I work at a large tech company, and the feeling here is unlike anything I’ve ever felt before. There are a few camps:

• Workers on visas that are utterly petrified of losing their jobs, and are struggling to plan for anything long-term, since companies that lay people off can’t file green cards for employees.
• Workers that are just numb to everything. They don’t give a fuck, they are jaded with the bullshit their employer pulls, and work is just work.
• People that would happily take a voluntary layoff to GTFO, spend some time with family, and potentially move to something better.

What seems to be the dominating feeling that everyone has, is that they no longer support their leaders. They feel there are too many middle-managers, they realise that their C-Suite staff are fucking useless, and the CEO’s are almost universally awful as leaders. Sundar has caused Google to nose-dive in popularity, Jassy is so ineffective that no one even knows he is CEO, Musk is a known sociopath going through a mental breakdown, Zuck bet everything on VR to mask huge privacy/product failings, and alongside all of this are dozens of CEO’s that forced employees back to the office or laid people off for bullshit reasons.

My hope from this dark time is that companies arise that focus on the employee first, learn from the mistakes made by big tech, and purposefully manoeuvre around FAANG until they are relegated to boomer tech. Until then, like most SWE’s, I’m just hoping things get better soon…