How are the current layoffs affecting non-US developers?

Poland.

On one hand it’s a bit slower on the other Google here hiring like crazy, Netflix opening up an office, Shopify acquiring whole companies…

To me it seems like big tech fires in the US then look for cheaper workforce elsewhere. Or maybe just a coincidence?

Lithuania. There were at least 3 companies last year who reduced their IT workforce: Interactio, HCL Technologies Lithuania and Genius Sports. As well last year Uber announced that they will close Lithuanian office but people can relocate (I know people who chose to move to different companies in Lithuania). This year I heard only about TrustPilot firing someone (or everyone).

It looks like companies choose not increasing salary path nowadays. That means the only way is to switch jobs to get salary increase and I know several people who did that recently. Company I work at is looking for front end developers as well. I have direct invite to some companies and I know that in case I lose my job I will get new one next day. LinkedIn spam reduced from 2 offers per day to 2 per week but I still get them.

Brazilian here: for laid off in November by an UK based startup and still unemployed.

Local companies seemly are willing to hire but because the flood of fired workers they are offering really bad wages. I got offered work as embedded C dev for 300 USD month... I didn't accept back then because I was still working in my old job. I regret not taking that job now. 300 USD at least is more than 0 USD.

Japan here. It does not seem to affect much. Companies look based on their performance. Interestingly, we got more applicants from the US and Canada recently. I heard multiple times that people want a "stable" job over higher comp. Especially young developers. Culture shift? Some companies actually raised salaries recently because of the cost of living (See the news about Nintendo and others). However the salaries in Japan have been stagnant for years, so this was kind of overdue.

They shut my office down in Canada. Lots of jobs. Most are remote for US companies though. Very few recruiters spamming me, but companies are very receptive to inbound inquiries from me.

I’m a senior eng in AI research though, which is obviously having a big moment right now.

I worked on a very internationally distributed team of ~50 people, and was one of the two US citizens working on the onshore US component of that team (about 14 people). Myself and one other H1B on the US team were the only ones laid off on the larger 50 person team, and the layoff decision was unilaterally made by a director in Singapore. This is at an American semiconductor company that took $40B from the government a few months ago to increase its US presence, for reference.

Australia has been fine. Amongst the big software engineering hirers (Google, Atlassian, Canva, big banks, WiseTech, AWS) only Google Sydney is known to be doing layoffs.

Zendesk (Melbourne) did layoffs last year, but this was small scale I think, and mostly driven by their company-specific troubles.

My company was affected.

We closed our India office, 1/3 of our global offices.

Late last year, a lot of our engineering team was let go - somewhere between 20 and 30%.

This year, between 20 and 30% of the sales / marketing folks were let go.

In my opinion, these were reasonable decisions that were brought about by poor management. New management is doing a good job, and made the hard, necessary call.

Thus, it's hard to say how much an impact the economy has had. It certainly seems to have been a catalyst, but these internal changes were also a long time coming.

Germany here. I heard that some startups are freezing hiring, especially vc-funded ones (money has become expensive on this side of the pond, too). Recruiter spam also has died down a bit. That being said, the market still seems comparatively healthy and AFAIK there have been no large-scale layoffs.

Here in Latin America, the hiring of local developers by companies in the United States has decreased. Since July of last year, it has been much easier to hire and retain local talent.

Norway here. I got laid off, but it was less of a deal because I was on my way out soon anyway, so it really worked out nicely. I got a new position relatively quick (relatively, because everything slows down near the end of the year.)

I think that the strong US dollar has put a bit of a damper on companies that have diverse cash flows in different currencies, my former employer included, particularly if their bills are denominated in dollars primarily. My new employer is international, but where I will work probably has a lot of cash flow in the local currency, so I presume things will be influenced by interest rate policy here (which stands at 2.75% now and rate hikes have slowed down significantly.)

In New Zealand - most layoffs I’ve heard about have been US companies trimming offshore staff. At least one high profile local startup has laid people off though.

Speaking as a hiring manager it’s definitely been easier to find people since around mid 2022

Why would they shut down offices in western Europe? That must be the absolute cheapest (western) region to hire for.

In Japan it doesn’t seem to have affected much, though our parent US company went through a significant round of layoffs.

Japan. No significant layoffs in tech afaict. The large companies are being urged by the govt. to raise salaries (as historically they base salaries are low in comparison to peers in other G7-G8 nations in similar roles).

That's so weird that layoffs have primarily been in the US, the most expensive labor market. It's almost like the layoffs aren't really out of any necessity in most cases but are just an attack on labor and labor costs.

That aside, it is worth noting that a lot of other countries make it a lot more difficult to lay people off and when you do there are more protections, greater notice periods and so on. So it may just be that layoffs are happening overseas and we haven't really heard about them yet.

Also, most non-US offices of big tech companies tend to e a lot smaller. London is a bit of an outlier.

Singapore here: lots of layoff. My current company is effected. Layoff over 90%.

Most of my friends are okay in their current jobs. When I apply for new jobs, mostly crypto companies are replying.

Most companies stop hiring.

