IT Workers Are Now Struggling to Find Work, as ‘Picky’ Companies Demand AI Skills
The class divide is widening in Silicon Valley as a tiny group of employees is landing unprecedented packages for AI skills, while many others struggle to find work. The have-nots are doing everything that used to guarantee great jobs — refreshing resumes, optimizing LinkedIn profiles and doing interviews — but companies are much more picky these days. The tech jobless are rethinking their lives. Some are taking pay cuts, others are leaving tech. Some are going back to study or launch startups. Some have retired....A former Google worker (laid off more than a year ago) says he’s still job hunting, according to the article, and “he’s learned it’s not enough to just apply in this competitive market. Workers really need to network and leverage their connections to get seen by hiring managers and stand out.”
Since 2022, more than 815,500 tech workers have been laid off, according to Layoffs.fyi, a website that tracks job cuts. The tsunami of pink slips surged in 2023, when companies that had gone on hiring sprees during the COVID-19 pandemic began to cut back. From January to April, U.S. tech employers announced 85,411 job cuts this year, up 33% from the same period last year, according to global outplacement and executive coaching firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas. The Public Policy Institute of California estimates that the number of information jobs — which includes jobs in hard-hit Hollywood as well as tech — tumbled 17% between the middle of 2022 and this February. The San Francisco Bay Area has been hardest hit, the institute said in a recent report, with the number of jobs declining by 0.4%, compared with 7.5% growth over a similar time span before COVID-19 slammed into the U.S. economy.
Tech layoffs are also spilling over into other industries. Automaker General Motors laid off roughly 600 workers in its information technology department, and Walmart is reportedly laying off or relocating roughly 1,000 workers in its technology and products teams. Recruiters say companies have become much more selective, requiring AI skills, combining different positions and interviewing more people for each job. “You’re seeing elongated hiring cycles,” said Robert Lucido, senior director of strategic advisory at Magnit, a California company that helps tech giants and other businesses manage contractors, freelancers and other contingent workers. “There’s more opportunity to fill the need that they truly want.”
Paul Flaharty, district president at staffing firm Robert Half in Los Angeles, said companies are laying off workers, but also creating new roles tied to AI initiatives. “For individuals that are displaced, it’s really important that they find ways to upskill themselves so that they can make themselves as attractive as possible for these new jobs that are being created,” he said. Kira Martins was already taking on more work in a small team at Snap — the parent company of disappearing messaging app Snapchat — when she was laid off in April. The company said the layoffs were to cut costs as it focuses on profitability, noting how employees are using AI to “reduce repetitive work, increase velocity, and better support our community, partners, and advertisers....” Martins, a 36-year-old Los Angeles resident, views AI as a tool and is optimistic about finding her next role. People still need to decide how to use AI and check the work it generates, she said. “In tech, you want to be a first adopter, because if you don’t move quickly, it’s very easy to become irrelevant,” she said. “Everyone’s kind of hopping on the AI train.”
But when 64-year-old product manager Bruce Bowers lost his job at Oracle — along with thousands of others — he just started his retirement early.
Yeah, I Noped Out
The company I was working for went out of business in March because stupid spending crap (like AI!).
I took a look at the state of the software industry and am just horrified. There’s just no room for someone who can just engineer solutions, knows about resource constraints (like disk and RAM and bandwidth - this may be hard to believe but those are not infinite!), and knows that what LLM coding produces is fast, fragile, insecure solutions with massive technical debt. I have played around it with (know the enemy or possible tool) and saw this at the last place! We had a junior guy spend six months trying to vibe code a network utility app that would have been very useful. ‘Oh let me just have Claude do it!’ Of course the VP was all over that s#$% and the guy’s only ‘job’ at that point was coaxing Claude to make the app.
Except… every time he had a candidate it was broken. So he’d go back and tell Claude to fix it. And it would. And it would break two other things. And since this guy has no idea what the code Claude wrote does he can’t just go in and fix things himself, he has to round trip. So I told him about unit tests… and he had Claude generate the unit tests [lawl]. Which are just abysmally bad. So every iteration was still broken. When the company went under he was still trying to make it work. This whole generation joining the industry is just lost. Most of them will be unable to do anything except produce slop. But in the mean time they sure look cheaper than us guys with the institutional knowledge.
So I said eff that, I don’t want to work in this industry any more. I am still doing consulting here and there, hand picked, for sane stuff like embedded firmware which is (for now) mostly free of slop code. But basically I just retired way early, will see where the dust settles. And let me tell you it is GLORIOUS. I have never been busier than I am now when every day is free, I can (and do) work on all my spare projects as I want, and I don’t have mentally deficient sociopath executives to deal with, and no slop. So congrats, AI, you beat me.
Re:Yeah, I Noped Out
Oh yeah, sorry to reply to my own post, but I could have written that network app he spent six months trying to do with Claude in a week (leaving plenty of room) - give another week (not full time) for testing and feedback and changes and it’s totally done in two weeks, one actual week of work at the outside. Woulda cost way less and it would be secure, upgradable, and maintainable. But we can’t have nice things in the hellscape of 202x.
Re:comms
Re:comms
I believe knowing how to use external tools, MCP servers, skills, md-files, etc. and how to integrate agents into your workflow goes a long way these days.
I feel like nowadays you can just go: “Claude, add a mcp-server”. Or “Claude, add a skill to do so and so”
20 years experience for new tech
I remember back in 1997 seeing countless job postings that needed 20+ years of Cisco experience, and have seen the same sort of insanity repeated with every new tech fad that comes along. Why would the biggest tech fad of all be any different?