The Mass Tech Layoffs Broke Something That Won't Come Back
Between 2022 and 2024, the tech industry laid off somewhere around half a million people. Not contractors. Not underperformers. Engineers, designers, product managers, entire teams deleted in a single afternoon. People who had been told they were essential, who had stock options vesting, who had relocated their families for these jobs. Gone. Often via email. Sometimes while locked out of their laptops mid-sentence. The industry has moved on. Hiring is picking up. The job market is recovering. But something broke during those years that is not coming back, and I think we are only starting to understand what it was.