- US companies are less likely to offer 15K/month, whereas before it wasn't uncommon

- Local Latam companies are having an easier time retaining talent

- Devs in Latam have lowered their salary expectations and often are putting regular salary increases on pause

- There's less job hopping between firms now

Not even sure the US layoffs are really impacting US developers. The US unemployment rate keeps going down month to month despite big tech layoffs. The devs getting laid off are being snagged by other companies almost right away.

it should only affect USA. most companies depend on investor money (some to live, like tsla, uber. some because of bonuses tied to stock prices)

those companies know that investor money is directly related to FED rate. if its zero, they get invested, if its high, people will put money to work elsewhere.

they only lever they have to control fed rate is unemployment. they know they are hurting their business by laying off people they fought to acquire, but their incentives for investor money is higher than anything else.

so their plan is to increase unemployment in the USA so fed lower rates so investment money keeps flowing.

Don't want to jinx it, but I haven't heard of any Sydney-based startups doing layoffs. I have heard about Sydneysiders from Microsoft, Google and such who were hit by layoffs though.

Poland. Amount of recruiters on LinkedIn decreases but they still exists. Heard of 0 layoffs whatsoever though.

Here in India most of the VC funded startups and large international tech companies are laying off people left and right. Most VCs are funded from international clients, who are fleeing with their money for good reasons; the grow-at-all-costs model hasn't worked out yet, and time is up because interest rates.

Hiring also seems to have been paused. I used to get recruiter inmail at least three times a week, but have only received 2 in the past three months.

This has not impacted other sectors outside IT/tech/startups. If you are currently a developer in a decently sized company in a different sector, you're likely fine. Non-software firms will obviously use the opportunity to lowball you on further salary growth, but it's unlikely that you'll get laid off soon.

I just hope people didn't go end spend all of their massive salaries they earned in the last few years since it's going to get even more difficult in the near future.

Interestingly no comments from anyone in India considering that is the largest tech market outside the US and where majority of jobs are moving to and India seems to be one of the few countries growing and projected to do well in this economic slump environment. I guess all their developers are busy working so no time for HN.

Eastern Europe here, local full time offers are down, US remote freelance offers are up. Not sure what to make of it yet.

France. The cryptocurrencies startup are failing. The startup ecosystem was less crazy than Us/Uk/Germany, and seems still going as it was (minus crypto, plus AI). Embedded is still going strong. Lots of opportunities for devops here in banking/insurance.

Spain. Data Eng. manager. I switched jobs a week ago. Although there are some startups with a freeze (because of failed investment rounds), the hiring market looks healthy: same salary ranges, recruiter spam with same frequency.

Sweden.

A lot of layoffs here as well. I wasn't affected but know devs that were. My understanding is that the most senior the dev, the easier it is to bounce back. Know people that got another job within 2 weeks with higher pay.

Germany

Local small social network startup’s main investor decided it’s not worth it, probably due to money being not that cheap now.

Fired 30ish people, left a skeleton crew of 2 people. Abandoned the 100k MAU Android app, iOS only now.

Vietnam.

The hiring market for programmers isn't as hot as it was say, a year ago. However, none of my colleagues have lot their job and the overall sentiment from people I know is that it's business as usual.

UK. I was looking for a job last month. It was harder than it typically would be. A lot of recruiters were talking to me, but then not getting back to me. I doubt it was an experience thing either.

I think it really depends on what you're looking for. There's stuff around still, but it seems salaries are generally lower and interesting jobs are harder to come by. Then when you do find something there seems to be more competition and it's harder to secure an interview.

Brazil

The big international companies here are not layoffing many Brazilian teams AFAIK. There are many reasons for that and we can discuss that further if someone wants.

The national unicorn startups are layoffing a lot. As they need to cut costs, they don't have much choice.

About the small/medium size companies, it's hard to talk about because some of them were smarter and stop hiring before this create a problem for them in the future. Others just follow the flux and now are firing people too.

-- South Korea - naver - kakao - huyndai - samsung - all hiring like crazy for developers - if you're a developer in south korea finding a job is very - very easy --

Netherlands

I haven't heard about layoffs. I'm currently looking for a position of a .Net senior dev/tech lead and the market here has cooled down. There are almost no positions for 85+k. Number of positions is considerably lower than it was a year ago. Year ago I was also applying but the war changed my plans.

Not an individual, but an agency working with international clients from India on team augmentation/ build your team basis.

In last June - we had 6 clients for whom 30 engineers were working. All our clients downsized on external consultants & we had to let go some of the people.

I am hiring out of Mexico and India. But mostly Mexico. Lots of software jobs are moving there.

Mexico here. I work for an American company and they just recently laid off about 16% of their staff, including 49 engineers and product managers. It was pretty harsh. They fired contractors from Latin America and full time employees from the states.

Indonesia got hit pretty hard. Someone event made a tracker for it [1]. Currently at least 42 companies have been affected.

[1] https://ecommurz.com/layoff/

Denmark.

Business as usual. Only layoffs seem to be the bubbles that we expected to burst anyway.

UK has been unaffected it seems. Lots of companies hiring right now.

Still going through a talent drought. Has barely made any impact.

I just got promoted. Without a salary bump. ):

The amount of spam I get from recruiters in the US hasn't decreased either, and yet I'm at ground-zero of the layoffs.