NYTimes: As the Start-Up Boom Deflates, Tech Is Humbled
Over the past decade, technology start-ups grew so quickly that they couldn’t hire people fast enough.
Now the layoffs have started coming in droves. Last month, the robot pizza start-up Zume and the car-sharing company Getaround slashed more than 500 jobs. Then the DNA testing company 23andMe, the logistics start-up Flexport, the Firefox maker Mozilla and the question-and-answer website Quora did their own cuts.
“It feels like a reckoning is here,” said Josh Wolfe, a venture capitalist at Lux Capital in New York.
It’s a humbling shift for an industry that long saw itself as an engine of job creation and innovation, producing the ride-hailing giant Uber, the hospitality company Airbnb and other now well-known brands that often disrupted entrenched industries.