In November, Apple laid off dozens of sales employees in a rather unexpected move for the tech giant. Apple is the rare tech company that has steered clear of mass layoffs, particularly among its peers in the trillion-dollar club. The layoffs “came as a surprise” for those who lost their jobs, according to a Bloomberg report—and they impacted some employees who had been with the company for decades.
The post-pandemic job market has come to be defined by layoffs, in tech and beyond: A Glassdoor analysis finds that there was a peak in 2023, but layoffs have since continued at a more frequent cadence relative to the years prior. A variety of sectors have been hit hard—and prominent employers like Verizon, Starbucks, and UPS have gone through multiple rounds of cuts this year alone, slashing thousands of jobs.
But the tech industry has been uniquely reliant on layoffs as companies have gone through periods of overhiring and fluctuating priorities, with the rapid emergence of artificial intelligence now upending the sector.
Since 2022, tech employers have laid off upwards of 700,000 workers, according to the tracker Layoffs.fyi. With the exception of Apple, which has conducted a handful of more targeted cuts in recent years, the Big Tech companies—namely Amazon, Meta, Google, and Microsoft—have laid off tens of thousands of employees over the last three years.
“There are just so many new grads coming out, trying to enter the tech industry, and they feel like the promise of a high-paying job in tech is just not really being fulfilled,” says Daniel Zhao, Glassdoor’s chief economist and director of economic research.
All this has led to a challenging environment for tech workers who are seeking new jobs and new graduates who are trying to find their footing. In the last two decades, Big Tech jobs held a certain cachet for millennial knowledge workers who were starting their careers. The sprawling campuses and free food were appealing, of course, but companies like Google also imbued their work with purpose and appeared to guarantee professional success.
But as layoffs have roiled the industry, it seems as though the tech jobs that were once hailed as stable and desirable may no longer be a sure bet for workers.
“Unfortunately, layoffs aren’t really a last resort response anymore,” says Brett Coakley, the principal executive coach at career consulting firm Close Cohen. “They’ve become more of an annual planning tool. These workers that thought they were insulated are realizing that prestige doesn’t really provide the protection that they’re used to.”
The dream job has changed
For years, these tech companies have promised both generous salaries and job security alongside lavish perks. Between recurring layoffs and strict return to office policies, however, something seems to have shifted—and it’s not just that the perks have dried up.
Many large tech employers hired aggressively during the pandemic, only to turn around and lay off workers not long after. Companies like Amazon forced employees to return to the office five days a week—in some cases requiring that they relocate.
The rise of generative AI is also radically reshaping tech companies, with many of them making multi-billion-dollar investments and courting top talent. Computer science graduates are finding it more difficult to land entry level jobs—in part because those roles are steadily being automated. Some companies, like Salesforce, have already replaced certain workers with AI, while others have warned that job losses are on the way and that employees need to meet the moment and adopt AI technology. Mark Zuckerberg noted earlier this year that AI could supplant mid-level engineers at Meta, while Amazon CEO Andy Jassy has said employees who “become conversant in AI” will have “high impact” and “help us reinvent the company.”
(Whether AI will actually cull jobs at a rapid clip is almost beside the point, though it seems like companies are reticent to name the other issues driving their business woes—among them immigration policy and tariffs.)
The result is workers have become more hesitant to stake their careers on a Big Tech job, Coakley says.
“We see that folks that are coming into their early career have that same symptom,” he says. “‘Why would I go into this thing that isn’t stable? I can do a gig role, or I can do something that’s a little more skills-based.’ Or: ‘Why do I need to go to a four-year college to get this degree if I’m not going to get a job?’ We’re getting a lot of that sentiment.” Some workers who are early in their careers are looking at smaller companies or trying to bolster their AI skills for when the pendulum inevitably swings back and Big Tech starts hiring again, according to Coakley.
Zhao argues that the high-paying job in tech still has its allure, though it feels increasingly out of reach for some new entrants to the industry. The number of workers who have been unemployed for over six months has ticked up as hiring has slowed—and college-educated workers now comprise a greater share of them.
“These Big Tech companies are still very attractive jobs,” Zhao says. “If you ask any new grad, ‘Do you want to go work at Google?’ I think most of them would still say yes. It’s just a question of how you actually get your foot in the door.”
What this means for tech workers old and new
It’s not just people early in their career who are reevaluating where they want to work. The current climate has revealed that tenure and seniority won’t necessarily preserve your job, particularly when companies are chasing AI talent. For older employees who built their careers at Big Tech companies, the unease permeating the tech sector has sparked questions about how long they can expect to remain in their jobs.
“We had a lot of folks at the beginning of the year coming to us after a layoff,” Coakley says. “So they didn’t see it coming, or they weren’t expecting it. [Now] I’ve started to see a lot of that other end of the spectrum, where people are being proactive and saying, ‘I don’t know if this is going to be here for me in six months.’”
Experts often say layoffs have a clear effect on company culture, and Glassdoor’s analysis supports this idea: The volume of Glassdoor reviews surge by over 40% in the week following a layoff, and they continue to be referenced in reviews months later. Zhao points out that some companies seek to avoid the negative attention and press coverage that accompanies a mass layoff by making smaller, more frequent cuts.
But tech workers can still see what’s happening, and Coakley says some of them are taking preemptive steps to carve out a new path.
“The mid- to senior-level [employee] has really sort of built their identities inside of one corporation,” he says. “They’ve lived inside that bubble of Big Tech, but now that the bubble is sort of thinning, they’re asking themselves: Who am I outside this company?” Coakley has found that some senior employees are now interested in fractional roles, or startups that offer more work-life balance.
“People are realizing that they’ve been relying on corporations for stability,” he says, “and that’s no longer viable.”
Amid a tough hiring market, even workers who have soured on their Big Tech jobs may be scared to make any drastic moves. But that could change when the market eventually turns around—to the detriment of these employers.
“If we see the balance of power shift back towards employees and away from employers, then a lot of this can change,” Zhao says. “And to some extent that’s a risk that employers should be paying attention to as well.”
The culture of Big Tech may have changed, but workers have also changed accordingly, growing more emboldened by the upheaval of the last five years—and the realization that their employers are no different than their peers across corporate America.
“I think the fact that workers feel so stuck right now,” Zhao says, “means that once the job market opens up again, all of those workers are going to hit the door.”