“This is a gift,” Mr. Pulliam said. “I don’t think that story gets told. It’s always pessimism.”
But for tech workers experiencing their first economic downturn, the cuts have been eye-opening. Ms. Chang studied product design in college with an eye toward joining a tech industry that seemed recession-proof. Getting fired from Lyft shook that faith.
Erin Sumner, a software recruiter at Facebook’s parent company Meta, used to brag to potential hires that the company was the fastest ever valued at $1 trillion. She said she would promote the company’s strengths, including last year when its share price plunged and her core business, digital advertising, struggled.
When layoff rumors began circulating last year, he assured his colleagues their jobs were safe and pointed to the more than $40 billion in cash the company had in the bank. But in November, she was among the 11,000 laid off workers.
“It was heartbreaking,” said Sumner, 32. She has found a new job as the hiring manager for DeleteMe, a startup that aims to remove a customer’s information from search results. But she said she cringed every time she read about more tech layoffs.
“I’m afraid it’s going to get worse before it gets better,” Ms Sumner said. “There is no guarantee. I was fired by the safest company in the world.”
A similar reversal of fortunes has challenged companies that sell software services. Shares of Salesforce, an industry leader, fell nearly 50 percent last year as its sales growth slowed. The company had splurged during the pandemic, spending $28 billion to buy Slack Technologies. It went from 49,000 to 80,000 employees in two years.
During a general meeting last week to discuss the company’s decision to lay off 10 percent of its workers, Marc Benioff, the chief executive, tried to sympathize with his personal discontent by putting the cuts in context.
