《经济学人》双语：科技行业被裁的员工去哪了？

原文标题：
Technology
The sack of Silicon Valley
Where have all the laid-off tech workers gone?
技术业
硅谷裁员
裁员后的科技从业者们去哪了？

Employment in the technology industry has reached an inflection point
科技产业的就业形势已经到达了一个拐点

[Paragraph 1]
TO UNDERSTAND THE shift in tone that has taken place in Silicon Valley in recent months, look no further than Mark Zuckerberg’s declaration in February that 2023 would be the “year of efficiency”.
要理解最近几个月硅谷语气的转变，只需看看马克·扎克伯格2月份的声明即可：“2023将是效率之年”。

It is hardly the kind of language to set the pulse racing—unless you are an employee on the receiving end of it.
这种说法不太可能引起激情——除非你是即将被裁的员工。

On March 14th Meta, the tech giant Mr Zuckerberg runs, announced it would fire 10,000 staff—on top of the 11,000 it laid off last November.
3月14日，Meta这家科技巨头宣布将再次裁掉1万名员工，而去年11月已经裁掉了1.1万人。

[Paragraph 2]

Meta is not alone. On March 20th Amazon, another tech behemoth, said it would cut a further 9,000 corporate employees, having already sacked 18,000 white-collar types.

无独有偶，3月20日，亚马逊也宣布将再裁掉9000名员工，此前已经裁掉了1.8万名白领员工。

So far this year American tech firms have announced 118,000 sackings, according to Crunchbase, a data provider, adding to the 140,000 jobs cut last year.
根据数据提供商Crunchbase的数据，今年迄今为止，美国科技公司已经宣布裁员11.8万人，去年已经裁去了14万个岗位。

[Paragraph 3]

Investors have cheered tech’s new-found cost-consciousness. The technology-heavy NASDAQ index is up by 17% from its recent low point in late December.

投资者对科技行业新的成本意识感到高兴。以科技为权重的纳斯达克指数自去年12月末的低点以来已经上涨了17%。

The companies are hearing the market’s message loud and clear. On March 24th the chief operating officer of Salesforce, a business-software firm, hinted that the company would soon add to the 8,000 lay-offs it announced in January.

这些公司听到了市场的声音。3月24日，企业软件公司Salesforce的首席运营官暗示，公司将启动新一轮裁员，此前1月份宣布裁掉8,000人。

[Paragraph 4]
They have a way to go: firings since the start of 2022 represent only 6% of the American tech industry’s workforce.
他们还有很长的路要走：自2022年初以来的裁员仅占美国科技行业劳动力的6％。

Because tech companies continued to hire throughout 2022, lay-offs have only just begun to reduce total industry employment (see chart 1).
由于科技公司在2022年持续招聘，裁员才刚刚开始减少整个行业的就业人数（见图表1）。

By comparison, between the peak of the dotcom boom at the start of the 2000s and its nadir at the end of 2003, America’s overall tech workforce declined by 23%, or 685,000 jobs.
相比之下，在本世纪初的互联网颠覆时期到2003年底的低谷期间，美国整个科技就业人数量减少了23%，即68.5万个岗位。

[Paragraph 5]
Still, the recent lay-offs have already been widespread and deep enough to warrant two questions.
尽管如此，近期的裁员如此普遍且深刻，以致于引发了2个问题。

First, who is getting the chop? And second, where are the laid-off workers going?
第一，被裁员的是谁？第二，被裁的人去哪里了？

[Paragraph 6]
So far techies themselves have been mostly spared, observes Tim Herbert of the Computing Technology Industry Association, a trade body.
计算技术行业协会的蒂姆·赫伯特指出，迄今为止，大多数技术部的人幸免被裁。

Instead, the axe has fallen mainly on business functions such as sales and recruitment.
相反，裁员主要集中在销售和招聘等业务部门上。

These had grown steadily as a share of technology-industry employment in recent years, a telltale sign of bloat (see chart 2).
近年来，这些业务部门在科技行业就业中所占比例稳步增长，这是膨胀的一个标志（见图2）。

[Paragraph 7]
Between the depths of the pandemic in the spring of 2020 and peak employment at the start of 2023, the tech sector added around 1m workers.
从2020年春季疫情最严重时期到2023年初就业高峰期之间，科技行业新增加了100万名从业者。

Simply enlisting such numbers required hiring plenty of recruiters; as a headhunting rule of thumb, one recruiter can hire 25 new employees a year. Many of those same recruiters may now be surplus to requirements.
要招募这么多人，就需要雇佣大量的招聘专员；按照猎头的经验法则，一个招聘专员每年可以招聘25名新员工。现在，许多招聘专员已经多余了。

