Comparing Google, Meta, and Twitter cost savings from layoffs

March 1, 2023

It’s no secret that layoffs are an effective cost-cutting measure. But just how effective are they for tech giants like Google, Meta, and Twitter?

Looking through WARN notices from these three companies (which reflect all of their California layoffs), and combining that information with salary data from layoffs.fyi makes this much easier to answer.

For this exercise, we looked at engineering roles at the three companies, which led us to the following estimates.

ㅤ	Engineers laid off in CA	Payroll savings (estimate)	% 2022 revenue	% 2022 profit
Google	1,211	$372,622,000	0.13%	0.63%
Meta	952	$315,130,000	0.27%	0.8%
Twitter	77	$36,120,000	1.5%	N/A

Keep in mind that these are not total payroll savings, but estimated payroll savings for layoffs of engineering positions in California.

Payroll savings distribution by Level

Google

Twitter

FAQ

Q: Why are you only looking at engineering roles?

A: Engineering roles provided the most reliable salary data, and also represented a significant percentage of the affected population. Because this data processing required significant time stitching together different sources and manually validating data, we decided to focus on these roles

Q: Why are you only looking at California?

A: WARN records from other states provide far less information than California WARN records. Because California data has been the most reliable and granular, and because the majority of these companies are headquartered in California, this has been our focus.

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