How tech workers are dealing with the ‘LinkedInferno’ of record Silicon Valley layoffs
The latest headlines from our reporters across the US sent straight to your inbox each weekdayYour briefing on the latest headlines from across the USYour briefing on the latest headlines from across the USA layoff was what inspired Julia, an executive at a well known tech company, to move to San Francisco in the first place more than a decade ago. Still, when she learned in mid-April that she was joining the hundreds of thousands of tech workers hit with recent layoffs, she was in shock.“It took me two days to get out of bed,” said Julia, who asked to remain partially anonymous to speak about her employer. “I went through this deep debrief. I didn’t think that would happen. I did not see this coming.”“I didn’t realize how much of my confidence and how much of my emotional wellbeing was tied to the fact that I had a routine,” she added. “I had a community. I had a job that I previously was told I was performing well at. It was very disorienting.”Julia was given severance and encouraged to reapply to other roles at the company, but the firm’s plunging stock price and pressure from AI gives her little hope she will find a new position there.While some in the industry, especially those with a post-exit financial cushion, view a layoff as a moment to take time off, Julia said she doesn’t have that luxury while pursuing a career in the age of AI. Competition for jobs is intense, and technological standards are changing rapidly. She threw herself into applying for new positions immediately and formed a group chat, dubbed “LinkedInferno,” with fellow women in the industry, where they bond over the shared challenges of suddenly being forced into a career reset. Hundreds of thousands of tech workers have been laid off in the last two years, and they say they’re facing fierce competition, interviews done by AI, and anxiety as they hunt for new roles (Supplied/Getty Images)“I just take one day at a time —sometimes it’s an hour at a time — but I can’t thinking too far out ahead because I can’t get myself into a panic,” Julia said. The members of LinkedInferno aren’t alone in feeling the pressure: More than 108,000 tech workers have been laid off this year, including from blue-chip firms such as Cisco, LinkedIn, PayPal, Meta and Amazon, according to the tracker Layoffs.fyi. Halfway into the year, cuts are already nearing last year’s total of 124,281 tech workers.“There's been little evidence that AI has actually been able to replace the work of the human employees let go,” Roger Lee, a tech entrepreneur and creator of Layoffs.fyi, told The Independent. “However, companies like Meta and Amazon are spending so much money on A.I. investments that they need to cut costs elsewhere. Layoffs are their answer to that, and these companies are hoping that A.I. can help increase productivity even as headcount shrinks.”Tech job losses now appear to outpace those that followed the 2020 Covid pandemic and the 2008 financial crisis. In the face of these historic challenges, tech workers in the Bay Area and beyond have turned to a variety of strategies, from forming community groups to applying for thousands of open roles. Some plan to leave the industry — or the country — altogether.Jonathan Denno passed his days learning new tech skills, applying for roles and playing poker with friends after being laid off in January (Courtesy of Jonathan Denno)Jonathan Denno, who lives in Santa Clara, the heart of Silicon Valley, said he was let go earlier this year from his role as a software test analyst after more than a decade at Fidelity Information Services, a Fortune 500 fintech company. He suspects he was laid off because, in his opinion, the company “jumped the gun” on its AI investments and needed to cut costs. Severance and unemployment held him over financially, and he took the time off to apply to scores of new jobs and double down on training, a practice known as upskilling. “I would dedicate a certain amount of hours to job hunting,” added Denno. “But that was not even half the time. The other half of the time I would use for skill training and brushing up on what I was good at and learning things I didn’t know.”More than 108,000 tech workers have been laid off this year, many of them from top Bay Area firms (Getty)To unwind, he met with a regular poker group.“They were very, very concerned for me and very supportive,” he said. “You need to have these sorts of groups and cliques. I will also say, because I play poker, I kind of developed a habit to play at casinos a little more than I should. That was a good way to blow off steam but also not something I’d recommend to anyone.”He came out about even from the casino, and he’s now working a contract role at Apple, so it seems his larger bet on training paid off.Outside of the financial stress, some recently laid off Bay Area tech workers worry about the bigger-picture implications of where the tech industry is going.Elbert Nguyen, 25, who was laid off last month from AMD, feels confident he can find another position soon, but he worries the tech industry hasn’t reflected enough on the broader implications of AI (Courtesy of Elbert Nguyen)Elbert Nguyen, 25, of Oakland was laid off for the first time in his career in April from his contract role as an engineering technician at AMD, a semiconductor firm at the heart of the AI race. He wasn’t given severance and aims to find another job within two months, though he lives with his parents and said he could ask for their support if things came to that. He’s confident he can find another similar position — firms are embracing contractor roles to save money in the AI age, he said — but he’s more worried that the industry is going all-in on AI too fast. He worries they’re betting their future on the technology before fully considering its political, economic, and environmental risks. Many senior Silicon Valley employees receive stock as part of their compensation, so charging ahead as fast as possible and even creating an AI bubble could be in their self-interest, at least in the short term. “It all comes at a cost,” he said. “I fear that it’s not being recognized or it’s being swept under the rug. We’re not hearing the impact of it from within the industry. I feel like the vast majority