London, Nov 26 (IANS): Julian Teicke, CEO of $4.5 billion digital insurance company Wefox, has said he is "disgusted" at tech companies laying off thousands of employees, saying "they are humans".

Teicke told CNBC he is "a little disgusted by statements like, 'never miss a good crisis' or 'we have to cut the fat'".

"These are people that have maybe quit other jobs to join your business. These are people that have maybe moved to other places because of you. These are people that have maybe ended romantic relationships," the Wefox CEO stressed.

"These are humans," he added.

Wefox is a Germany-based firm that connects users seeking insurance with brokers and partner insurers via an online platform.

"I don't believe in mass layoffs. We're going to focus on performance, but not on mass layoffs," he was quoted as saying.

He said that "CEOs have to do everything in their power to protect their employees. I haven't seen that in the tech industry".

As more and more companies across the spectrum sack employees amid the global meltdown, at least 853 tech companies worldwide have laid off about 137,492 employees to date, and the tally is only going north amid recession fears.

According to data from layoffs.fyi, a crowdsourced database of tech layoffs, 1,388 tech companies have fired a total of 233,483 employees since the onset of Covid-19, but 2022 has been the worst for the tech sector.

As of mid-November, more than 73,000 workers in the US tech sector have been laid off in mass-level job cuts led by companies like Meta, Twitter, Salesforce, Netflix, Cisco, Roku, and others.