Tech layoffs pile up as Sllicon Valley shakeout continues into 2026

Joseph Tinner, a licensed technician, spent nearly a year looking for a job. It was a depressing crash course in the radical changes in Silicon Valley.

The former San Francisco Bay Area product instructor has ridden the tech wave throughout his career, moving easily from Verizon to Fitbit to Workday. Since losing his job early last year, the 59-year-old has hit a wall.

He applied for hundreds of positions – sometimes going through multiple rounds of consideration – only to be rejected again and again.

“It’s been a roller coaster,” he said. “Honestly, it takes a lot of resilience to be in this job market. »

He is not alone.

Tech companies that hired aggressively during the COVID-19 pandemic have cut tens of thousands of jobs. For workers like Tinner, it was difficult to realize that Silicon Valley’s upheaval would extend for another year.

Last week, Block – the financial technology company that owns payment services Square, Cash App and Afterpay – announced that it was laying off 4,000 people, or half of its workforce.

Many other tech companies outside of the hot artificial intelligence sector are significantly downsizing. Block blamed AI, saying the power of the technology means it no longer needs as many people.

“The intelligence tools we build and use, combined with smaller, flatter teams, enable a new way of working that fundamentally changes what it means to build and run a business,” Jack Dorsey, co-founder of Block and founder of Twitter, said in an article on X.

U.S. technology employers announced more than 33,000 job cuts between January and February, an increase of 51% compared to the same period last year, outplacement company Challenger, Gray & Christmas announced Thursday.

Andy Challenger, a workplace expert and the company’s chief revenue officer, said he was once skeptical that companies could replace workers with AI, but he’s starting to become convinced.

“Artificial intelligence has caught the attention of these companies dramatically,” he said.

Mass layoffs in the tech industry began in 2022, after a surge in hiring during the pandemic, when demand for online services increased while people were stuck at home.

But many of the world’s most powerful technology companies have continued to cut spending, even as their profits have increased. They cited a variety of reasons for the layoffs, from strategic changes and restructuring to the transition to smaller teams and fewer managers.

An advertisement promoting an AI-based company is seen downtown on Thursday, October 16, 2025 in San Francisco, California.

(Manuel Orbegozo/For Time)

Tech companies like EBay, Meta, Google, Autodesk, Pinterest, Salesforce and others have been downsizing. The layoffs also affected media and entertainment companies, including Los Angeles video game developer Riot Games.

On LinkedIn, laid-off workers who have been out of work – some for more than two years – are asking for help finding a job. They shared stories about their financial and emotional struggles, including losing confidence, housing and savings while looking for work.

Tech workers who have seen their employers grow over the past decade have noticed a change in company culture. Workers who have already been laid off said it has been harder and longer to find a new job than in previous years.

A longtime Salesforce employee who was recently laid off and asked to remain anonymous out of concern that speaking to the media could affect his severance package said the sales software company previously focused more on helping its employees. Salesforce spread this value by highlighting its “ohana” culture, using the Hawaiian word for family.

“I was incredibly grateful every day to be able to wake up and make a positive change in the world,” the worker said. “I thought the company was about the same thing.”

But the tone at Salesforce changed in 2023 as the company faced pressure to cut costs and increase profits. New leaders arrived and the direction changed.

“The company is trying to erase any semblance of what it used to be,” the worker said.

Salesforce said AI helps it get more out of fewer people.

“AI now does 30 to 50 percent of the work at Salesforce,” the company’s co-founder and chief executive, Marc Benioff, told Bloomberg.

Salesforce did not respond to a request for comment.

Marc Benioff, CEO of Salesforce Inc., in an interview with Bloomberg Television at the World Economic Forum in Davos,

(Bloomberg/Bloomberg via Getty Images)

Although technology is changing the way people work, experts and even some AI leaders believe companies sometimes use AI as an excuse to cut staff in what’s known as “AI washing.”

Enrico Moretti, an economics professor at UC Berkeley, said factors other than AI are fueling layoffs. As a company grows and matures, it no longer hires as much as it used to.

“It’s a change in their position and the maturation of their product, and therefore the technologies and their employment needs,” he said.

Roger Lee, an entrepreneur who created a website to track layoffs, Layoffs.fyi, in 2020, said in an email that tech companies are pouring billions of dollars into AI investments, and that downsizing helps offset those costs.

When he started tracking layoffs six years ago, Lee wanted to raise awareness about layoffs in the tech sector and help laid-off workers find their next job. He never imagined the layoffs would continue today.

“I think 6 years of persistent layoffs have led many tech workers to re-evaluate the perceived ‘security’ of tech jobs and their relationship to the industry in general,” he said in an email.

According to the latest tally from Layoffs.fyi, there have been more than 35,000 layoffs in the tech sector globally so far this year.

Nearly half of that total comes from Amazon alone.

Tinner, an unemployed technician, was laid off from Workday, a Pleasanton company that provides a platform for businesses, universities and organizations to manage payroll, benefits, finances and other tasks.

In 2025, Workday cut about 1,750 jobs, or 8.5% of its global workforce, citing a prioritization of investments in artificial intelligence and platform development. Then, in February, the company announced plans to cut 2% of its workforce, or about 400 employees.

As job cuts pile up, Tinner faces intense competition in a job market flooded with talent from the biggest tech companies.

As he reflects on his next career steps, he also redefines his identity and his relationship to work.

He even tried serving beer for fun or thought about making more artwork.

“Maybe what I need to do is just celebrate everything that I’ve done instead of going back into that rat race, onto that treadmill, and looking for something totally different,” he said.