Mass layoffs at large tech companies have once again flipped the dynamic between employers and employees, prolonging job searches and causing fear and anxiety among many in the industry, according to workers and executives. is spreading.
“After years of employees benefiting from working from home, this is the employer’s market. [and] Angela Bateman, who is looking for a job after being laid off by education tech company Osmo in November, said. “Employers reassert their dominance — Disney DIS,
Google Google
goog,
when when,
Apple AAPL,
snap SNAP
[are] Ask workers to be on site three or four days a week.”
On Friday, Alphabet Inc.’s Google was the latest tech giant to add to the uncertainty by announcing 12,000 job cuts just two days after Microsoft Corp. MSFT.
announced that it will cut 10,000 positions. The two join a long list of companies, including Salesforce Inc., that have announced layoffs in recent months.,
Facebook parent company Meta Platforms Inc., Amazon.com Inc. AMZN,
Cisco Systems, Inc. CSCO,
Intel Corporation INTC,
HP Corporation HPQ,
Coinbase Global Co., Ltd. COIN,
Spotify Technology Inc. SPOT
and Snap Inc.
For many: MarketWatch tally of tech companies laying off thousands of people
With laid-off workers struggling to find new jobs, many executives believe it could motivate people to stay at their current companies.Former CEO of Cisco Director John Chambers believes: Tech workers jumping from one high-paying job to another turned into a great reappointment.
“Previously, my career at a company was two years. That lasted over ten years,” Chambers, now a venture capitalist, told MarketWatch. “Now, the last person hired is the first to be fired. There is a shift towards a culture-focused approach where employees reassess their commitment to the company. Turnover drops dramatically. ”
But while tech executives foresee a new commitment to hiring, ordinary workers are embracing cutbacks, mandates to work in offices at least three days a week, and a desire to be more productive with fewer resources. We recognize that tensions are building in anticipation. They say they tend to stay with their employers and refrain from changing jobs over the past few years, rather than engage in a job search that could last as long as a year, amid declining job openings and increasing competition.
“I am nervous about competing with big tech companies because their profile is a ‘safe’ bet for companies that may be less willing to give chances to people who do not come from established brands. Because I think,” said Alex Gammelgaard of the Sun. A Francisco-based marketing he executive who previously worked at TrustedHealth. In his months of job hunting, Gammelgaard has “realized that almost everything is closed” since Thanksgiving, he told MarketWatch.
“On LinkedIn, we see 100 to 500 applicants within a week, which is much more than normal, so it shows the impact big tech layoffs are having,” she said. said.
Overall, more than 56,500 tech jobs, almost all in the US, have already been cut this year, according to data from Layoffs.ai, with more cuts to come. His 97,171 jobs will be cut in 2022, up 649% from the previous year, reports consulting firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas.
Also Read: ‘It wasn’t sustainable or realistic’: Tech layoffs approaching Great Recession levels
After years of benefits and blazing hiring, the sudden purge of tech jobs is creating fear for employers. His late-November survey of 2,162 people found that about 69% of recently laid-off employees received no support from their previous employers, and 60% trusted their next employer. said it is unlikely. us workers By Biz Report.
“If Meta announces that it will break 11,000, [in November], and others in Silicon Valley soon followed,” Bateman told MarketWatch. It looked like the floodgates had opened. They were just waiting for the cut.
‘Muskification’ is changing the outlook
Job cuts are likely to continue, tech executives warn. Workers laid off from small businesses face the potential to compete for jobs with tens of thousands of former Big Tech employees who are now looking for employment.
Todd Erickson has applied for 70 jobs since being laid off in October after working for the startup Phase Change Software for six years. He has only heard of his 10 of those jobs.
“It’s been a tough few months,” Erickson told MarketWatch. “I was in a role doing tech writing, legal, web development, whatever it took, but I didn’t have the expertise to help me in this job market.”
Non-existent job openings by employers looking for people unrelated to specific jobs is a list of job sites that seem to be little more than “fishing expeditions.” Explanation, Gammelgard and others said.
First take: Big Tech layoffs aren’t as big as they seem
Schiffer predicts that some job seekers may have to look outside the industry as a result of the current job collapse in the tech industry. He referred to Elon Musk’s move since acquiring Twitter in October, stating that “with the ‘masking’ of shrinking employees, tech companies are rethinking how they deploy human capital.” rice field. “We are in a cycle of downsizing after years of overstaffing.”
Freshworks Inc. FRSH said:
CEO Dennis Woodside, Google, Impossible Foods Inc., Dropbox Inc. DBX Veteran
and Motorola.
The 22,000 job cuts at Google and Microsoft last week “made the problem worse for technical job seekers” who are not developers or programmers, said Eric Schiffer, CEO of private equity firm Patriarch. told MarketWatch. “There’s a lot more pain ahead.”
Non-tech companies may need more tech workers
However, the news is not all bad. Other industries are hungry for high-tech workers, economists say, and the job market remains strong, with job openings and turnover surveys reported monthly by the U.S. Bureau showing the unemployment rate dropping to a few digits in December. It was 3.5%, the lowest in ten years. of labor statistics. Even in Silicon Valley, he added about 13,000 workers in December, and the unemployment rate for the month was 2%, according to an analysis by the Joint Venture Silicon Valley Regional Institute.
“Another point I’ve been trying to make for two years is [was that] The rest of the economy was hungry for technology,” said Federal Reserve Board member Christopher Waller at the Council on Foreign Relations in New York on Friday. “They couldn’t get enough tech workers. .”
He added: “So I think there will be a significant redistribution of tech talent across the rest of the economy, perhaps unlike some other sectors.”
Damien Daurio, who lost his job at DirecTV last summer, found a job as a software contractor for Charles Schwab Corp. SCHW.
With the help of recruiters and referral companies. According to Daurio, finding another job was easier than finding a non-technical job because of his software project leadership skills.
On the other hand, those who recently quit their tech jobs see an opportunity in the current situation. Donna Estrin left the cybersecurity industry in October and started consulting in November. “My view is that when employees are laid off, companies will hire contract workers rather than replace full-time workers,” she told MarketWatch. “Companies still need to get the job done, so they will need consultants.”
But other job seekers haven’t had the same success. The outlook is “pretty barren,” Mr. Ericsson said. Ericsson is postponing surgery on his knee because his health insurance doesn’t fully cover it.”I just applied to Microsoft,” he said.
MarketWatch Staff Writer Gregory Robb contributed to this article.