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Allison Croisant, an information scientist with a couple of decade of experience in technology, was laid off by PayPal earlier this 12 months, joining the masses of unemployed across her industry. Croisant has one word to describe the technique of on the lookout for a job without delay: “Insane.”
“Everybody else can also be getting laid off,” said Croisant, who lives in Omaha, Nebraska, where she worked remotely for PayPal.
Her sentiment is reflected within the numbers. Because the start of the 12 months, greater than 50,000 staff have been laid off from over 200 tech firms, according to tracking website Layoffs.fyi. It is a continuation of the predominant theme of 2023, when greater than 260,000 staff across nearly 1,200 tech firms lost their jobs.
Alphabet, Amazon, Meta and Microsoft have all taken part within the downsizing this 12 months, along with eBay, Unity Software, SAP and Cisco. Wall Street has largely cheered on the cost-cutting, sending many tech stocks to record highs on optimism that spending discipline coupled with efficiency gains from artificial intelligence will lead to rising profits. PayPal announced in January that it was eliminating 9% of its workforce, or about 2,500 jobs.
For the tens of 1000’s of individuals in Croisant’s position, the trail toward reemployment is daunting. All told, 2023 was the second-biggest 12 months of cuts on record within the technology sector, behind only the dot-com crash in 2001, according to outplacement firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas. Not since the spectacular flameouts of Pets.com, eToys and Webvan have so many tech staff lost their jobs in such a brief time frame.
Last month’s job cut count was the highest of any February since 2009, when the financial crisis forced firms into money preservation mode.
CNBC spoke to a dozen individuals who have been laid off from tech jobs up to now 12 months or so about their experiences navigating the labor market. Some spoke on the condition that CNBC not use their names or write about the main points of their situation. Taken together, they paint an image of an increasingly competitive market with job listings that include exacting requirements for qualification and are available with lower pay than their prior gigs.
It’s a very confounding situation for software developers and data scientists, who just a few years ago had a few of the most marketable and highly valued skills on the planet, and at the moment are considering whether or not they need to exit the industry to find employment.
“The market is not what it once was,” Roger Lee, creator of Layoffs.fyi, said in an email. “To secure a recent position, many salespeople and recruiters are leaving tech entirely. Even engineers are compromising — accepting roles with less stability, a tougher work environment, or lower pay and advantages.”
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Lee said tech salaries have “largely stagnated” within the last two years, citing data from Comprehensive.io, a compensation tracker he recently helped launch.
Croisant’s job search involved applying for some positions that had racked up a whole lot of applicants. She could see that data using LinkedIn’s Talent Insights platform, which shows what number of persons are vying for an open role.
Moreover, some listings required applicants to have advanced degrees or skilled experience in machine learning and artificial intelligence, a recent development in Croisant’s experience on the job market.
During five weeks of job hunting, Croisant said she applied to 48 openings and landed two interviews. She finally opted to accept a lower-level data analyst role and a roughly $3,000 reduction in her base pay to take a contract role starting next month at a financial technology company.
“This was a fully terrifying experience for me, and I’m unsure if I’ll ever truly feel secure in a job again,” Croisant said. “But I’m still one in every of the lucky ones ultimately. I even have friends who’ve been on the lookout for months and still have not found anything.”
‘It’s humbling’
Krysten Powers was laid off in January from travel tech startup Flyr after two years in marketing at the corporate. She said navigating the present labor market is sort of a full-time job, “sometimes even harder.”
“You are putting out resumes and getting almost immediate rejections,” said Powers, who’s worked in marketing for a decade. “It does take a toll in your confidence and also you get this type of imposter syndrome.”
Powers lives with her husband and two kids within the small town of Natchez, Mississippi. A month before she lost her job, her family bought a recent house. Powers said moving is not an option, and he or she’s only considering distant roles in marketing. Nonetheless, she is willing to accept a pay cut.
“It’s humbling of course,” she said.
Google Headquarters is seen in Mountain View, California, United States on May 15, 2023.
Tayfun Coskun | Anadolu Agency | Getty Images
The identical dynamics are playing out across the industry, even for former employees of Google, which was long considered the house of Silicon Valley’s elite talent.
Christopher Fong, who worked at Google from 2006 to 2015, is the founding father of a bunch called Xoogler.co, which seeks to provide help for people laid off from the web company. The 9-year-old organization, consisting of 1000’s of Google alumni and current staffers, offers peer support and a whole lot of in-person events.
In January, Google eliminated several hundred positions across its hardware, central engineering and Google Assistant teams. A 12 months earlier, the corporate cut 12,000 jobs, or roughly 6% of its full-time workforce.
Fong said the “biggest challenge” today for a lot of ex-Google employees is finding a job that maintains their previous level of pay.
