I’m glad to see that something I’ve been raising for about 18 months now seems to be coming true.

IMO this is happening all over the tech industry. I work for a competitor, and the shift over the last year or two has been seismic. Back when Google was the king, new engineers wanted to build “the next Google”, and startups were where the magic happened. The big tech companies saw this, and they hired the best and brightest en-masse to work on moonshot ideas. For the last 5-8 years, you could work for Google, Amazon, Apple, any of the big tech companies in any number of industries - if it worked out, your career would be solid, if it didn’t you’d move on to the next thing while keeping your job. All of this was secured with great salaries, freedom of movement to live/transfer wherever you want, and job security (assuming you’re not at Amazon).

Now, not only are the moonshots gone, but also the following:

• Scrutiny for all hiring, with established teams struggling to secure any headcount to improve, or even maintain due to previous layoffs.
• A push to do more with less, often resulting in obvious enshitification to boost metrics or make more profit at the expense of users.
• A focus on speed over completeness - with companies favouring technical debt, hiring externally to get people in seats fast, etc. You could be a strong performer internally, and you’d be overlooked for an internal role because someone with far fewer credentials can be brought in immediately from outside.
• Zero job security. Layoffs have been rolling for over a year now, and with companies that PIP, you’ve got the worry of both being laid off AND being one of the 5-15% of people that are fired to meet performance quotas.
• Leaders taking zero ownership, or skirting the culture and rules of the company, like with Amazon going on CEO “gut feeling” while expecting others to use data, or Google basically shifting towards being “ungoogley” and “evil”.

Outside of pay, the benefits of working for a big tech company are gone. The innovation is happening elsewhere, and these companies have purposely bled talent to appease shareholders. Students don’t want to prep for months for a job that’ll fire them months later, especially when opportunities are limited. Finally, no one wants to work on things that don’t generate profit - especially when whole orgs are laid off or shut down, all while the leaders that set the direction to fall off a cliff are parachuted into roles elsewhere in the business. That last one is key, because tech employees now look at VP+ level moves as a sign of them losing their job, another distraction from being able to do your job or caring about your output.

So yes, Google will be the new IBM, and I don’t think there’s a way back for any of the FAANG tech companies. They either course correct through new leadership and focusing on their talent/prouct again, or they become relics of the 2000’s and crumble when their share price inevitably drops.