Are tech layoffs happening abroad?
There’s been a lot of news about layoffs in the US. How is everyone fairing from other countries?
I can only speak for the UK, but the tech market is very different here. We don't really have large tech companies like in the US. Most tech work in the UK is in sectors like finance, retail, or public sector. While our economy isn't great and there are lay offs it would be wrong to call it "tech layoffs".
We have some tech startups here too though, and those are obviously struggling right now, but startups don't normally lay people off, they simply fail, and that happens all the time anyway.
However, where it is like the US is in the way tech hiring has dropped off a cliff. So if you're working at a startup and the startup fails, or if you're a contractor and your contract isn't renewed then you're going to find it extremely hard to find work right now. I'm getting a lot of messages from ex-colleagues at the moment struggling to find work but thinking about it I don't know anyone who actually got laid off unless you're talking about long-term contracts not being renewed.
The only sector that seems completely fine is public sector work, but there's just not enough public sector work to go around.
It's bad in Europe as well. Spotify let lots of people go last year, Pitch recently fired 2/3 of their staff. Glovo, Veriff, Xolo are just a few others I heard about, but I'm sure it's a hell of a lot more.
I'm thinking once this correction has settled we're probably left with companies that produce actual value instead of just hype, which is good, and I'd rather work for companies with real profits anyway, but it's rough to ride this wave right now for sure, especially if you get laid off and need to pay bills.
Freelance developer from Germany here.
There is a significant drop in projects and a slowdown in permanent offerings, but no layoff wave like in the US.
Demand is still high but due to the current recession most companies delay hiring for now.
From my point of view there is also a skill-missmatch in Germany.
While firms look for the usual most modern tech stacks, workforce is often conservative, staying years or even decades at one company with outdated technology.
Hiring non-EU citizens is almost impossible because of the bureaucracy.
So, in Germany the situation is complicated and different from the US.
Germany: as a senior the market looks ok, although a bit slower and customers seem more hesitant to start expensive projects/hire additional contractors. I get a few job offers now and then, enough to not be unemployed long if I wanted/had to switch my employer.
According to Bitkom, the German IT trade association, there are 149,000 open IT positions reported in Germany as of 2023-12-13, which is 12,000 more than one year ago.[1] The absolut numbers are not so significant here, because this is only what is reported and a lot of IT positions exist outside of the IT industry in the narrow sense, but the trend is quite meaningful.
[1] Source: https://www.bitkom.org/Presse/Presseinformation/Rekord-Fachk... (in German)
Japan: It's very hard for companies to lay off employees here, and I haven't seen any reports of large layoffs in the Japanese business press. However, a lot of IT work is subcontracted to smaller companies, and cutbacks in subcontracting might not make the news. Employment cutbacks by smaller IT firms might fall under the media radar, too.
The picture of the overall employment situation as conveyed by the news media here is of a tight labor market and of difficulty for companies in finding and retaining employees.
Haven't heard much from my family in Japan. Layoffs are rare in Japan in general and unemployment is generally always in the 2% range there. I'm sure startups are struggling there though as that seems to be the global trend, but the software engineers I know there at bigger companies haven't mentioned anything about layoffs and seem to be doing fine.
I haven't heard much this year in New Zealand but '21/'22 was pretty bad for Xero and a handful of smaller companies. But overall companies here didn't see the insane 2020 growth of American firms. Hiring has slowed across the board, hugely.
Indonesia: Huge layoffs from the unicorns correcting their valuations and a large number of earlier stage startups shutting down. Lots of disillusionment from tech workers over whats been happening, many are trying to move to large corporates / banks, many are struggling to find work.
Theres some sectors doing well, some new fundings happening, but overall slow and layoffs continue.
I'm at a mid sized SaaS company in the Nordics (European). No layoffs, but hiring has slowed down and we no longer actively try to recruit junior devs. We used to have lots of active job ads, now they're reduced to only the most in-demand roles. The company is profitable and we have big important projects going on so not too worried.
SE Asia had been hit hard for a while. The thing is we never really had a dot com bubble. Unicorns were raising hard, selling $1 stuff for $0.90, outsourcing everything, skyrocketing growth, raised billions, repeat. VCs would frown on companies that were raising money to use it as a warchest, YC style.
It choked out funding for cautious YC style growth especially after Grab acquired Uber operations here. So everyone else did it too, the fake it until you make it mindset became prominent. Eventually everyone runs out of fund sources and have to become profitable, but it's hard when you're now public and used to losing millions every quarter. The costs is often in employees, so waves of layoffs it is.
A lot of it isn't American money, but it's bad timing.
The layoffs aren't bad in the US (yet). Hiring has slowed down considerably, but we're not seeing massive layoffs yet.
For those in the Bay Area. Remember, you'll know that things are bad when rush-hour commute looks like non-rush-hour commute.
In Sweden, there has also been a notable tech downturn, with layoffs, etc.
India- multiple companies are laying off . First 1000+ laid off from payment unicorn, then Google lays off. From what I can see( collecting job data) slowness is there and companies are letting people go and will hire again in few months ( Google tech)
Heard that S. Korea tech scene is in a similar situation. It's much harder to do mass layoff in the country, but many people are leaving their companies in a form of "voluntary resignation". Also hiring slowdown is happening as well as project cancellation.
When this topic comes up I usually check https://layoffs.fyi/ which typically has roughly up to date data, but isn't 100% accurate of course, because it relies on submissions.
Google is laying off 1000 in Singapore.
Lazada and Shopee, online marketplaces, are also reporting double-digit percentage layoffs. For one of them, more than 50% of the C-suite was let go.
We are hearing about tech layoffs in some of the largest "tech" companies, but I'm not sure that we're seeing that in the many companies where tech serves the needs of the business.
In Indonesia, I’ve heard that several big startups/companies are laying off their employees almost every month. Some have suddenly announced that they're closing their business too.
Not sure how it is in other countries, but my department is hiring more internationally than domestically this year. Seems to me the pattern is layoff domestically and hire internationally.
In France I didn't heard a lot of layoff. It's recently way more difficult to find a good job, but you can still find a shitty job overnight at consulting companies
No layoffs among the (tech or otherwise) friends and family I know in the Germany/Netherlands/Belgium area
I work in the financial sector in Ireland. Afaik, my company is not doing any layoffs.
I know the answer is “because neolibs,” but I think at least one politician might want to campaign a little on how companies are replacing US employees with cheap labor abroad. I don’t even need to take a side on the matter. Objectively it seems they’re dropping the ball rather hard.
Haven't seen tech layoffs in Turkey yet.