As hiring freezes and layoffs hit, is the bubble about to burst for tech employees?

Tech and IT employees have been reaping the advantages of a candidate-driven jobs market in latest months, with the demand for digital expertise making a seemingly limitless variety of profession alternatives for seasoned software program professionals.

However brewing beneath the floor are indicators that the occasion might be coming to an finish. As enterprise leaders brace for surging inflation and better prices, hiring and wage freezes are prone to comply with – leaving emboldened tech employees feeling markedly much less buoyant, and maybe with much less choices in job negotiations than they’ve not too long ago turn out to be accustomed to.

Till now, the tech trade has largely sailed by the financial turbulence that has impacted different industries. Distant working and an urgency to place every part on the cloud or in an app – considerably accelerated by the pandemic – has created fierce demand for many who can create, migrate, and safe software program.

SEE: Fewer distant jobs for builders are being marketed as firms rethink hiring plans

Nonetheless, tech leaders are bracing for powerful occasions forward. Based on latest information by CW Jobs, 85% of IT choice makers anticipate their group to be impacted by the price of doing enterprise – together with hiring freezes (21%) and pay freezes (20%). We’re already seeing this play out, with Tesla, Uber and Netflix amongst the large names to have introduced hiring freezes or layoffs in latest weeks. In the meantime, Microsoft, Coinbase and Meta have all put dampeners on recruiting.

If tech employees are involved about this ongoing tightening of belts, they are not displaying it: the identical CW Jobs report discovered that tech professionals stay assured sufficient within the trade that 57% anticipate a pay rise within the subsequent yr.

Hiring freezes and layoffs do not appear to have had a lot impression on employee mobility, both: simply 24% of pros surveyed by CW Jobs say they plan to remain of their present function for the following 12 months. That is down from 29% in 2021. Clearly, tech employees really feel no stress to hunker down for the approaching storm – a storm simply 44% of IT leaders really feel assured about weathering.

This poses the query: is it time for tech employees to take a actuality test? The post-pandemic jobs growth was sure to sluggish ultimately, and it is tough to see how tech employees will proceed being capable of negotiate such large salaries when firms are searching for methods to chop prices.

And if firms begin clamping down on large bumps in salaries, what’s subsequent? Might versatile working discover itself within the firing line because the tech jobs market tightens and the stability of energy slips again in favour of employers?

SEE: Tech salaries simply hit document highs. So why do IT employees nonetheless really feel underpaid?

In the meanwhile no less than, tech employees have little to fret about. Hiring exercise within the trade stays sturdy, significantly for these with the abilities that proceed to show so onerous to supply – cybersecurity and software program growth amongst essentially the most distinguished. Nonetheless, the great occasions cannot final ceaselessly, and as enterprise leaders transfer to guard their backside strains, job-hopping tech employees must resolve whether or not it is higher to stay or twist. 

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