Prominent Tech Companies’ Mass Layoffs Affect Designers

As a Bay Area resident, I’m inundated with all things tech. Lately, big companies like Google, Meta, Microsoft, and Amazon have committed mass layoffs across all departments. Nobody is safe, but designers have been particularly caught in the crossfire. It’s no secret that designers are pivotal in any company, let alone tech juggernauts like Google and Amazon.

This Fast Company piece dives deep into what the layoffs mean for designers and where they might go. As reported in the article, Daniel Wert of Wert & Co., a bi-coastal firm, mentioned one of the critical factors that led to these recent layoffs. “The last 10 years, there’s been a lot of over-hiring,” he said.

Unfortunately, Fast Company couldn’t collect specific data from the above-mentioned companies regarding how many people have been laid off since the start of the year. However, Roger Lee, an entrepreneur who keeps track of tech company layoffs, reports that in 2023, there have been 118,426 laid-off employees from 410 tech companies with reported layoffs (so far). Oof. Those aren’t great numbers, considering it’s only March.

It might not be all doom and gloom for designers, though. There’s a light of opportunity that pierces through the career darkness. Fast Company also spoke with Mia Blume, who spearheads Design Dept. in San Francisco. “There is this really interesting opportunity for the design community to engage in business in a way that we’ve been slowly inching toward. This an opportunity for us to show that the value of our work is much more closely tied to the core of business. We can help shape the future. We don’t have to be the ones who sit off in R&D labs to do innovation,” she said.

Of course, diamonds are created from pressure. A period of intense career lows and high stress can result in genuinely innovative ideas. Some of the world’s most incredible inventions were born out of various crises. “What came out of the housing collapse? Airbnb, Slack, Uber. When the Nasdaq crashed in 2000? Facebook, Twitter. The internet bubble in 1995? Amazon,” Judy Wert of Wert & Co. told Fast Company.

All we can do is speculate, but these layoffs pose a chance for designers to do what they do best: design. To design opportunities, as corny as it sounds. We’re creative beings. If anyone can rise from the ashes, it’s us.