Amazon and Meta's 48,000 job cuts usher in Big Tech's new mantra: Revenue per employee

• Amazon and Meta say their combined 48,000 job losses are about getting leaner.

• For remaining employees, that means being squeezed for value.

• The age of growth is over, and the age of revenue-per-employee is in.

Amazon employees that have managed to cling onto their jobs after two devastating rounds of layoffs in the space of three months may feel like they've survived the worst of a brutal period in tech. They're not off the hook yet: Workers will have to fight tooth and nail to prove their worth.

Amazon CEO Andy Jassy made this much clear when announcing on Monday that the company will be laying off around 9,000 workers, including at its cloud business AWS and Twitch. That adds to the 18,000 Amazon already culled in January with an eye to getting leaner.

"Given the uncertain economy in which we reside, and the uncertainty that exists in the near future, we have chosen to be more streamlined in our costs and headcount," Jassy wrote in a blog post.

Meta's Mark Zuckerberg has likewise culled a further 10,000 workers in his "year of efficiency", on top of the 11,000 announced last November.

All told, the two firms have cut 48,000 jobs across two waves of layoffs in less than six months.

This neatly fits a renewed tech drive for lean operations.

The rationale is that these firms over-hired during the pandemic and need to readjust to a high-interest rate economy that makes fighting for every dollar harder.

The tech workforce is about to be squeezed for every last dollar.

Squeezing revenue dollars out of every employee

Specifically, tech leaders are likely to focus in on a metric that fell out of vogue during the boom years.