What Today's Tech Layoffs Mean for the Modern Careerist

Big Tech’s Big Displacement

Last week, Amazon announced the latest in a series of massive tech layoffs with 30,000 people displaced overnight. The month before, Axios reported on a Senate Democrats report that concluded that up to 100 million jobs could be erased due to AI in the next decade.

100 million jobs.

It’s clear that the workforce in 5 or 10 years will look dramatically different from how it looks today. And unfortunately, layoffs are part one of this transition.

While I haven’t been laid off, I’ve worked at companies early in my career that went through layoffs (media). I also saw firsthand what happened in the last major wave of workforce disruption: the Great Recession. My dad worked at Ford Motor Company for 30 years before losing his job during the auto industry collapse of 2008.

As it turns out, the pattern of layoffs across major tech companies since 2023 looks strikingly similar (in both pace and scale) to what happened in the auto industry leading up to the Great Recession.

In both cases, the layoffs didn’t just increase unemployment; they sent seasoned careerists back into the job market — many of whom haven’t needed to look for new work in a decade or more. This introduced a very different dynamic from the churn of the gig, freelance, or startup worlds, where people enter knowing the risks and expect volatility as part of the deal.

I wanted to see just how close the parallels really were, so I spent the morning digging into the data. Here’s what I found.

Before Tech, It Was Detroit

Seven major automative companies laid off a cumulative total of 166,100 workers between June 2005 and February 2009.

These companies included: BMW, Chrysler, Daimler-Chrysler, Ford Motor Company, General Motors, Nissan, and Volkswagen. There were obviously more layoffs than this during this period, but I focused on just the biggest layoff events.1

Silicon Valley’s Correction Moment

Since 2023, the layoffs of nine big tech companies has mirrored the impact of displaced people from the auto industry during the Great Recession.2 These companies are Amazon, Cisco, Dell, Google, IBM, Intel, Meta, Microsoft, and Salesforce.

Collectively, these nine Big Tech companies have displaced 171,800 people from the workforce since 2023.

Here’s the breakdown of major layoff events from just these companies over the past few years.

Because the scale of job losses felt so similar, I wanted to see how the timing compared. The chart below tracks the cumulative layoffs in both industries, beginning with each one’s first major layoff event.

As you can see, Big Tech is hitting the same numbers faster. At roughly 1,000 days since the first major layoffs, tech companies have cut 50% more jobs than automakers did before the 2009 crash.

What Happens Now

This is an imperfect analysis in many ways.

Obviously, today’s layoffs are not limited to the big players. Startups and smaller tech firms have also been contracting, and other sectors, and layoff are hitting many other industries as well, ranging from consulting and retail all the way to the postal service.

I decided to only focus on the impact of Big Tech companies compared to Big Auto companies because I was curious about the number of so-called “careerists” who have been displaced. In both industries, these big players made big promises to their employees: Generous compensation packages, strong benefits, solid healthcare, and steady paychecks.

For anyone whose parents grew up in Michigan (like mine), working in the auto industry was once the definition of security. And for anyone who came of age during the Internet boom (also me), working at Google, Microsoft, or Amazon carried that same sense of safety. I’ve watched many friends move from the volatility of startups to the stability of these giants. Then they stay for five, ten, even fifteen years.

The trouble is, the longer you stay, the harder it becomes to move. That’s why it was so difficult for my dad to find a new job after his decades at Ford. And it’s why today’s tech layoffs introduce a new kind of complexity into the market. It’s not just that more people are looking for work; it’s that the people being laid off are the ones who deliberately chose security over risk. Now they’re being asked to re-learn how to adapt and build new skills for the AI age. This is hard for anyone, but it’s especially hard when you’re learning something new for the first time…in a very long time.

Maybe this is what it takes to define the modern careerist now. It’s no about longer loyalty to one company, but the ability to keep learning long after the world stops rewarding it. My dad’s generation believed security came from staying put. It seems mine is learning that security comes from staying curious.

For those caught in this latest wave of layoffs, that curiosity may become their most valuable asset, a small spark that lights the way to pivoting toward whatever comes next.

Sources for Automative Layoffs:

https://www.npr.org/2005/06/07/4684372/general-motors-slashing-25-000-jobs-shutting-plants https://www.nbcnews.com/id/wbna10946664

https://www.nytimes.com/2006/01/24/automobiles/daimlerchrysler-is-cutting-6000-whitecollar-jobs.html

https://www.nbcnews.com/id/wbna11270198

https://www.nytimes.com/2007/02/14/business/15chrysler.html https://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/27/business/worldbusiness/27iht-bmw.2.10472089.html

https://www.mlive.com/annarbornews/2008/05/ford_plans_involuntary_layoffs.html https://www.theguardian.com/business/2009/feb/09/nissan-recession-jobs

https://www.thestar.com/business/gm-to-slash-47-000-jobs/article_b5050b81-f669-5dfc-b722-b463b6536f03.html

Sources for Tech industry layoffs:

https://techcrunch.com/2023/01/04/salesforce-to-cut-workforce-by-10-after-hiring-too-many-people-during-the-pandemic/

https://techcrunch.com/2023/01/05/amazon-to-cut-18000-jobs-as-tech-layoffs-continue/

https://techcrunch.com/2023/01/18/microsoft-announces-10000-job-cuts-nearly-5-of-its-workforce/

https://techcrunch.com/2023/01/20/google-parent-alphabet-cuts-6-of-its-workforce-impacting-12000-people/