Amid mass tech layoffs, some workers with years of experience or deep technical expertise are having trouble getting hired again while some seek non-tech jobs
Google, Amazon, Microsoft and a raft of others fired thousands of workers in January, continuing a layoff wave that began in 2022. Threads: @beth4158 . Mastodon: @carnage4life@mas.to and @remotesynth@mastodon.xyz X: @washingtonpost and @winwinirwin . Forums: r/technology Threads: Beth Kujawski / @beth4158 : I was glad to see this included: “Now, executives are looking for more places where they can squeeze more work out of fewer people.” Yup. But that's going to bite them in the ass soon. The pendulum has swung too far in the layoffs direction. I hit my breaking point at work this week. … Mastodon: Dare Obasanjo / @carnage4life@mas.to : Companies like Google and Microsoft are laying off workers despite the overall economy adding jobs and those companies specifically making tens of billions in profits. — As revenue growth has slowed, growing profitability by cutting jobs is the only way to appease Wall Street. … Brian Rinaldi / @remotesynth@mastodon.xyz : I've been in this industry for a long time (25+ years), and I can say this isn't new. 2000 and 2008 were both awful and the tech job markets were arguably worse in both. — But this is definitely the ugliest tech job market in a good economy. This is the “the tech job market is awful for dumb reasons” economy. … X: @washingtonpost : The U.S. economy added 353,000 jobs in January, a boost that was around twice what economists had expected. And yet, Google, Amazon, Microsoft, Discord, Salesforce and eBay all made significant cuts in January, and the layoffs don't seem to be abating. https://www.washingtonpost.com/ ... Jon Irwin / @winwinirwin : For people lamenting layoffs in the games industry, a good reminder that the issues are not endemic to gaming but a part of a broader problem in all tech jobs Forums: r/technology : The U.S. economy is booming. So why are tech companies laying off workers?
Context & Ripple Effects
This report extends the retrenchment that began with Alphabet’s planned 12,000-job reduction and Microsoft’s planned 10,000-job cut. It matters because the effects are no longer confined to headcount announcements: experienced workers are encountering a harder market for their next role.
Earlier coverage showed tech workers considering banking, retail, health care and manufacturing as alternatives during the initial layoff wave. This account suggests that cross-sector movement is becoming a practical response for workers whose specialist experience is not quickly translating into another tech job.
First-order effects
- Workers laid off by Google, Amazon, Microsoft and other employers face a more difficult and potentially longer search for comparable tech roles, including those with substantial experience or technical depth.
- Some displaced workers shift their search outside technology, while the companies cutting staff operate with fewer employees even as the report notes strong profits at some of them.
Second-order effects
- A larger pool of experienced candidates raises competition for remaining tech openings and gives non-tech employers a chance to recruit technical talent from the layoff pool.
- Workers moving into other industries may redirect skills and spending power away from the tech labor market, rather than creating an immediate rebound in hiring at the companies making cuts.
Third-order effects
- If persistent, the pattern weakens the assumption that seniority and specialized technical skills alone guarantee rapid re-employment, making career paths across tech and adjacent industries more fluid.
- Repeated profitable-company layoffs could normalize leaner staffing as a management model, though the durability of that shift depends on whether demand later forces companies to rebuild teams.
The trend: The story is one data point in a tech labor-market reset in which companies continue reducing headcount while displaced talent is redistributed across the wider economy.