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After mass layoffs, tech workers rethink their future


Company bicycles are located outside the office building on Google's Mountain View campus.

Company bicycles are located outside an office building on the campus of Google’s Mountain View, California. The tech giant has laid off 12,000 employees amid industry-wide layoffs. (Brian Contreras/Los Angeles Times)

As Quinn transitioned from the video game industry to corporate tech gigs in 2019, job security was a big part of why.

The game world is “festival and famine,” said Quinn, who is always hiring and firing people, said Quinn, who asked to retain his last name to avoid hurting job prospects in future. A more traditional software role – working on learning and development at a customer service company – seems to be a safer option.

Quinn, now 28, is not alone. For many years, a job at a major Silicon Valley company was one of the lucrative contracts an American could find. Even after all the rhetoric in the early 2010s about making the world a better place began to empty after scandals at Facebook, Uber and other companies, a combination killer between high salary, many perks, flexible management and the San Francisco Bay Area. campus created for a lifestyle that entice Many people start their own careers early.

The pandemic seems to have refuted that argument. As people’s lives suddenly turned online, software giants saw their stocks skyrocket and tech workers began to enjoy the luxury of coding from the couch. in the living room.

Quinn’s decision to enter the industry seemed heralded at the time. “It gives me a really strong sense of security and stability that in hindsight really doesn’t,” he said.

In November, Quinn was fired, part of a wave of powerful tech companies Cut jobs and implement a hiring freeze started last summer and gather forces until the end of 2022 and into this year.

Since January 1, countless employees have been put on the cutting board by Amazon (18,000 yen) lay off), Microsoft (10,000 won lay off), Sales force (8,000 lay off) and Google (12,000 lay off). Those cuts appear after previous cuts at Meta (11,000 lay off in November) and Snap (1,300 lay off in August), as well as at Twitter, which is melted for other reasons.

The industry-wide downturn has forced many tech workers — no longer interested in the fervent interest of an industry hungry to attract the brightest talent — to reevaluate their careers just as Quinn did. do.

Their current position could reshape the industry for decades to come.

“One person’s loss is another’s gain,” said Dan Ives, technology analyst and managing director at Wedbush Securities. Ives said skilled software developers and engineers won’t be out of work for long, and the companies that attract them will likely be at the forefront of exciting new areas like artificial intelligence. , electric vehicles, cloud storage and cybersecurity. “I think it’s a repositioning of technology.”

Ives said the cuts come after unsustainably rapid hiring over the past five years. “Now, the clock strikes midnight for super growth, [and] you’re seeing tech CEOs ripping off Band-Aid.”

It was a moment with Remarkable similarities to the bursting of the dot-com bubble in the early 2000s, when a fledgling version of the internet economy became obscured to investors amid the collapse of Pets.com and other projects. Another frivolous Web 1.0 venture.

However, that crumbling empire provided the raw material for the next 20 years of technology, Ives said, by pumping a flood of talented software engineers back into the market. These latest layoffs could have a similar effect, he said.

“I see it as redistributive and pecking order change rather than a sign of darker times,” the analyst said.

The shift away from the so-called FAANG company – Facebook (now Meta), Amazon, Apple, Netflix and Google – is part of a larger trend in which tech workers are becoming increasingly disillusioned with many of Silicon Valley’s biggest employers, most Most of them at this point already have reputational if not scandalous flaws.

Now, some workers may, after being laid off and with the golden cuffs cut, have a chance to find work that better aligns with their values.

John Chadfield, United Tech’s secretary, said: “Since COVID, what I’ve noticed is that tech workers from all walks of life – but especially experienced ones – no longer want to work for Facebook, Google and Microsoft too.” and the Allied Workers Union in Great Britain. “It is no longer an aspiration.”

Chadfield predicts, some software engineers will now prioritize working at smaller companies, which can give them the flexibility to work remotely, a four-day workweek and a good quality of life. than. Others will turn to extremely flexible freelance work.

But the changes to come could be more radical than just employees moving from big tech companies to smaller, more agile ones. It is sometimes said that every company today is a software company, given that technology is ubiquitous in every aspect of the economy, and many non-tech companies still have good reason to hire people. that traditional tech companies just laid off.

Chadfield said he’s recently seen tech workers taking on roles at government agencies and NGOs.

“They don’t run away; a lot of them don’t have to accept whatever happens,” he said of the tech workers. “They are filling in the open market gaps and being picky about where they go.”

Allstate insurance company recent signal plans to hire laid-off tech workers to help boost its tech capabilities. The Department of Veterans Affairs has done Similar transactions.

An engineering director, Jace – who left a San Francisco software company in December – says the current turmoil at large, traditional tech companies is not representative of a career. technology in general, now covers many sectors, including healthcare and banking.

“Every company has an app, it has a website, it has a service,” said Jace, who hid his last name because he was actively looking for work. “You can see an expansion in what it means to work in tech, what it means to work in engineering.”

A job in tech, he said, doesn’t have to be “in a place with slides and ball pits,” alluding to the famous summer camp feeling many Silicon Valley companies have fostered before. epidemic.

However, some college graduates are still attracted to the tech giants despite the lack of new job security.

Allison, a college senior studying computer science in the Bay Area, said she accepted a job offer at a FAANG company after two defense industry opportunities in Pennsylvania and Idaho.

“Better apply to a place that pays $250,000 and get fired after 6 months… than go to Idaho and get $100,000,” she said. “I am willing to take the risk for significantly more money.”

She said some of her friends, who previously did tech interns at companies outside of the traditional tech ecosystem, are also looking for full-time positions at larger companies. Again, paying is their motive.

But not everyone is lucky enough to find a job before graduation, she says; Many of her friends sent out hundreds of job applications, some even applied for internships with no response.

Nataliya Nedzhvetskaya, a UC Berkeley doctoral candidate who studies tech worker activity, said tech workers are non-technical — that is, people who don’t write code or possess technical skills. other – has been particularly affected by staff cuts.

“The majority of these layoffs are affecting people [working in] recruitment or customer service at these companies,” said Nedzhvetskaya.

Many tech companies also rely on contract or temporary workers, she said, who – even during boom times – face significantly less stable employment conditions than those in the industry. full-time worker.

“Google of more than 50% contract workers,” Nedzhvetskaya said, “and if those people are not rehired, or if their contract is canceled before the completion date, that is not considered dismissal.”

For Quinn — the tech worker who switched from video games to software in 2019, only to be laid off late last year — economic headwinds have forced him to reconsider his commitment to the company. tech industry.

Although he initially thought he was simply looking for a similar job at another tech company after being fired from customer service, he has since struggled. to recreate what was lost. Applications to many companies over the past few months, he said, were close to the final steps, only because a sudden hiring freeze sent him back on the hunt.

Quinn is currently looking at roles in healthcare, game and app development, and even mortgage documentation — i.e. areas that use technology but aren’t the employers themselves. must be a technology company. He wasn’t sure if he was “sure” of staying with traditional technology, he said. Many of his colleagues are asking themselves the same thing, he added.

“I think everyone I’m talking to is, at least, having a moment of wondering: ‘Hmm, is this what I think?'” Quinn said. from all these economic things? shift?'”

This story originally appeared in LA time.

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