Banks are technology firms. So why aren't they cutting jobs tens of thousands of jobs too?
It's been a while, but anyone who still remembers 2015 may also remember that Lloyd Blankfein, then the CEO of Goldman Sachs, famously declared that Goldman Sachs was a technology company rather than a bank. At that time, Goldman Sachs had 9,000 engineers among its 33,000 employees. This made its engineering team larger than Facebook's, said Blankfein.
Ten years on, and Goldman Sachs' headcount was 47,000 people at the end of March. Goldman doesn't volunteer its current technology headcount, but it's thought to be over 12,000 people. JPMorgan employs another 63,000 technologists. Citi has 60,000. Even HSBC has over 30,000 people in its tech team.
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Facebook's headcount has also grown. In 2015, it employed only 13,000 people. Two months, ago Meta's headcount was closer to 80,000. But last week, Facebook announced plans to cut 10% of its workforce and to cancel 6,000 planned new hires as it invests in AI. It's not alone: Oracle, Microsoft, Amazon, Dell, Block and others are doing the same. Blind, the forum which used to be full of FAANG engineers discussing high pay is now full of engineers complaining of their dystopian futures.
If technology firms are cutting tens of thousands of staff as they go hard on AI, why aren't banks doing the same?
The answer depends who you ask. "The bloodbath will come," claims one senior technologist at JPMorgan, speaking off the record. "It will just take longer because the banks are slower."
As we reported last week, JPMorgan has begun tracking how often its developers use its suite of AI tools and has categories for "non," "light" and "heavy" users. JPMorgan says these are simply so that it can understand how well-used the tools are; insiders there are not so sure.
"When banks finish rolling out Claude Code or Codex to the majority of their techies, the cuts will come," the JPMorgan engineer tells us. "I think we will start to see cuts in Q4 as bonus season approaches. Individuals and teams will become surplus to requirement."
Some banks are anecdotally more gung-ho with AI coding tools than others. Goldman Sachs is rumoured to be among the circumspect, but insiders at the firm say technologists are still likely to suffer from the firm's rolling rounds of job cuts in 2026. One senior engineer there says underperformers have been added to an exit list. A spokesperson for Goldman Sachs said: "As always, Goldman Sachs is focused on supporting our people through our talent management, development and engagement efforts. We do not comment on speculation or rumours.”
While banks are trimming technology headcount, though, they are not making the kinds of wholesale cuts seen in big tech. The senior Goldman engineer, also speaking off the record, says this is because banks have yet to see sufficient benefits coming from AI to enable them to replace people. "At the moment, banks have just halted incoming headcount instead," he says.
Another senior technologist at a US bank confirms the nil-hiring trend. "Hiring is on hold while we explore the fabled 20% productivity boost from AI," he says. "The emphasis is on reallocating existing staff rather hiring new ones."
Will big cuts come later? He's not so sure. "Banks have to be careful because they're regulated and there's money at stake," he reflects. "The recent problems at Amazon where AI-written code resulted in thousands of client orders being cancelled have scared banks. They're not going to cut. They're just not going to hire."
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