Tech Workers Still in Demand Despite Mass Layoffs: Ripple CTO

In Brief

• Tech workers still retain some of the highest demand in the labor market, in spite of recent dismissals.
• Twitter under Musk recently shed half of its staff, while Facebook let go of 11,000 of its employees.
• With the recent collapse of FTX, the CTO of Ripple Labs reminded employees that “Ripple is always hiring.”

With the collapse of Sam Bankman-Fried’s FTX exchange, many of his skilled employees will likely have to seek new employment. Fortunately for them, the chief technology officer at Ripple Labs hinted that they may not have to look far.

In a recent tweet, Ripple CTO David Schwartz reminded FTX employees, “not involved in compliance, finance, or business ethics,” that

“Ripple is always hiring.”

Ripple reportedly has over 350 vacancies across Asia and North America. Schwartz had made a similar overture to former employees of Twitter who had been culled by new owner Elon Musk.

Tech Workers Face Massive Layoffs
Following massive recruitment efforts during the pandemic, economic circumstances over the past year have forced major tech firms to contract. Upon acquiring Twitter last week, one of Musk’s first actions was to reduce the company’s staff by roughly half.

“Regarding Twitter’s reduction in force, unfortunately there is no choice when the company is losing over $4M/day,” Musk explained.

Following dismal results revealed during its latest earnings report, Meta Platforms made a similarly drastic move. Earlier this week, the company laid off 13% of its workforce, amounting to more than 11,000 people.

Additionally, payments company Stripe also shed some 14% of its staff last week, roughly of its 1,000 employees. The chief executives at both of these firms took responsibility for expanding too rapidly amid last year’s enthusiasm.

Robust Tech Labor Market
But while the labor market may become saturated with tech workers, they are still some of the most in-demand employees. In its latest jobs report, the U.S. Bureau of Labor statistics highlighted “technical services” among the areas of highest growth.

According to a tech jobs report by CompTIA, postings rose over 3% to 317,000 openings in Oct.

Labor market research firm Janco underscored that it is primarily larger tech companies that have had to reduce their workforce. This in turn has enabled many midsize companies to take advantage of the situation to hire hitherto scarce talent.

The researcher tallied some 15,300 new IT jobs in the past month, and raised its annual estimate to 188,000 new IT jobs.

Even those recently laid-off can take heart about making the most of their experience. Venture capital firm Day One Ventures recently announced a new initiative.

The program will invest $100,000 into 20 start-ups founded by entrepreneurs previously laid off from a tech company.

Founder Masha Bucher said that getting laid off enabled her to take the initiative and start her own company. “Some of the people are saying, ‘This is a sign I’ve been waiting for’,” she said. “It really gives people hope.”

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