“This is a gift,” Mr. Pulliam said. “I don’t think that story gets told. It is always doom and gloom.”
But for tech workers going through the first recession, the cuts have been eye-opening. Ms. Chang studied product design in university with a desire to enter the tech industry that seems to be proving a recession. Being fired by Lyft has shaken that belief.
Erin Sumner, a software recruiter at Facebook’s parent company, Meta, once bragged to potential employers that the company hit $1 trillion the fastest ever. She said she would play to the company’s strengths, including last year when its stock price tumbled and its core business, digital advertising, struggled.
When rumors of layoffs began circulating last year, she assured colleagues that their jobs were safe, pointing to more than $40 billion in cash the company had in the bank. . But in November, she was among 11,000 workers laid off.
Ms Sumner, 32, said: “It’s heartbreaking. She landed a new job as head of recruiting for DeleteMe, a startup that aims to remove customers’ information from search results. But she says she cringes every time she reads about more tech layoffs.
“I fear it will get worse before it gets better,” Ms. Sumner said. “There are no guarantees. I was fired by the safest company in the world.”
A similar reversal of fortunes has challenged businesses that sell software services. Shares of Salesforce, an industry leader, fell nearly 50% last year as the company’s sales growth slowed. The company splurged during the pandemic, spending $28 billion to buy Slack Technologies. It has grown to 80,000 employees from 49,000 in two years.
During an all-in-one meeting last week to discuss the company’s decision to lay off 10% of its workers, Marc Benioff, the chief executive, tried to sympathize with his disgruntled employees by giving make context-appropriate cuts.
