The tech industry was one of the few industries that had massive prospects in the pandemic era, when everyone had to transition their daily work and operations towards online resources and tools. But as the world regains its footing and hints of pre-pandemic ways reemerge, the tech industry now needs to maintain itself as it sees the hourly usages of their platforms dwindle. 

Several tech companies and giants in the US seem to be on rocky roads, rendering thousands of developers jobless after unilateral layoffs from their respective companies. These preventative measures began around the middle of the year, most notably with the crypto startup company Coinbase when they announced that they would lay off 1,000 employees. A slew of affected employees flocked to the famous job-search platform LinkedIn, sharing their experiences and crowdsourcing for potential openings and opportunities. This job hunt progressively became more difficult as more and more companies followed the trend in the next months. Most recently, multinational tech company Amazon laid off about 10,000 of its employees, while social media giant Meta let go of around 11,000 employees. 

This chain of layoffs seems to be fueled by an excessive tech hiring bubble during the pandemic period. As the need for technology skyrocketed, companies found an opportunity to expand their operations, therefore opening more positions and onboarding more developers than normal. This massive need failed to continue in the post-pandemic era.  As the US anticipates an economic recession and the tech bubble starts to burst, companies are now forced to reevaluate their internal workforce. Such layoffs are expected to continue steadily in the foreseeable future, as more companies are pushed into cutting their expenditures.

On the contrary, a shortage of tech talent is seen across many parts of the world. Despite equally benefitting from the tech boom of the pandemic, Europe still faces an inadequacy in its tech workforce, spurring immigration policy changes that aim to attract foreign talent into the European tech ecosystem. Most prominently, the French tech visa policy grants a four-year visa with potential extension for skilled workers regardless of their educational background, as well as a long-term visa for aspiring startup builders. Most other European countries, as well as others outside of Europe, also offer similar visas, although these are either more generic types for immigrant workers or those that have a more narrowly defined scope of skilled professionals.

Despite these more generous immigration standards (at least compared to the US), Europe still finds itself lacking manpower in tech. A good reason might be that the European tech ecosystem is generally less funded compared to its US counterpart. Investors in Europe tend to be aversive to risks, which hinders the growth of high-risk, high-reward companies and therefore leaves the technological and financial foundation of the European startup industry lagging behind. The stringent labor laws, as well as data privacy policies make it even less attractive to businesses. Meta’s practices on handling and monetizing user data has always been a point of contention, as they are expected to abide by the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) in Europe or be forced to exit. EU ministers recently approved a policy mandating a USB-C port to be the universal charging standard in Europe. This could be seen as a strike on Apple’s ecosystem of products that rely on specific types of chargers, which arguably fuels its competitive advantage in retaining customers and maximizing revenue.

On the other hand, South Korea has a relatively strong tech industry, with its biggest tech companies and startups like Samsung, Naver, and Kakao having wide presences across the country. This leads to a headache for US tech giants like Apple, Google, and Meta, respectively, in penetrating the South Korean market. This wide influence of domestic tech companies in Korea is widely attributed to massive government support, not only in the startup industry but also in tech modernization. South Korea is one of the world’s most interconnected countries, with over 90% of the country having access to the internet, making it easier for tech startups to flourish. The tremendous growth of the Korean wave, or Hallyu, has also made Korean culture vibrant and attractive to foreigners, even though the country is generally less conducive to the international community than in Europe. This makes it even easier for the startup industry in South Korea to attract talents. 

From the looks of it, the post-pandemic startup scene seems to only retract back to how it was before. The imminent US recession is forcing tech companies to let go of employees they would otherwise have probably kept, despite the tech bubble’s growth stagnating. Europe is still going to face such shortages in tech talent, as seen even in the pre-pandemic years. What clearly remains is that the US startup scene is still a powerful and popular option for startup enthusiasts and tech aspirants. In the future, we may see new players rising in the scene, especially now that our economies have significantly recovered from the effects of the pandemic.