After a year of big layoffs, job cuts at the tech industry’s largest companies trickled into the first month of 2024.
经历了一年的大规模裁员之后，科技行业最大几家公司裁员工作在2024年的第一个月悄然展开。

Google started the year with layoffs of several hundred employees and a promise of more cuts to come. Amazon followed by trimming hundreds of jobs in its Prime Video department. Meta quietly thinned out middle management. Microsoft also cut 1.900 jobs in its video game division.
今年年初，谷歌裁员数百人，并指出将进一步裁员。随后，亚马逊在Prime视频部门裁减了数以百计个工作岗位。Meta悄悄地精简了中层管理人员。微软也在视频游戏部门裁员1900人。

The layoffs continued even as sales and profits jumped and share prices spiked. That disconnect, tech insiders and analysts say, is reflective of an industry facing two big challenges: coming to terms with frenetic work force expansion during the pandemic while also making an aggressive move into building artificial intelligence.
尽管销售额和利润大幅增长，股价飙升，裁员仍在继续。科技业内人士和分析人士表示，这种反差反映了行业面临的两大挑战：一方面要适应疫情期间疯狂的劳动力扩张，另一方面要积极进军人工智能领域。

Now, instead of hiring thousands of people every quarter, the companies are spending billions to build A.I. technology that they believe could one day be worth trillions.
现在，这些公司不再每个季度招聘数千员工，而是投入数十亿美元开发人工智能技术，他们认为这些技术有朝一日可能价值数万亿美元。

Mark Zuckerberg, the chief executive of Meta, said in a call with analysts last week that his company had to lay off employees and control costs “so we can invest in these long-term, ambitious visions around A.I.” He added that he had come to realize that “we operate better as a leaner company.”
Meta的首席执行官马克·扎克伯格上周在与分析师的电话会议上表示，他的公司必须裁员并控制成本，“这样我们才能投资于这些围绕人工智能的长期、雄心勃勃的愿景”。他还说，他已经意识到，“我们作为一家更精简的公司，运营得更好”。

From the end of 2019 to 2023, tech companies scrambled to keep up with an explosion of consumer demand, as people stuck at home splurged on new computers and spent much more time online. Apple, Amazon, Meta, Microsoft and Alphabet, Google’s parent company, added a total of more than 900,000 jobs.
从2019年底到2023年，科技公司争先恐后地跟上消费者需求的爆炸式增长，因为宅在家里的人们纷纷购买新电脑，上网时间也大大增加。苹果、亚马逊、Meta、微软和谷歌的母公司Alphabet总共增加了90多万个就业岗位。

When that boom ended, they were forced to adjust. Meta, Amazon, Microsoft, Google and Apple cut about 112,000 jobs from their respective peaks in 2021 and 2022. But they were still much bigger and more profitable than before the pandemic began.
这一繁荣期结束后，他们被迫进行调整。Meta、亚马逊、微软、谷歌和苹果分别在2021年和2022年削减了约11.2万个工作岗位。但与疫情开始之前相比，它们的规模和利润仍然要大得多。

Today, the five companies employ 2.16 million people, 71 percent more than they had before the pandemic. Combined, they generated $1.63 trillion in sales in their most recent fiscal years, about 81 percent more revenue than five years earlier.
如今，这五家公司雇佣了216万人，比疫情前增加了71%。在最近的一个财政年度里，它们总共创造了1.63万亿美元的销售额，比五年前增长了约81%。

Wall Street has rewarded them. Over the past year, Meta, Amazon, Microsoft, Google and Apple have gained nearly $3.5 trillion in market value.
华尔街奖励了他们。在过去的一年里，Meta、亚马逊、微软、谷歌和苹果的市值增长了近3.5万亿美元。

Employment in the broader tech industry, despite notable cuts at a number of other companies, is still positioned for a rebound. In January, tech delivered its second month of job growth, adding 18,000 workers, according to CompTIA, a technology education and research organization. Its unemployment rate of 3.3 percent is below the national average of 3.7 percent.
尽管其他一些公司也有大幅裁员，但整个科技行业的就业仍有望反弹。根据技术教育和研究机构CompTIA的数据，今年1月，科技行业的就业岗位连续第二个月出现增长，增加了1.8万名员工。它的失业率为3.3%，低于3.7%的全国平均水平。

“We go through these cycles where you see this intense focus on innovation and then the pendulum swings and there’s an intense focus on the bottom line,” said Tim Herbert, CompTIA’s chief research officer. “But when I read that Amazon is cutting back on Alexa workers or Google is cutting staff on its Pixel phone, it tells me there is a focus on margins. They’re trimming where they can and redeploying resources.”
“我们经历了这样的周期，你会看到对创新的强烈关注，然后钟摆摆动，人们会强烈关注收支平衡，”CompTIA首席研究官蒂姆·赫伯特表示。“但当我看到亚马逊正在裁减Alexa员工，或者谷歌正在裁减其Pixel手机的员工时，我就知道，他们关注的是利润率。他们正在尽可能地裁员，并重新部署资源。”

Generative artificial intelligence has altered everyone’s business priorities. The technology, which can answer questions, create images and write code, became an overnight sensation after OpenAI’s chatbot, ChatGPT, exploded in popularity.
生成式人工智能已经改变了所有人的业务重点。在OpenAI的聊天机器人ChatGPT爆红后，这项可以回答问题、创建图像和编写代码的技术一夜之间引起了轰动。