Michael Kascsak, who was laid off by Google in March of last 12 months, took a distinct approach to his job search.
Kascsak said he welcomed a pay cut to start as head of talent acquisition for veterinary business CityVet in January after applying for a whole lot of jobs. He acknowledged that his previous employer had set exceptionally high compensation expectations.
“I went into this knowing I had been fortunate to work at an organization that paid at the highest percentile and I’m a realist. I prepared myself to be flexible,” said Kascsak, who lives in Austin, Texas, and previously worked in talent sourcing for Google. “I’m tremendous with the pay now because I’m within the environment I would like to be in with great people.”
Tech is a notable outlier in a labor market that is been largely regular over the past two years. Nationwide, the unemployment rate ticked up to 3.9% in February from 3.7% each of the prior three months. It has been mostly in that range since early 2022. The U.S. economy added 275,000 jobs in February, topping 200,000 for a 3rd straight month.
Booming marketplace for AI engineers
Sentiment indexes are mixed. Job review website Glassdoor’s Worker Confidence Index, which gauges how employees feel about their employer’s six-month business outlook, sank to its lowest level in February since its sentiment data first began in 2016. Amongst tech staff, discussions about layoffs on Glassdoor have greater than quadrupled up to now two years, and were up 12% last month compared with a 12 months earlier.
Nonetheless, ZipRecruiter’s Job Seeker Confidence Index has been rising since mid-2023, and increased to its highest level within the fourth quarter since the second quarter of 2022.
Even inside tech, there’s an unlimited divide in the present market. Lee of Layoffs.fyi said AI is driving a “return to rapid hiring and expansion,” whilst layoffs proceed elsewhere. Salaries for AI engineers rose 12% from the third to fourth quarter last 12 months, and the typical salary for a senior AI engineer nationally is greater than $190,000, according to Comprehensive.io.
Amit Mittal was laid off from AI lending company Upstart
Amit Mittal
Amit Mittal has been on either side of the employment market — previously as a hiring manager and now as a job seeker.
In November, Mittal was laid off from AI lending company Upstart, where he worked as a software engineering manager, often overseeing interviews. Mittal said he witnessed the hiring process develop into “loads more demanding” as layoffs surged.
“There was loads more pressure on us to principally raise the bar higher and better,” he said. “Any individual with a four-year experience up to now would have had a fairly good probability at getting a great job. But now they’re competing against individuals who have six, seven, eight years of experience for a similar position.”
Mittal, who’s from India and has lived within the Chicago area since 2007, has recently been subject to a really different sort of pressure. Under his H-1B visa, Mittal had only 60 days from the official end of his employment to find a recent job within the tech industry so as to stay within the country.
“If for 4 months, I even have to pay my bills by driving an Uber or working at McDonald’s flipping burgers, that is tremendous,” he said. “But that mechanism doesn’t exist for me.”
Mittal has now successfully petitioned to obtain a separate B-2 tourist visa, giving him an additional six months to find recent employment. It wasn’t an affordable effort, though. He estimated he spent around $8,000 on legal and administrative costs tied to his submission.
All of the while, Mittal said he’s applied for about 110 jobs to no avail. He attributed the dearth of success to employers’ reluctance or inability to sponsor visa holders.
“It looks like the probabilities are pretty slim without delay, although I see a whole lot of postings each day,” Mittal said.
Bill Vezey was laid off by eBay in January following a 13-year profession as a software engineer at the net retailer. He said he’s learning the principles of the “recent game,” they usually’re much different than he remembers.
“Attainability is just not only a numbers game,” said Vezey, 64, who lives in Santa Cruz, California. “It’s a mixture of how well you brand yourself, about your access through networking to any given position — to the hidden job market.”
Vezey said he hopes to be rehired at his longtime employer and needs to remain in tech.
“I’m sort of an incurable optimist, despite what 60-odd years of living have brought,” he said.
Like lots of those that spoke to CNBC, Powers said she spends her days tailoring her resume for openings, scanning online job boards and applying for newly posted positions. She networks by contacting a recruiter or hiring manager connected to each role, though she said some recruiters have ghosted her as quickly as they’ve expressed interest.
She’s had a number of interviews, and turned down one job offer. That position would’ve required her to go to an office while taking a greater than 50% pay cut from her previous job. And he or she’d have to find child care.
“There is a sense of impending doom,” Powers said. “There’s some extent where the cash runs out and the choices develop into really bleak.”
Still, Powers said she’s trying to stay optimistic, “because giving up is just not going to get me a job.”
— CNBC’s Jennifer Elias contributed to this report.
WATCH: Why widespread tech layoffs keep happening despite a powerful economy
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