Despite layoffs at Alphabet, Microsoft and Amazon, new tech hires aren't worried
Silicon Valley is cutting thousands of jobs. But people who got into the field during the ‘Great Resignation’ find their new skills paying off even as the hot job market cools.
Tech employers are rapidly slashing jobs ahead of a potential recession, but even the industry’s newest workers remain largely unbothered.
The recent wave of tech layoffs has begun to unwind the industry’s hiring spree during the coronavirus pandemic, when millions of Americans rode the “Great Resignation” into new jobs and careers. While the nation’s historically hot labor market is fitfully cooling down, many of the least experienced tech workers say their new skills and connections put them on firmer footing in case the economy deteriorates this year.
The weeks and months ahead will test their optimism. One basis for it, in the meantime, is that “upskilling” has already paid off for many.
Danielle Bridgewater, 29, was working as a librarian at a Long Beach, California, elementary school in 2020 when it shifted operations online. Hitting a wall with her $50,000 salary and growing weary of working from an empty room in an empty building, Bridgewater enrolled in a six-month UX/UI (user experience/interface) online boot camp with Trilogy Education Services, at the University of California, Irvine, nearby.
Danielle Bridgewater.Courtesy Danielle BridgewaterWith that certification, Bridgewater landed a design internship at Webserv, an Irvine-based digital marketing firm. She was eventually promoted to lead designer and, in combination with a teaching assistant gig with Trilogy (now known as edX), netted a salary boost of $20,000, she said. Bridgewater said she went from renting a room with her extended family to having her own apartment and better financial and career security.
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