Tech’s biggest companies are rushing to hire engineers to build A.I. systems. Last year, there were 180,000 job postings in the United States related to A.I., including roles in software development, semiconductor engineering and cloud computing, according to CompTIA. The number of A.I. job openings has expanded this year.
最大的科技公司都在争相招聘工程师来构建人工智能系统。根据CompTIA的数据，去年美国有18万个与人工智能相关的职位，包括软件开发、半导体工程和云计算方面的职位。今年，人工智能领域的职位空缺有所增加。

Those employees are helping Microsoft, Google, Amazon and Meta improve chatbots and build other A.I. systems. Apple is hiring for A.I. engineers, as the company develops its own A.I. offering to release later this year.
这些员工正在帮助微软、谷歌、亚马逊和Meta改进聊天机器人，并构建其他人工智能系统。苹果正在招聘人工智能工程师，该公司正在开发自己的人工智能产品，将于今年晚些时候发布。

“Our M.O., if you will, has always been to do work and then talk about work and not to get out in front of ourselves,” Tim Cook, the chief executive of Apple, said on a call with analysts last week. “But we’ve got some things that we’re incredibly excited about.”
“可以说，我们的做法一直是先做工作，然后再谈论工作，而不是事先就吹嘘。”苹果首席执行官蒂姆·库克上周在与分析师的电话会议上说， “但我们已经有了一些让我们非常兴奋的东西。”

The companies are spending billions of dollars on the expensive chips and supercomputers necessary to train and build A.I. systems. By the end of the year, Meta expects to have purchased 350,000 of specialized chips from the chip maker Nvidia, which cost an estimated $30,000 each.
这些公司正在花费数十亿美元购买训练和构建人工智能系统所需的昂贵芯片和超级计算机。到今年年底，Meta预计将从芯片制造商英伟达购买35万个专用芯片，每个芯片的成本估计为3万美元。

The push into generative A.I. has coincided with cuts elsewhere. Google’s layoffs reduced the number of people working on augmented reality technology. Meta, which laid off nearly 20,000 people last year, has been cutting some of its program managers, who oversee different projects and are responsible for keeping teams on schedule.
在推动生成式人工智能发展的同时，其他领域则在裁员。谷歌减少了从事增强现实技术的人数。Meta去年裁掉了近2万人，它一直在裁掉一些项目经理，这些人负责监督不同的项目，并确保团队的工作进度。

Over two years, 2020 and 2021, Amazon doubled its work force to 1.6 million employees as it tried to keep up with a surge of e-commerce orders. The hiring included increasing the number of corporate jobs to 380,000 from 200,000. It has since cut about 30,000 corporate jobs and about 50,000 other jobs, according to a person with knowledge of the changes, and its leadership has made clear that those jobs won’t return any time soon.
在2020年和2021年的两年时间里，亚马逊的员工人数翻了一番，达到160万人，因为它试图跟上电子商务订单的激增。那次的雇用高潮将企业职位从20万个增加到38万个。据一位知情人士透露，此后该公司削减了约3万个企业职位和约5万个其他职位。该公司领导层明确表示，这些职位不会很快恢复。

“We’re looking to hold the line on head count,” Brian Olsavsky, the chief financial officer of Amazon, said during a media call last week.
亚马逊首席财务官布莱恩·奥尔萨夫斯基上周在一次媒体电话会议上表示：“我们希望控制员工人数。”

After laying off more than a thousand employees in January, Google warned employees that rolling layoffs could continue through the year. The exception would be bringing aboard top engineers, Ruth Porat, chief financial officer of Alphabet, Google’s parent company, said during a call with analysts last week.
在1月份解雇了1000多名员工后，谷歌警告员工，滚动裁员可能会持续到今年。谷歌母公司Alphabet的首席财务官露丝·波拉特上周在与分析师的电话会议上表示，引进顶级工程师是个例外。

In contrast with its peers, Apple showed restraint with hiring during the pandemic. But last year, as sales of iPhones, iPads and Macs dropped, the company began to shrink its work force. For the first time in at least 15 years, it reported that its total number of employees declined, even as it avoided making major layoffs.
与同类公司相比，苹果在疫情期间对招聘采取克制态度。但去年，随着iPhone、iPad和Mac销量下降，该公司开始缩减员工规模。至少15年来，该公司首次报告称其员工总数有所减少，尽管它避免了大规模裁员。

The 3,000 fewer jobs that Apple reported at the end of its most recent fiscal year were eliminated largely through attrition, and by encouraging some managers to give tougher annual reviews, according to three people with knowledge of the company’s strategy.
据三名了解苹果战略的人士透露，苹果在最近一个财年结束时宣布裁员3000人，主要是通过自然减员，以及鼓励一些管理人员给出更严格的年度评估来实现的。

An Apple spokesman declined to comment.
苹果发言人拒绝置评。

Microsoft is the only tech company that didn’t report a reduction in its total number of employees. The company employed 221,000 people at the end of its 2023 fiscal year, equal to its post-pandemic peak.
微软是唯一一家没有报告员工总数减少的科技公司。该公司在2023财年末雇佣了22.1万名员工，与疫情后的峰值持平。

Investors have rewarded Microsoft’s stability. Last month, it dethroned Apple as the world’s most valuable company. Its market value is now more than $3 trillion.
投资者对微软的稳定给予了回报。上个月，它取代苹果成为世界上最有价值的公司，市值目前超过3万亿美元。

Tripp Mickle驻旧金山，为《纽约时报》报道苹果和硅谷。他关注的苹果相关议题包括产品发布、制造问题和政治挑战。他还撰写了有关整个科技行业趋势的文章，包括裁员、生成式人工智能和机器人出租车。点击查看更多关于他的信息。

翻译：晋其角