More than a year out from the most brutal round of tech layoffs since the dot-com bubble burst, workers are reckoning with the loss of what some saw as airtight job security in an industry that\u2019s still downsizing.<\/p>\n
The tech industry recorded about 34,000 layoffs in January, the most in a single month since January 2023, when almost 90,000 people were let go, according to the job-loss tracker layoffs.fyi. While the latest cuts in Silicon Valley aren\u2019t as deep as those early last year, tech remains one of the few soft spots in a strong labor market in which unemployment has held below 4% for over two years.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere was a time when working in tech seemed like the most stable career you could have,\u201d said Ayomi Samaraweera, who was laid off as chief of staff at the content creator platform Jellysmack in December 2022. After about 10 years in the industry, she said, \u201ctech does not seem safe and secure.\u201d<\/p>\n
There was a time when working in tech seemed like the most stable career you could have.<\/p>\n
Ayomi Samaraweera, founder of social app Canopy<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n That reality has been sinking in among workers in a field unaccustomed to extended periods of deep, widespread cuts. Many of those who lost their jobs over the past year or so have had mixed experiences bouncing back. Some have returned to the companies that laid them off, some are starting their own ventures, and some have left the industry. Others remain unemployed and are turning to one another for support.<\/p>\n Government data released last week showed overall layoffs declining across the economy, with one big exception: professional and business services, which includes many tech jobs. In January, layoffs in that broad category hit 446,000, the most in a month since January 2023, when over half a million people were laid off.<\/p>\n The cuts of the past year and a half follow a pandemic period of aggressive hiring, when tech companies benefiting from low interest rates poured money into projects that they\u2019ve since tapped the brakes on. After it launched a big push for the metaverse, Facebook owner Meta, for example, has slashed jobs and steered more resources toward artificial intelligence.<\/p>\n The shift has caused some whiplash for workers who spent years at big-name tech firms, many of which have long boasted some of the most competitive pay and benefits on the planet. Across the U.S. economy, average hourly earnings broadly rose in 2023 from the year before, but pay for tech workers decreased. The industry\u2019s average annual salary dipped to $111,193 last year from $111,348 in 2022, according to the tech career hub Dice.<\/p>\n Google slashed about 12,000 workers (about 6% of its workforce) last year, followed by more than 1,000 additional layoffs so far this year. The job losses were widespread, and many of the people cut were mid-career employees who in some cases had served for well over a decade \u2014 or over half of Google\u2019s entire history.<\/p>\n \u201cThe biggest challenge people have in that group is they\u2019ve not written a r\u00e9sum\u00e9 in 15 years,\u201d said Christopher Fong, an ex-Google employee who manages Xoogler, a community of other former Googlers, which doubled in size after last year\u2019s layoffs. Fong said that Google has since rehired some of them but that the majority are still looking for full-time work.<\/p>\n As part of its support services, Xoogler offers psychotherapy coaching to boost members\u2019 confidence throughout their job searches. One in-person gathering early last year featured a slideshow presentation that reminded attendees \u201cmost layoffs are not about performance\u201d and said, \u201cThis was not your fault.\u201d<\/p>\n Some laid-off tech workers have used the change in fortunes to strike out on their own. Samaraweera used her severance to go \u201call in\u201d on her own startup, a social app called Canopy that she described as a \u201cless chaotic version of Reddit.\u201d<\/p>\n The software is in a pilot phase, and Samaraweera said the path ahead remains daunting now that a seemingly endless tide of money that once flooded into Silicon Valley has dwindled. As a tech startup owner in the current climate, she said, \u201cI\u2019ve been lean and frugal.\u201d<\/p>\n Others aren\u2019t ready to ditch corporate life yet, even if it means working outside the tech sector proper.<\/p>\n LinkedIn said the share of users in tech who marked themselves as \u201copen to work\u201d on its platform before starting roles in new industries rose to 65% early this year, up from 56.7% in April 2022.<\/p>\n With large tech employers like Cisco, PayPal and Microsoft still shedding employees in recent months, the share of \u201copen to work\u201d techies switching careers remains elevated, at 61.6% as of January, according to LinkedIn. The company said many workers leaving tech and media have opted for marketing, project management and sales roles in other fields.<\/p>\n The biggest challenge people have in that group is they\u2019ve not written a r\u00e9sum\u00e9 in 15 years.<\/p>\n Christopher Fong, manager of XOOGLER group for ex-google workers<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n Nolan Church, a recruiter who founded the talent marketplace Continuum, said the layoff \u201cbloodbath\u201d affected many tech industry workers in nontechnical roles \u2014 including fellow recruiters and human resources personnel.<\/p>\n Some of them, Church said, will \u201ctransition into software sales because they understand tech as an industry,\u201d adding that laid-off techies are still in the \u201cearly innings\u201d of any future career choices.<\/p>\n Others who\u2019ve taken entrepreneurial routes are trying something completely different.<\/p>\n Ash Yao, a former DocuSign account executive who previously worked at Tesla, launched a decidedly non-tech company after she was laid off in the e-signature firm\u2019s 10% workforce reduction last year, which came months after a 9% cut. She used her severance to launch Kace, a line of ready-to-drink teas now distributed nationwide.<\/p>\n Yao said that she\u2019d always wanted to be an entrepreneur and saw her layoff as a \u201csign from the universe\u201d to go for it.<\/p>\n She said the experience taught her to \u201cuse those skills you worked hard to gain to build for yourself,\u201d adding, \u201cWhen you\u2019re working for a tech company, all those hard efforts are going into their brand.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/p>\n More than a year out from the most brutal round of tech layoffs since the dot-com bubble burst, workers are reckoning with the loss of what some saw as airtight job security in an industry that\u2019s still downsizing. The tech industry recorded about 34,000 layoffs in January, the most in a single month since January […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":2069,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2068","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-business"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2068","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2068"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2068\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2069"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2068"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2068"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2068"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}