The REALITY of Tech Jobs in 2025

The bloodbath in tech continues with Facebook or Meta as it's now called, firing more than 11,000 employees. In 2023, Meta's stock price shot up 194%, making it one of the most successful tech companies of the year. At the same time, they laid off 21,000 people. Google's parent company, Alphabet, hit record profits and laid off 12,000. Microsoft's value crossed $3 trillion and they cut 10,000 jobs. Something doesn't add up. It gets weirder. The average software engineer's salary is at an all time high. Companies are paying more than ever for talent, yet tech unemployment has doubled in the last year. Today, we're going to break down the actual numbers behind tech's bizarre job market and explain why those jobs may never be coming back. To understand how one bad year can shatter tech's unstoppable growth, we need to look at just how massive and consistent that In the year 2000, Google was a startup with 40 employees. By 2010, they had 24,000. By 2020, 135,000 employees. And by 2022, they peaked at 190,000 employees. That's not just growth, that's exponential growth. Each decade, they weren't just getting bigger, they were growing faster. And Google wasn't alone. Let's look at the numbers. Amazon in the year 2000 had 9,000 employees. And by 2021, they had 1.6 million. Meta slash Facebook had 2,000 employees in 2010. By 2022, they had 87,000 employees. Microsoft in the year 2000 had 39,000 employees, and they grew to 221,000 by 2022. This wasn't just hiring for the sake of hiring. The tech market was expanding so rapidly that companies needed this many people just to keep up. From 2000 to 2010, we saw the internet become mainstream. Then, as you remember, the mobile revolution happened. After that, cloud computing took over. And then in 2020, the pandemic forced all the companies into going digital. Each wave created entirely new industries, products, and job categories that didn't exist before. The math was pretty simple. More technology equals more products equals more engineers equals guaranteed growth. Until it wasn't. In 2022, something changed. For the first time in over two decades, tech saw its first real market contraction. The zero interest rate period rewarded growth in every single tech company. But when inflation skyrocketed and interest rates went up, the Nasdaq dropped 33%. But here's a key thing. It wasn't just that the market went down, it's what that decline revealed about the entire tech industry's foundation. You see, tech's growth wasn't just built on innovation and disruption. It was built on a very specific kind of math, one that required continuous uninterrupted growth to work. And when that growth stopped, even for just a year, it triggered a domino effect that has made the future of tech unemployment questionable. During tech's growth years, the message was clear. Learn to code, get a six-figure job. The entire education industry restructured around this promise of the demand for engineers and data Companies couldn't hire fast enough. The education industry saw dollar signs. Universities couldn't admit CS graduates fast enough. From 2015 to 2020, the number of CS graduates almost doubled from 60,000 to 100,000. But back in 2013, when the number of CS graduates wasn't enough, Silicon Valley had an idea. Why wait four years to make a program? Why not do it in three months? Enter the coding bootcamp. If you could do anything, what would you do? Say you want to be a web developer? Check this. You can graduate in as little as four months. Land the perfect job, you pay the big bucks, and then you pay Lambda. These weren't schools, they were the startup-fied versions of education. For example, boot camps like Lambda School raised $122 million with a pitch that sounded too good to be true. Pay nothing up front, learn to code, get a high-paying tech job, and share a slice of your salary. And ultimately, it was a bet on tech's infinite growth. From 2016 to 2023, the number of coding bootcamp graduates went from 18,000 to almost 60,000 per year. The conveyor belt of new engineers seemed unstoppable. But when tech hiring froze in 2022, the bootcamp bubble burst. Lambda School immediately laid off 39 percent of their staff and pivoted their business model. Flatiron School cut their workforce in half. If they didn't find jobs, the boot camps didn't get paid. But here's where things get interesting. While boot camps are imploding, specialty master's programs are doing better than ever. For one, they've tapped into a completely different line. In 2022, the international graduate enrollment shot up by 21 percent, and then another 22 percent in 2023. Schools like Columbia and Michigan caught onto this trend and added special STEM designations to their programs that let internationals stay in the U.S. for longer. Second, and this is crucial, is the fact that master's programs actually benefit from economic uncertainty. See, when jobs are more scarce, more people go back to school. And unlike boot camps, universities get paid regardless of whether the graduates find jobs. Federal loans cover full tuition, so there's no incentive to actually reduce class licenses. But this creates a mathematical problem that gets worse by the day. We have record numbers of CS graduates competing with thousands of boot camp graduates. We have expanding master's programs pumping out more graduates than ever, and we have more people entering these programs as jobs get more scarce. The education system we built for Infinite Growth is still producing graduates at peak capacity, but the jobs it was built for have vanished. So like in a typical supply-demand curve, we're seeing tons of supply of actual candidates while the demand has fallen, making it more competitive for every single job. Now I want to stop right here and note that all master's programs aren't treated equally. For example, UCLA's business analytics program is one of the best programs that I've seen, given how good their placement rates are and how much the staff actually cares about the success of their students. Georgia Tech also has a very affordable online master's program where you can take each individual class and pay on a per-credit basis, and the entire program is under $10,000. So overall, I say do your own research if you're actually looking to get into a master's university or going into a master's program. So we have a record number of entry-level people looking for a job in tech, but why is the demand for jobs now so constrained? Looking at this graph, something strange is happening. Even as tech companies hit record profits, their headcount in 2024 is still below 2019 pre-COVID levels, and it's not just because companies are cutting back to boost profits. The real story is what happened to the people who stayed. In a healthy job market, engineers switch companies every few years. Each move creates a chain reaction. The senior engineer leaves for better opportunities, the mid-level engineers get promoted to fill their spots, and then junior positions open up, which gives new graduates a chance to actually break in. But that chain is completely frozen right now. Why? Because anyone who survived the 2022 layoffs is sitting on a golden ticket. Let's take Meta as an example. If you were a senior engineer who stayed through the layoffs, here's what happened to your compensation. In late 2022, you'd