Tragic photo exposes Australian nightmare

On Tuesday, Evan Clark, the founder and boss of educational tool ClickView, stumbled across a sad sight on social media.

While browsing Facebook Marketplace, he noticed an ad for Herman Miller’s Mirra office chairs.

One photo shows a room full of chairs in Sydney selling for $465 each – when the chairs sell for around $2000 brand new.

On Twitter, Mr. Clark wrote: “Nothing says ‘tech meltdown’ like hundreds of Herman Miller office chairs on Facebook Marketplace.”

“That’s a hefty discount if they’re legit!” he added.

“The many office chairs for sale on online marketplaces are one of the few signs that things are not good,” Mr Clark told news.com.au.

“Shrunken Christmas parties – and staff being forced to take advantage of their increased holiday in December and January are two I’m already seeing.”

In the last six months, the Australian technology industry has been gripped by a crisis as investors were frightened by dramatic falls in valuations, making it difficult to find financing.

Current market conditions have caused many companies, big and small, to lay off jobs or go under as they struggle to stay afloat in the turbulent marketplace.

Just last week, the Australian branch of delivery giant Deliveroo went bankrupt as the company failed to turn a profit.

Also last week, cryptocurrency exchange FTX filed for bankruptcy. News.com.au knows of Australian workers in their mid-20s who have gone from being worth millions to nothing as a result of the crypto giant’s collapse.

News.com.au has previously reported on a technical worker who lost his job before his first day at work and another worker who was made redundant three days before the company went into liquidation.

In August, news.com.au reported on a governance and risk management technology firm called FirmGuard that went bust because it owed creditors $2.3 million.

In the months leading up to its demise, a worker went unpaid and the company’s CEO began paying employees from his own bank account.

Later that same month, an Australian quit his six-year job to work at a tech startup called Zenbly, but was devastated to learn there was no longer a job for him as the new company had gone into liquidation.

He couldn’t return to his old job because he had already quit and was unemployed while a new baby was on the way.

Then there was Metigy, an artificial intelligence platform that made headlines for owing investors a staggering $32 million following its collapse.

A Melbourne-based esports company called Order, which raised $5.3 million in funding last year, also collapsed as bankruptcy trustees sought an urgent sale of the company.

In July, Australia’s first neobank launched in 2017, Volt Bank, went under, 140 employees lost their jobs while 6,000 customers were urged to withdraw their funds urgently.

Other failed companies include grocery delivery service Send, which went into liquidation in late May after the company spent $11 million in eight months to stay afloat, and a Victorian grocery delivery company called Deliver, which posed as a rival to UberEats, also collapsed in July as it became unprofitable.

In July, news.com.au asked questions about another Sydney-based tech company, D365 Group, which develops software for healthcare, real estate and accounting services.

Employees claim they haven’t been properly paid in months.

Are you affected by Australia’s tech crisis? Get in touch | alex.turner-cohen@news.com.au

Many Australian tech companies have also slashed their workforces in hopes of saving money.

Cryptocurrency exchange Swyftx laid off one in five of its employees in August, while a Brisbane-based telecoms and IT infrastructure company called Megaport revealed it spent a whopping $1.6 million to pay off the 10 percent of the laid-off employees.

An Australian social media start-up called Linktree, which was recently valued at $1.78 billion, laid off 17 percent of its employees from its global operations.

Another crypto platform Immutable, which was valued at $3.5 billion, faced a backlash for laying off 17 percent of its employees from its gaming division while continuing to “hire aggressively” after she raised $280 million in funding in March.

Then there was Australian health start-up Eucalyptus, which offers treatments for obesity, acne and erectile dysfunction, which laid off up to 20 percent of its staff after an investment firm withdrew its funding at the last minute.

Collections startup Indebted laid off 40 of its employees near the end of its fiscal year, despite its valuation rising to more than $200 million, with most of the layoffs in sales and marketing.

The growing list of layoffs also included Australian Buy Now, Pay Later provider Brighte, which offers money for home improvement and solar energy, and in June laid off 15 percent of its employees whose roles are primarily in corporate and new product development.

Another buy-now, pay-later provider with offices in Sydney, BizPay, laid off 30 percent of its workforce, blaming market conditions for the huge downsizing in May.