As it seems the dust is slowly beginning to settle on the latest round of layoffs – Meta this time, which is seriously destroying internal morale from what has been reported, I can’t help but think of a conversation I had outside the Orlando World Center Marriott, at a Marketing convention for Clickfunnels called Funnel Hacking Live just a few short months ago..

We were discussing new ideas for said funnels, marketing opportunities and our backgrounds prior to getting into Digital Marketing.

I mentioned I had been a web developer for most of my adult life.. “Wow, great industry to be in she replied for this kind of thing, those tech salaries are great!”

“Yeah… For Now”, I replied.

“How do you mean? Those salaries are insane! There’s huge demand, loads of people are getting into it”

“Yeah.. I think it’s going to change soon real quick. I think we’ll begin to see a shift by this time next year.”

That was in September 2022. The fears of a recession, rise of cost of living and all the other problems of the world had already begun to start.

I’m not boasting to have known but the warning signs were all there.

We didn’t have to wait even half the year to see the layoffs begin.

Why did my gut tell me this was going to happen?

Well, here’s my list.

1. It feels like half the industry is people teaching other people how to get into the industry, teaching how to code, selling courses, bootcamps and so on, anytime you get “Selling shovels in a gold rush” vibes there’s probably a reason for it.
2. With the ridiculous level of entry interviews completely unrelated to the job tasks themselves, the entire industry for entry level developers was based more so around passing an exam / passing FANG specific exams, of which again, there’s no shortage of courses and thus more shovels were sold.
3. Coming full circle, most people just wanted to join these companies so they could say they were a part of them and swing back to… selling courses or take inflated salaries of smaller companies blown away by the associated brand on the resume.
4. Being from a tech background and knowing friends in tech, I knew many, many people had very, very little to do during working hours. This was later confirmed in many articles when it turned out half these major companies were hiring out of greed of keeping talent from other companies.
5. There was becoming a huge disconnect in tech salaries compared to other jobs which society relies much more heavily upon. I still remember a ‘trend’ on twitter a couple of years back where everyone was posting their salaries to ‘open transparency for new developers, particularly those deemed to be ‘disadvantaged’. What followed was a shocking lack of awareness of real world awareness as hundreds of people posted on a global platform, complaining about ‘only’ getting 100-200k, compared to some earning eye watering sums of up to $560,000. This was before the huge inflation and cost of living crisis that followed the pandemic also.
6. Tying into number 5, the answer to pretty much everyone out of a job because of tech was to ‘get a job in tech’, learn to code. This A) Isn’t as easy as it sounds as many of these people have barely used a computer in their life and may struggle with Microsoft Word nevermind the many concepts required to get a foundation level of coding and B) Leads further to the over saturation of the job market.
7. The Rise in remote work. I remember at the start of the pandemic everyone beginning to enjoy the ability to work from home, I shook my head, as someone who’s been competiting with other digital marketers across the world for about 10 years now, I knew many are in for a rude awakening. As soon as companies realise they can outsource work to a remote worker across the globe or even to a worker in a cheaper cost of living state, minus the benefits a regular employee gets and pay in most cases less than half of what an American level salary pays ( much less than half for silicon valley based employees ), they would do it. We’re beginning to see it already with Seattle & San Francisco offices becoming pretty much empty as companies realise they don’t need to have offices in incredibly over priced states & cities and can get the same results being based elsewhere or even without an office.
8. Remote work problem part 2, with the rise of TikTok and many other self snitching platforms about people bragging about doing all their work in an hour then using a clicker / auto mouse scroller for the rest of the day, bosses must have begun to have debates about how much work their employees actually do..
9. Finally as soon as I heard about AI being able to take over entry level coding to some small levels of intermediate I knew it was a ticking time bomb. The endless abilities of what AI is able to achieve will soon be recognised by everyone and of course, the first people to realise this is, people in tech, especially managers in tech – managing costs, in a recession.

So TLDR For those who scanned right to the bottom.

The market was completely over saturated, the salaries were incredibly over inflated compared to most industries & we have a huge rise in tools and software that can replace the majority of these jobs, where jobs can’t be replaced, they can be moved to a cheaper location or outsourced.

I’m not saying this is an exhaustive list or these reasons are equal in weight but have a read and think about it, if you disagree or find yourself nodding along, let me know in the comments below.

My Lessons for you.

Don’t throw all your eggs in a basket because everyones jumping into it, there’s lots you can learn in the tech industry will be insanely useful for your life regardless if you have a ‘job’ in it. The days of ‘knowing’ word and excel being consider bonuses on your CV are over – these are mandatory skills. Learn automation, AI, learn what can serperate you from the rest.

You can also take shortcuts from tech and make your own life easier, for tips like how to do this, follow the newsletter. I don’t post much but when I do, it’ll be valuable. So no worries about me clogging up your email inbox.

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