Techies earning up to $1 mn a year laid off at Big Tech firms

San Francisco, Jan 23 As Big Tech layoffs dominate headlines, more details have emerged on which verticals and senior executives earning up to $1 million annually bore the maximum brunt at Google, Microsoft, and Amazon.

At Google, laid-off employees included those who had previously received high performance reviews or held managerial positions "with annual compensation packages of $500,000 to $1 million,a reports The Information.

According to the report, 12,000 impacted employees belonged to every department, from Google Cloud and Chrome to Android and "search-related groups under senior executive Prabhakar Raghavan".

Google Cloud laid off people in strategy, recruiting, and go-to-market teams, the report mentioned.

Google's parent company Alphabet's in-house research and development (R&D) division called Area 120 was also significantly hit.

Majority of the Area 120 team has been "winded down".

At Microsoft, which laid off 10,000 employees, game development studios like Halo were the biggest hit. Other cuts impacted its mixed-reality (MR) headset teams.

Microsoft has also shut down AltspaceVR virtual reality-based social platform it acquired in 2017.

Amazon's layoffs included jobs in the devices and services division.

The job cut affected nearly 2,000 people in hardware chief Dave Limp's division, which is home to products like Alexa and Echo smart home devices.

CNBC reported the layoffs also included a "significant number" of employees working on the Prime Air drone delivery project.

Amazon will also shut down its charity donation programme, "AmazonSmile", as it failed to create the impact the company hoped for.