of people in the industry are in a similar position like me, where they have these qualms, or they have these concerns about the technology at large that they’re developing, its use, and its impact on society.”One cost is to tech workers themselves, who face stiff competition and little leverage in a job market where companies can simultaneously have soaring stock prices and mass layoffs.A Silicon Valley-based senior engineering manager, laid off in October after working on AI projects at a well-known IT firm, told The Independent he went through more than 50 rounds of near-miss interviews while applying to similar big-name firms including Meta, LinkedIn and Amazon, before deciding to accept a role at a start-up where he is earning less than a third of what he used to make at his prior role and while likely working more hours. “It’s not the best outcome, but at the same time I’m also getting a chance, an opportunity, to work in A.I., close to the cutting edge and reskill myself,” he said.Amid the ongoing AI race, companies poured a record $61 billion into building data centers in 2025, part of the massive capital outlays prompting some firms to trim staff (Getty)The man, now in his late 30s, wonders how long he can stay in the tech industry altogether. Between the rapidly changing state of the art and the tech industry’s bias towards youth, he worries he may not be able to find another gig the next time he is back on the job market.He’s considering returning to his native India and maybe retiring, living off the savings he accrued during boom times in a tech industry that no longer resembles the one he once knew.“If I can stay and push my career for another five years, that would a big bonus actually,” he said. “That’s the feeling I have. Because every six months it’s just getting outdated and more and more companies are having layoffs. We are being replaced by AI. That’s why as a family, I have plans to relocate back to India next year. At least the cost of living will be one-third or even lesser, and my savings will definitely last me until I retire.”A common thread among those laid off in recent months has been a hunger for community, professional and otherwise.Basem Istanbouli, who worked in ad sales at Google until being laid off last January, founded a group in December called un(PTO) to seek out kindred spirits, get moving and break up the isolating monotony of applying for one job after the next on LinkedIn.Many laid off tech workers have sought refuge in community groups such as un(PTO), which hosts regular hikes in the Bay Area (Courtesy of Basem Istanbouli)He began by hosting weekly hikes around the Bay Area for laid off tech workers, which now sometimes attract more than 90 participants per outing. The group has since evolved into a larger community that attends events in the region together and swaps information and tips. Istanbouli, whose wife works in design in the industry, is still searching for a position. He said being around others with a shared experience helps erase the stigma associated with being laid off.“Even on LinkedIn, to even say that you’re laid off has this shame attached to it, to have that ‘open to work banner,’” he told The Independent. “I even had someone who was like, ‘Hey, maybe don’t put that because it makes you look like you’re trying to hard.’ And I’m like, ‘Dude, I am trying hard.’ I need this job.”“You wanna be with people in a similar boat,” he added. “You want people that you can be vulnerable around. That’s a big reason as to why the group has done so well...People can let down their guard.”As much as community can help, the longer a layoff persists, the harder things get, according to Jessica Bryant, a Virginia-based software engineering associate laid off from the consulting firm Accenture in September. The layoff was part of a season of hardship for the software engineer, whose partner of 17 years, her high school sweetheart, died in 2024. Bryant has applied to hundreds of jobs, while upskilling and getting certifications on benchmark industry systems such as Amazon Web Services, but she has yet to get a solid offer. At one point, she was interviewed by an AI, an exercise she suspects was aimed mostly at improving the technology, rather than genuinely seeking new hires.Jessica Bryant, who was laid off in September, worries about the developmental impact on her young daughter if a day care voucher expires because she hasn’t found a job (Courtesy of Jessica Bryant)Bryant, who is living off savings, is used to budgeting carefully, and she’s switched careers before, moving from being a cook to joining the tech field. Still, she worries most about her children, one whom could lose access to day care if Bryant is unemployed long enough. A state voucher covering the cost of the day care expires at the end of the month unless Bryant can find a new job. Her one-year-old daughter has developmental delays and sees a speech therapist at the day care. “She’s made so much progress since she’s been around other kids...There is just a lot more at stake than just money,” Bryant said.Ironically, the tech workers who have pushed the state of the art forward on AI are some of the first to see their jobs threatened by it.Tech layoffs in 2026 are on pace to surpass losses from 2025, even as AI companies are pushing the stock market to record highs (AFP/Getty)“This is a really interesting time for reflection about the future of work,” said Julia, the San Francisco tech executive laid off in April. “What these layoffs are really signaling is something greater. We are going to be replaced at some point — engineers, marketers, sales people — and AI is moving at such an incredibly fast rate. The technology is getting so, so good. We don’t often have the time to really go and be introspective and look at our lives and really question, ‘Is this my calling?’”With a bit of Silicon Valley’s signature optimism, Julia sees a twinkle of possibility in all this creative destruction.“While this is a really scary time, this is also a really important time for people to reflect and think about how the they want to live their lives with purpose and intention and what their trajectory really looks like,” she said.However, as the AI race has shown, what workers want and what they actually get can be two very different things.
