I would say that comparing this to covid is a mistake. The lockdowns drove more people online and ultimately drove more money into the tech sector. It looked like tech bucked the trend, but it was basically just benefiting from the downturn in other sectors of the economy.
In a recession, spending goes down across the board, and tech is on shakey ground as a lot of the products and services can be viewed as luxuries... or at least optional. When customers stop paying subscriptions, consuming content, or buying the current pretty device, the money flowing into the sector is going to drop. Companies are going to need to start managing costs, and the only way to do that is by managing payroll and product lines.
Bottom line is those hundreds of thousands of job openings are going to start getting yanked while the number of people who can do them is going to increase.
Those who can't be reassigned or are redundant get pink slipped and re-enter the job market. Eventually some MBA will rediscover "outsourcing", and then someone else will come up with a new word for "topgrading" and write a book on it. More competition for less jobs available.
Meta has already started to turtle down, alphabet as well after a terribad quarterly report a few days ago. About to see it from Twitter big time.
It's not the end of the world. Tech workers are still going to have it easier than others in a lot of cases, but I'd expect the salaries to get a littler lower, the perks to dry up, and the process of finding a job to get harder. Will get worse longer the recession lasts.
And if someone's one of the people who's a "project manager" or "community moderator" that likes to say they are a tech worker... they should either be looking into developing high demand skills or thinking about a lateral career change right about now.
I would say that comparing this to covid is a mistake. The lockdowns drove more people online and ultimately drove more money into the tech sector. It looked like tech bucked the trend, but it was basically just benefiting from the downturn in other sectors of the economy.
In a recession, spending goes down across the board, and tech is on shakey ground as a lot of the products and services can be viewed as luxuries... or at least optional. When customers stop paying subscriptions, consuming content, or buying the current pretty device, the money flowing into the sector is going to drop. Companies are going to need to start managing costs, and the only way to do that is by managing payroll and product lines.
Bottom line is those hundreds of thousands of job openings are going to start getting yanked while the number of people who can do them is going to increase. Those who can't be reassigned or are redundant get pink slipped and re-enter the job market. Eventually some MBA will rediscover "outsourcing", and then someone else will come up with a new word for "topgrading" and write a book on it. More competition for less jobs available.
Meta has already started to turtle down, alphabet as well after a terribad quarterly report a few days ago. About to see it from Twitter big time.
It's not the end of the world. Tech workers are still going to have it easier than others in a lot of cases, but I'd expect the salaries to get a littler lower, the perks to dry up, and the process of finding a job to get harder. Will get worse longer the recession lasts.
And if someone's one of the people who's a "project manager" or "community moderator" that likes to say they are a tech worker... they should either be looking into developing high demand skills or thinking about a lateral career change right about now.