[Paragraph 8]
But the specialists are not immune to the efficiency drive. As part of its lay-offs, Meta will restructure its tech functions in April.
然而，专业人员也难逃被裁的命运。作为裁员的一部分，Meta将于4月重组技术部门。

Releasing talented tech workers back into the wild could be a boon for other sectors wrestling with digital reinvention.
释放才华横溢的技术人员到市场上，可能有利于其他正在进行数字化改革的行业。

For years unsexy industries like industrial goods have struggled to compete with the tech industry for talent. Now they are pouncing.
多年来，一些不起眼行业（如工业制品）一直在与科技行业争夺人才。现在他们正在抓住机会。

John Deere, an American tractor-maker, has been snapping up fired tech workers to help it make smarter farm machinery.Last year the firm opened an office in Austin, a thriving tech hub in Texas.
美国拖拉机制造商约翰迪尔正在争抢被解雇的技术人才，来帮助它制造更智能的农业机械。去年，该公司在得克萨斯州蓬勃发展的科技中心奥斯汀开设了一家办事处。

Carmakers, increasingly focused on software, are also hungry for technologists. So are banks, health insurers and retailers.
汽车制造商越来越注重软件，也渴望招聘技术人才。银行、医疗保险公司和零售商也是如此。

[Paragraph 9]
Some of the laid-off techies are helping fuel a new generation of startups.
一些被裁的技术人才正在推动新一代创业公司的崛起。

Applications in January to Y Combinator, a startup school in Silicon Valley, were up five-fold on the previous year.
硅谷的创业孵化器Y Combinator1月份的申请量是去年同期的5倍。

Excitement is particularly strong in the buzzy field of ChatGPT-like “generative” artificial intelligence (AI), which uses complex algorithms and oodles of data to produce everything from essays to artworks—so much so that even big tech continues to hire enthusiastically in the area.
ChatGPT这样的“生成式”人工智能（AI）领域的激动情绪尤为强烈，它使用复杂算法和海量数据生成文章、艺术品等各种内容，以至于大型科技公司仍在积极招聘该领域的人才。

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Optimists hope that this technology will, like the smartphone before it, unlock a new wave of creative destruction, as AI entrepreneurs conjure up a variety of clever applications.
乐观主义者希望，这种技术将像智能手机一样，开启一波新的创新热潮，因为AI企业家将创造各种各样聪明的应用程序。

The new AIs may in time mean even less need for, say, human marketers. But they could, like other breakthroughs before them, create entirely new job categories—not least in the technology industry itself.
新的人工智能可能会逐渐减少面向人类的市场营销等岗位的需求。但是，它们可能像以前的其他科技突破一样，会创造出全新的工作岗位，尤其是在科技行业本身的岗位。

（恭喜读完，本篇英语词汇量688左右）
原文出自：2023年4月1日《The Economist》Business版块。

精读笔记来源于：自由英语之路

本文翻译整理: Irene本文编辑校对: Irene
仅供个人英语学习交流使用。

【补充资料】（来自于网络）
Salesforce是创建于1999年3月的一家客户关系管理(CRM) 软件服务提供商，总部设于美国旧金山，可提供随需应用的客户关系管理平台。Salesforce允许客户与独立软件供应商定制并整合其产品，同时建立他们各自所需的应用软件。对于用户而言，则可以避免购买硬件、开发软件等前期投资以及复杂的后台管理问题。因其口号“软件的终结”，故在业内常被称作“软件终结者”。

约翰迪尔John Deere是世界领先的农业和林业领域先进产品和服务供应商，是主要的建筑、草坪和场地养护、景观工程和灌溉领域先进产品和服务供应商。约翰迪尔也在全球提供金融服务，并制造、销售重型设备发动机。

Y Combinator成立于2005年，是美国著名创业孵化器，Y Combinator扶持初创企业并为其提供创业指南。

【重点句子】（3 个）
Instead, the axe has fallen mainly on business functions such as sales and recruitment.
相反，裁员主要集中在销售和招聘等业务部门上。

Releasing talented tech workers back into the wild could be a boon for other sectors wrestling with digital reinvention.
释放才华横溢的技术人员到市场上，可能有利于其他正在进行数字化改革的行业。

Some of the laid-off techies are helping fuel a new generation of startups.
一些被裁的技术人才正在推动新一代创业公司的崛起。