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Last week, Coinbase Senior Product Manager David Hong Wrote On LinkedIn, he said he was up at 4 a.m. to prepare for a meeting when his MacBook suddenly shut down. It was later discovered that he was part of Nearly 20% of the company has been laid off from what the company’s CEO has described as a looming recession.
“When I joined Coinbase, I accepted that working in the industry would be risky,” Hong wrote in a LinkedIn post. “But on the other hand, I didn’t give more to a company and was reassured as recently as last week that my team and I were safe.”
When Coinbase announced the layoffs, it sent a wave of anxiety beyond just the cryptocurrency industry into the broader tech world.
But recruiters wereted no time commenting on Hong’s post, and others like him, with employment opportunities in their companies.
While Coinbase has been one of several companies to announce layoffs in recent weeks, recruiters and others involved in tech hiring told CNBC that they are more hawkish than the norm. Even after several months of stock price crashes and inflation in the broader US economy, companies across the industry still desperately need talent.
layoffs, isolated slowdowns
Microsoftthe father of Facebook deadAnd the nvidiaAnd the Explode, Explode All plans announced in recent weeks to employ less forcesuch as inflation, and The war in UkraineThe continuing effects of Covid-19 around the world have also dampened the outlook for the rest of the year. The owners of capital are Warning their portfolio companies To prepare for dark times, some startups lay off people or close the shop.
But experts said the cuts are so far isolated.
“The layoffs seem to be specific to companies in more precarious financial situations, such as if they are unprofitable and funding dries up, or if they don’t have a runway to continue operating without additional funding,” said Daniel Gao, chief economist at Glassdoor, a site used by researchers. Work to assess potential employers.
Zhao added that quite a few companies “read the economic tea leaves and retreat in uncertainty” as opposed to necessary.
On high-profile Netflix layoffsthe company took action after being informed of The first loss to subscribers in a decade. Most of the affected roles were not tech-related and Los Angeles-based. Most of them are directors or “coordinators,” according to California state documents seen by CNBC. The company also continues to regularly post job openings every week.
But for the majority of the industry, business is business as usual, experts said. They are still hiring and they still have a shortage.
“You can’t say there are massive layoffs in tech because it’s so isolated,” said Megan Slabinski, district president for HR consultants Robert Half. “I don’t see the demand for technology-related jobs going to be affected in the foreseeable future.”
said Valerie Fredrickson, executive search founder of Fredrickson Partners, an insurance and risk division of The Gallagher Corporation. “When venture capital puts out messages saying ‘Hey boys and girls it’s time to slow down buying football tables, it’s time to get serious here’ – it happens to this type of group.”
Experts also pointed to examples such as a Report Earlier this month from Reuters, which said Elon Musk wanted to cut 10% of jobs at Tesla, citing “a very bad feeling” about the economy. Musk later came back, saying Tesla’s announcement of the layoff would only affect everywhere 3.5% of the total workforcesaying the actual amount was “not material”.
“You can lose a lot of confidence in the market when you make quick reactions that can hurt your employer brand,” said Lauren Elofsky, a talented partner at Capital G, the growth-stage venture capital arm of Alphabet.
Staff are still in the driver’s seat
Slabinsksi says one in ten calls she receives is linked to economic concerns, but most hope to find more talent available. Experts said that candidates receive several offers at once.
“When a headline comes up, a company calls me and says ‘I see there are layoffs, is this the time when I can have better access to talent or ask for qualifications that are more than a few months old? ‘ said Slabinsk. ‘And my answer is ‘No.’
Slabinkski says a recent company report shows that 52% of tech workers are still looking to quit or look for a new opportunity within the next six months.
“We have seen a modest decline in demand for tech workers, but the level is still much higher than it was before the pandemic and companies are still desperate,” Zhao said.
There is also a high demand for HR departments of companies that touch the technology ecosystem. “A lot of tech employers come to us and order four to six different HR searches at the same time because they have a great need,” Fredrickson.
“Workers still have leverage to demand better arrangements, but instead of office perks like free lunch and table tennis tables, tech employees are looking for remote work and flexibility,” Zhao said.
“Right now, I’m having a lot of conversations about swaps going to public companies or private companies,” said llovsky of Capital G. “The most common topic is ‘Should I go to Facebook, Meta, Apple, Netflix, etc. and take advantage of a lower stock price knowing that it will hopefully go up? Should I go to a private company?
Experts said they are also using their leverage to keep their employers’ feet in the fire.
“The candidates are asking really tough questions that the founders haven’t had to answer for the past few years,” Lalovsky said. Things like ‘Are you planning to lift the tour down?’ “Are we on track to deliver on our board of directors plan?” or “Are you ready to work with market headwinds?”
take a pause
However, some companies pause or re-evaluate what you need.
Ilovsky said she finds herself advising any employee involved to “take a beat” before taking any steps. She said companies are doing the same, albeit not on a large scale.
“When things started going sideways, it wasn’t ‘Oh—! Moment because they’re still on an upward trajectory,” Llovsky said. It was a reassessment of how to grow in a declining market, like “Maybe we invest more in engineering than marketing.” Or, the company says “instead of investing all the energy in a product in 2026, we’ll focus on our core product.”
In general, though, they are afraid to make any big moves for fear of not being able to reassign employees when they need them. “They think this is going to be like Covid where some companies are slowing down their hiring and then they have to catch up and that puts them behind the ball,” Fredrickson said.
“Their memory of recent history — they don’t want to go back to the job market for 2021,” Zhao said of the companies. “They were playing a role in catching up with Covid and keeping up with the hectic environment that followed and the struggle for re-employment,” Zhao said of the companies.
Some experts said the extra downtime is ultimately beneficial to the industry, which has ballooned in recent years.
“I’d like to see it go a little slow so it’s easier for CEOs and boards to hire good HR leaders without having a lot of showing, but unfortunately, I haven’t seen that at all,” Fredrickson said.
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