Working in big tech is not as cushy as it
used to be.
This year, nearly 50,000 people have already been laid off
from their jobs in the tech industry and just got
laid off about two hours ago.
I was a victim of being laid off With the
massive tech layoffs,
we're going to be announcing that we're restructuring,
and Gen. Z now is starting to look at a
different sector that's nearly layoff proof.
I'm Katie Natopolis. I'm a senior correspondent at Business Insider.
In the 20 Tens, it was pretty cushy to work
at places like Amazon or Meta
Google. Salaries were high, the jobs were pretty steady and
there was tons of perks like free food,
Thank you, free daycare,
and even free laundry services.
Oh thank you. And these tech companies had money to
burn.
They were funding these moon shot projects.
Things like a wind turbine kite,
a self driving car, robotic
cell service tower on a balloon.
So now companies are starting to cut back
and even lay people off.
I think we can all agree that working in tech
is not an amazing place to be right now.
So why is this happening?
For a long period in the
2000s and 2000s and 10s,
it was really cheap to borrow money.
There were low interest rates.
It was called the Zerp period 0 interest rate phenomenon.
the Fed has raised interest rates.
This effects things like the cost of a home mortgage
loan,
for example. But it also means that for companies,
it's harder to raise capital,
raise money. This means it's just more expensive to run
a business.
During COVID, a lot of these companies grew a lot
and they hired a lot and there was over hiring
during this period and now they're sort of adjusting and
cutting back.
And the last reason
is AI. And a lot of these companies,
they're not replacing workers directly with jobs that are
run by a robot or AI.
But what's actually happening is a lot of these big
temp companies are sort of rethinking and
restructuring their workforce around new goals about how they're going
to develop AI.
You're still working corporate and you haven't been laid off.
You're probably super worried that you're going to be part
of the next layoff.
My friends, my colleagues, myself included,
we're all pretty scared and a little bit stressed.
It's a lot harder to get a job now.
And that's for two reasons.
One is these companies have fewer job offering.
All they could do was supply every single night,
apply, apply, apply. The amount of rejections or
no callbacks or anything I received is insane.
The other is that there's a lot more applicants than
there used to be,
and that's because these jobs were so desirable for so
long that a lot of people decided to major in
computer science.
There's more people looking for jobs than companies hiring.
There's been twice as many computer science graduates as there
were a decade ago.
And overall, what this means is it used to be
that you had to be in the
65th percentile of engineers in order to pass an interview
at a big tech company.
Now you have to be in the 83rd.
So what does this mean for Gen.
Z? Well, there's a new kind of job that's starting
to become very desirable for them,
and that is
government jobs. Here's how to get into tech in
2024. In a tech sector that does not have mass
layoffs,
Gen. Z is diversifying where they're looking for jobs.
And that's partly because compared to two years ago,
it is a lot harder to find a job.
The number of job openings has gone way down since
2022. Although the big tech jobs and private sector work
often will have much higher salaries than the public sector,
there are a lot of upsides to working for the
government in a federal job.
Things like student loan relief,
a lot of public service jobs,
or public sector jobs will erase your student debt after
a certain amount of time.
Another is job security. People think that I'm exaggerating when
I say that it's almost impossible to get fired by
the federal government.
People are much, much more likely to lose their jobs
through a layoff in the private sector.
About three times more likely than the public sector
Health insurance. I work in the public sector and I
really love it because,
one, I always wanted to be a government employee.
Two, I have great health insurance.
My deductible $350.00. I have a pension,
so I have to worry about the market.
Early retirement. A lot of these jobs you can retire
at actually 65 or even sooner.
These things really matter to Gen.
Z. And of course money is important.
Money is important to everybody.
But Gen. Z is rating job security.
It's the number one thing they care about when looking
for a job.
No, I do admit working the public sector,
you don't make a lot of money and it could
be based on where you live,
but also what you do.
I actually looked it up if I went into the
private sector for what I do for work.
I can look over six figures and that is very
nice and that literally changed my life.
But I always remember you could be laid off.
Joe, you're late. What you gonna do?
Fire me? All right, Joe,
I'm not gonna ask you again.
Get off your phone. What
you gonna do, fire me?