expect a base salary of around $200,000, with original stock grants worth $200,000 or more at $80,000 per share. You might have gotten also a new retention grant as well. Today, with Meta stock price at $500 plus, those same stock grants are worth millions. Just by saying put, many Meta engineers saw their total compensation rise to record volumes. Here's the real kicker. If they switch jobs now, they have to start over. New stock grants at today's prices, no accumulated investment, even a 30% raise in base salary can't make up for walking away from millions in uninvested stock. And this isn't just happening at Meta, it's happening across all the FANG companies. The irony? Companies planned it this way. By giving massive stock grants during the market bottom, they effectively locked in their best talent for years to come. It was brilliant for the companies and life-changing for the engineers who stayed. But it's made tech unemployment even worse for everyone else. Think about it, we have a record number of new graduates entering the market, but the normal cycle of job openings has completely stopped. It's like a game of musical chairs, where no one ever wants to get up. And here's where things get concerning for the future of tech jobs. Companies aren't dealing with just today's headcount, they're planning for a future where they need fewer engineers altogether. The data is already showing the shift. Microsoft reported that GitHub Copilot, their AI coding assistant, makes developers 55% faster at completing coding tasks. This isn't just marketing hype. GitHub's own research shows that 96% of developers are completing tasks faster with AI and 88% feel more productive. Additionally, the average completion time for complex tasks is being cut in half. Wall Street is paying attention. For the first time in tech history, the market is rewarding companies for efficiency, not growth. And investors are betting that AI tools will let companies do more with fewer engineers. But AI is only half the story. There's a massive shift now also happening in how companies build their engineering team. With the rise of remote work, a lot of companies and startups are questioning why the remote employees even need to be based in the US. The worldwide business process outsourcing market was estimated at $250 billion and predicted to increase at a 9% compound annual growth rate from 2022 to 2030. And behind that number is a fundamental change in how US companies will approach engineering talent. If they focus on moving entry-level work overseas and only hiring senior roles in the US, then we're going to see a massive seismic change in how the talent pipeline develops. Traditionally, tech companies would follow a pattern of hiring new graduates, training them for two to three years, and developing them into senior engineers, while building institutional knowledge. But now, companies are replacing that first step with a combination of AI and global talent. Entry-level work either gets automated or sent overseas, and then new grads can't get jobs. So then who becomes the next generation of senior engineers? This isn't just speculation. Major tech companies are openly discussing using AI to reduce their engineering needs. In their earnings calls, companies like Microsoft, Google, and Amazon all highlight how AI tools are making their existing engineers more productive. So let's put all three pieces together. We have a record number of new graduates competing for jobs, experienced engineers are locked in with golden handcuffs and aren't switching jobs, and companies are betting on AI and outsourcing to need fewer engineers. This isn't just a temporary blip of market conditions. We're watching a fundamental restructuring of how tech employment works. And unless something changes dramatically, an entire generation of engineers might never get their start. So after all this doom and gloom, and yes, after I spent five minutes explaining how AI is going to take over all of our jobs, there's still a silver lining. We might be at the beginning of something new and not at the end. First, let's address the AI elephant in the room. Yes, AI is making engineers and data scientists more efficient. Yes, companies might need fewer people for basic tasks. But here's what's interesting. Every major technological shift in history has been the same thing. And yet tech jobs kept growing. Because efficiency tools don't just eliminate work, they create entirely new categories of it. Open AI doubled their headcount in 2023. Job postings requiring AI skills are up 500%. And we're seeing roles emerge that didn't exist a year ago. The real opportunity isn't competing with AI, it's figuring out how to utilize it. Which brings me to a bigger shift in what's happening in tech. For the last decade, working in tech meant one thing, just getting a job at Facebook, Apple, Amazon, or any of the same companies. That's what every bootcamp promised. And that's what every CS graduate dreamed of. But something's happening in the startup world. With the AI shift happening, venture capital firms are sitting on a record amount of cash and needing to deploy it. Startups also need to hire more entry level talent than big tech as they can't afford senior engineers to build enhanced handcuffs. And even geographically, tech is changing. Silicon Valley's grip is weakening. New tech hubs are emerging in Miami, Austin, Seattle, and remote work has In general, I think tech employment is going through a fundamental shift. The traditional path of getting a CS degree, then going straight to Fang is becoming harder than ever. But we're not seeing the end of tech jobs. We're actually seeing a redefinition of what tech jobs actually are. And just like every previous tech crisis, this looks like it's the end of the road until it isn't. Now, if you're a new grad, entry level, or even a mid level data scientist or engineer, and you're looking for jobs right now, I highly recommend you checking out interview query. Interview query is the number one data science, engineering and analytics interview prep platform for your job search. We have 1000s of jobs on our job board filtered by different statuses, like if they accept candidates with visas, along with actual interview guides associated with it. Additionally, we have over 700 plus interview questions with in depth solutions and a community featuring 200,000 plus data sites. So you're applying to jobs right now and you need to actually make sure that you're going to be prepared for that one interview you get. Please check out interview query. Hannah Lee was a master's student who landed a data engineering job using interview query. She says interview query was one of the few platforms where I can refresh my knowledge of calculus, statistics, A B testing and coding. I think before interview query people mainly use leetcode. But leetcode only focuses on the test technical aspect with With interview query, the questions are presented like an interviewer would ask. Other people can also get answers at the bottom, which offers additional thoughts and ideas on how to answer the question, making it more of a discussion. So there you go. We're super happy that Hannah got her job. And if you like this video, by the way, please comment and like and subscribe. Don't forget to like and subscribe. Thanks for watching everyone. And goodbye.