Don’t Call it ‘Tech Layoffs’ Anymore

Seattle isn't just losing tech jobs. The technology career itself is changing.

On April 21, I became a statistic.

Starbucks announced a technology reorganization that eliminated 61 positions. Mine was one of them. Not to worry though—I quickly rebounded.

Since then, I've watched what initially seemed like a series of unrelated layoff announcements become something much larger: Amazon. Meta. Microsoft. Starbucks. Oracle. T-Mobile. Expedia. Zillow. Qualtrics. Google. Salesforce. TikTok. And others.

Add up the larger reductions affecting the Seattle-area technology market since April and you get a loss of more than 7,000 positions.

I didn't arrive at that number through exhaustive original research. I asked ChatGPT to help me investigate the question, and it assembled and cross-checked reporting from Washington WARN filings, GeekWire, the Washington Employment Security Department and other published sources. The precise total is less important to me than what the individual announcements collectively tell us. But "tech layoffs" doesn’t tell the whole story.

Look at who's actually losing their jobs: Product managers. Technical product managers. Program managers. Software engineers. Architects. UX professionals. Data scientists. Analysts. Engineering managers. Directors. Senior directors. Vice presidents.

These aren't just technology jobs being eliminated—they're pieces of the career structure that built Seattle's technology economy.

For years, one of the implicit promises of a technology career was that experience created value and, eventually, some measure of security. You accumulated domain knowledge. You learned how organizations actually work. You became better at navigating ambiguity, leading people and delivering complicated things.

I'm no longer convinced experience provides the protection it once did.

Seattle's boon may also be its Achilles Heel

Our anchor companies are reducing workforces. This means the hundreds of smaller companies and the substantial consulting ecosystem respond in kind.

For years, the concentration of opportunities created mobility. If one opportunity ended, another company down the road might need exactly what you knew how to do.

But when multiple companies reduce their workforces in the same timeframe, it creates a market crunch

A Senior Product Manager opening, for example, doesn’t simply attract people already looking for product jobs. It may now attract former senior people from Amazon, Microsoft, Meta, Expedia, Zillow, Starbucks, Oracle and Qualtrics—all competing for the same seat.

There are fewer opportunities to go around

Did I bury the lead? Could be.

Washington's Employment Security Department has characterized the current environment as a "low hire / low fire" labor market.

This doesn't feel like 2001, when the dot-com bubble visibly burst, or 2008, when the financial system seemed to be coming apart.

Jobs still appear. Companies still hire. Recruiters still reach out.

But fewer chairs appear to be available while a remarkable number of experienced people are standing.

That creates a strange labor market. You can be highly qualified, have decades of experience, possess a strong professional network and still discover that finding the next opportunity takes considerably longer than you expected.

So what does a technology career look like now?

I don't have a tidy answer.

Companies may become increasingly reluctant to permanently employ all of the experienced people they occasionally need. Consulting, contract work, fractional leadership and smaller specialist firms may become a larger part of how experienced technology professionals build careers.

Relationships matter even more. So does adaptability.

And perhaps we need to become more comfortable with careers that don't follow the traditional progression from individual contributor to manager to director to vice president, with each promotion supposedly bringing greater security.

After more than 25 years working in digital technology, I don't believe Seattle tech is disappearing. There is too much talent, capital, infrastructure and institutional knowledge here for that.

But I do think it's changing.

And when roughly 7,000 positions can disappear from major employers in one regional technology ecosystem over a matter of months, we should probably stop treating each layoff announcement as an isolated event.

Taken together, they form a pattern—we just need to figure out where we all land.