Tech industry layoffs of the last year has led to a recruiting boom for start-ups, according to a new report from The Wall Street Journal.
Speaking with tech recruiters and investors, the Journal found that though startups often offer less money and fewer perks, former big tech employees find the chance for equity and the opportunity to get in on the ground floor has more appeal.
"The best talent is always looking for where they can have the most impact, and how they can accelerate their career," said Alex Kayyal, a partner at Menlo Park-based Lightspeed Venture Partners.
Over the past year, Silicon Valley has seen Meta Platforms Inc., Google LLC, Cisco Systems Inc. and others part ways with thousands of employees as they try to bring down costs. Just this week, Sunnyvale-based LinkedIn — a subsidiary of Microsoft Inc., which let go of 10,000 employees at the start of the year — announced it was laying off 716 people and closing its China operation.
According to the website Layoffs.fyi, 2023 has seen Bay Area-based tech companies shed some 61,834 jobs to date — 11,203 more than all of 2022. That number includes employees of these companies who are not based locally, and it covers companies of all sizes.
For Ayal Yogev, founder and CEO of Anjuna Security Inc., a Palo Alto-based cybersecurity start-up, these layoffs offer workers the chance to reassess their view on the idea that big companies guarantee any kind of real job security.
“If Google is laying people off, it makes more people comfortable with the idea of working at a startup,” said Yogev.
Speaking with CNBC in December, Megan Slabinski, the West Coast district president for staffing firm Robert Half, said the hiring market was beginning to shift away from big tech.
“It’s a good time for start-ups to access talent when you’re not competing against one of the FAANG (Facebook, Amazon, Apple, Netflix, and Google) companies,” Slabinski said.
According to Yogev, changing jobs has also meant for many a change in career, too, with tech workers looking at non-tech roles at startups, while others have chosen to take their chances and launch their own companies.
In January, The Economist reported that applications to Y Combinator, the Mountain View startup accelerator, were up five-fold on the previous year.
