It's a new, cold world of work for those among the tens of thousands of people who were laid off from jobs in Big Tech in recent months and have since taken jobs at less prestigious companies with smaller operating budgets.
"I've been reminiscing about the onboarding I had at Twitter," a former worker of the social platform, who was caught in the new owner and CEO Elon Musk's initial mass layoff, said.
Onboarding at a new job is not typically a pleasant memory for most, or a memory at all, but at Twitter, it was a leisurely process of getting to know the company, coworkers, and the new job. At least before Elon Musk took over. It even had a name, "Yes to Desk," and was designed to make the period between a person accepting a job offer and beginning their work as seamless as possible.
A few weeks ago, the former Twitter worker started a new job at another tech company. Although the new company is well known with a multi-billion dollar valuation, the magic of being part of tech's three-decade bull run has evaporated. Onboarding felt unorganized and "pointless," he said. The food provided by the company is worse and the pay is lower. Many people who spent years in Big Tech, with its big salaries, generous stock grants, and luxurious perks, are being forced to adjust to a new, lower, standard of work.
"It's definitely been a wake-up call realizing most companies do not operate so smoothly," another former Twitter employee Musk laid off said after recently accepting a job at a tech startup. Although there is no doubt that Musk's drastic and continued cuts at Twitter have changed much, if not all, of what these former employees are missing, "Twitter 1.0 was special," one said.
A former Facebook employee who is currently applying for jobs and has had several interviews with other companies said the process overall has her feeling "nostalgic" – not just for Facebook, but major tech companies throughout the industry sparing no expense to make workers happy. Such freewheeling days have ended as Facebook, Google, Microsoft and nearly every other company in tech move to cut more costs after mass layoffs. Yet the employees that remain in Big Tech still have it good. The pay remains high and the food is still free, even if a sense of job security is gone. Those that were kicked out realize they may never have it that good again.
Several of the laid off half dozen workers Insider spoke to, all of whom asked to remain anonymous for fear of jeopardizing new jobs or prospects, are considering offers or interviewing at major consultancies or accounting firms, like Deloitte, in an effort to get back to the compensation they had in tech.
"It's so tempting for the money, but not the work," a person who last year lost a Big Tech job and recently interviewed at one of the "Big Four" accounting firms said. This person is still interviewing elsewhere, including a newer streaming platform and a hedge fund, both of which are offering less pay.
Others who recently lost jobs in tech have come to accept that they won't be able to get back to the salary they just had, even if it's taken months of applying to jobs, going through multiple rounds of interviews only to get to salary negotiation and be suddenly ignored by recruiters to realize it. And a tech job market now flush with experienced workers is letting companies force pay down dramatically.
One person who was recently laid off from Microsoft and is currently interviewing for new jobs said tech companies simply realized last year they've been overpaying people.
"The salary in tech just ballooned, making every other type of engineering seem obsolete in comparison," the person said. "Now the competition is so insane it's hard to get back in. I would imagine people are going to accept pay drops of 20% to 30%, maybe more."
A friend, the person said, spent four months looking for a job after being laid off and just accepted an offer outside of Big Tech for the same type of work at the same level with the salary cut in half.
Frustration with a job market that had already started to cool last year is why a tech worker who was laid off from Snap used severance pay to take some time off, as many of his industry peers did. The job market still hasn't improved. After being eventually rejected by Amazon and ghosted by Google after many weeks of interviews, he's now deciding between offers from a fintech company and a startup backed by a major venture capital firm. Both are paying less than he previously made.
"It won't be fun, exciting stuff that touches millions of people," the person said. "It's a job."
Are you a tech employee or someone else with insight to share? Contact Kali Hays at khays@insider.com, on secure messaging app Signal at 949-280-0267, or through Twitter DM at @hayskali. Reach out using a non-work device.
