compassion… we will move forward.”
Tech morale has plummeted as a result of mass layoffs. Some employees were found to have been laid off because their corporate logins were no longer working or their work pass was automatically disabled.
Shulman, who received $32 million in salary and stock-based compensation last year, is an advocate of “stakeholder capitalism,” according to which companies serve the interests of not only shareholders but also employees, suppliers, the planet and the general public. should contribute.
This theory has been criticized by Republican politicians in the United States as a kind of “awakened capitalism”.
Shulman said the company’s values “center around fighting discrimination of all kinds.” But the company has come under fire from some British politicians last year when it suspended payments to free speech advocate Toby Young. This ban has since been overturned.
The job cuts come after PayPal announced a stock buyback program worth up to $15 billion last summer under pressure from activist shareholder Elliott Management.
It is also trying to cut costs after last year’s decline in stock prices.
Meanwhile, chip maker Intel plans to cut executive pay to save money without layoffs. A 25% pay cut for the CEO and a 10% cut for other senior executives.
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