I work a typical tech job. Good benefits, unlimited vacation, work from home, etc. Our growth for the year was lower than expected because we focused too much on getting new customers rather than improving things for our existing customers. Because of this, many of our customers found alternatives to our products and the value lowered even more. The value of my shares, which were essentially my entire retirement plan, have more than halved in one year.
The company just announced a massive layoff of about 100+ contractors. They claimed that any layoffs were off the table for the remainder of the year before this. They’re now claiming that the layoffs were only off the table for non-contract full time employees, which was not specified there.
We just held a company-wide meeting with one of our CEOs and he basically confirmed that we are in a tight spot and will have to cut back on expenses despite just opening up a multi-million dollar office in an effort to return to office that barely anyone goes to. They put in a hiring freeze and implied that significantly less employees will get bonuses or raises for the year. Worth noting that the two founders of the company have a net worth of roughly $10 billion each.
I’m already paid slightly lower than the market value for someone in my position (i’m a FTE so wasn’t laid off) so I plan on cashing out the remainder of my stocks next year and moving on. I just wanted to remind everyone that despite many tech jobs having amazing benefits, flexible working hours, stock plans, etc, you can and will be thrown under the bus the moment it becomes economically advantageous to the company. I know tech workers have it significantly easier than people in other fields, but these benefits and treats are there to prevent workers from realizing that their worth is
determined only by the amount of money they make for these CEOs.