HUMAN CAPITAL PULSE: TECHNOLOGY · ISSUE 10 · OCTOBER 2026
A monthly Human Capital benchmark for HR and People leaders in Technology: the sector's talking points and how culture, workforce and talent compare across your peers, built on Deltabase data covering 5,500+ companies and 11M employee reviews.
October showed how thin most Human Capital reporting still is. Meta reported a 15% fall in headcount alongside 26% revenue growth, tech job cuts jumped again in September and Amazon made fresh cuts in its Stores business. This issue sets out a board-ready Technology scorecard that puts culture, workforce shape, skills and turnover on one page.
Leroy Hall, Deltabase
What happened: Meta's third-quarter results, released on 21 October, reported headcount of 66,775 at 30 September 2026, down 15% year on year, while revenue rose 26% to $64.60bn.
The Deltabase lens: Workforce: A headcount total hides the mix a board needs to see. In Deltabase Workforce data, 4.7% of Meta's workforce sits in Legal Services, 3.8% in Product and 2.9% in Research & Development. Turnover: Departures in January–August 2026 were 15,172, against 13,727 a year earlier.
So what: Report where the workforce sits and who is leaving, not just how many remain; that is what turns a headcount line into Human Capital reporting.
What happened: Challenger, Gray & Christmas counted 10,799 US tech job cuts in September, up 77% from 6,103 in August, taking the 2026 total to 165,925, up 54% on a year earlier. AI has been cited in 120,136 cuts this year, the leading reason, Fast Company reported.
The Deltabase lens: Culture: Leadership sentiment has been slipping ahead of the cuts. Supportive Leadership NSS fell at seven of our ten Technology companies in 2025, and the median moved from −21.1% to −22.7%.
So what: Boards approving AI-linked restructures should see leadership sentiment alongside the savings case.
What happened: Amazon confirmed a small number of job cuts, mainly in its Stores unit, during Prime Big Deal Days. Fewer than 1,000 corporate employees in the US, India and the UK were affected, according to a person familiar with the matter, Reuters reported. They follow a 30,000-job round that began in 2025 and ran into January.
The Deltabase lens: Talent: 10.9% of Amazon's workforce lists customer service skills, against 10.3% for software development. Culture: Career Progression NSS fell from −22.3% to −30.9% in 2025 (18,337 reviews).
So what: Repeated smaller rounds wear down career confidence; track it quarter by quarter, not only after the big announcements.
9 of 10: Technology Top 100 companies had lower average monthly turnover in January–August 2026 than a year earlier; only Oracle rose.
| Company | Culture: overall NSS, 2025 (2024) | Culture: Supportive Leadership NSS, 2025 | Workforce: % in Tech | Turnover: avg monthly, Jan–Aug 2026 (2025) |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Arm Holdings | +37.9% (+24.5%) | −12.7% | 42.5% | 0.62% (0.83%) |
| Alphabet (Google) | +14.8% (+12.9%) | −16.3% | 43.2% | 0.65% (0.85%) |
| Microsoft | +10.9% (+12.4%) | −24.6% | 46.9% | 1.60% (1.77%) |
| SAP | +10.1% (+16.0%) | −12.1% | 25.7% | 0.45% (0.65%) |
| IBM | +6.4% (+6.5%) | −20.9% | 44.6% | 0.68% (0.96%) |
| Oracle | −1.4% (0.0%) | −15.1% | 31.4% | 1.08% (0.70%) |
Source: Deltabase Culture data, Employee Net Sentiment Score (−100% to +100%), 2024–2025; Supportive Leadership median and count across Microsoft, Apple, Alphabet (Google), Amazon, Meta Platforms, IBM, Oracle, Salesforce, SAP and Arm Holdings. Deltabase Workforce data (share of workforce in Tech). Deltabase Employee Turnover data, average monthly turnover January–August 2026 (January–August 2025 in brackets); count across the same ten companies.
The two European names in our Technology set are moving in opposite directions. On Culture, Arm's NSS rose from +24.5% to +37.9% in 2025 (415 reviews), with Career Progression at +25.0%, the only positive score of the ten, while SAP fell from +16.0% to +10.1% (2,377 reviews), though its Work-Life Balance score of +52.1% is the highest of the ten. On Workforce, Arm is an engineering business, with 42.5% in Tech and 31.9% in Engineering & Maintenance; SAP has 25.7% in Tech and 16.5% in Professional Services. On Talent, AI skills are level at 15.5% and 15.7%, but 30.7% of Arm's workforce lists Python against 10.3% at SAP. Median tenure is 5.6 years at SAP and 3.7 at Arm.
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Sources: Meta Platforms, Q3 2026 results press release, SEC Form 8-K Exhibit 99.1 (21 October 2026); Fast Company, citing Challenger, Gray & Christmas (1 October 2026); Reuters, via GV Wire (8 October 2026); Deltabase Culture data; Deltabase Workforce data; Deltabase Talent data; Deltabase Employee Turnover data.