Remaining Employed in Tech Today
With massive layoffs, the rise of AI and potential job replacement, and the general churn of the world right now, here are some ideas for remaining employed in tech.
What I read: “How the hell are you supposed to have a career in tech in 2026?” by Anil Dash. Posted January 5, 2026.
Although my career path has taken many interesting turns and side paths over my lifetime, computer and software technology is how I have often paid the bills.
Starting in the 1980s, I began my technology career as an accidental IT administrator when the bank at which I was temporarily working bought a small Wang mini-mainframe system that did word processing, spreadsheets, and simple databases. When the computer arrived in our office, I asked the Vice President of the department who was going to run it. They said they had no idea but bought it because they had extra budget they had to use or lose. I told them to give me one week. I read the manuals cover to cover and practiced using the system off hours. I set up a meeting with the Vice President and showed them I could create and manipulate documents, spreadsheets, and databases. On the spot they gave me the job to oversee that system and my technology career was born. I became that department’s IT Manager.
Since that time, I have held titles within companies, as an employee or contractor, of Software Specialist, Software Trainer, Automation Specialist, Software Development Project Manager, Software Information Development Manager, and others. Taken together, I have 35+ years of experience in the computer and software technology field.
Nowadays, much like Anil Dash, I’m asked similar questions from friends, acquaintances, and former colleagues currently working in or recently laid off from their technology jobs.
The number one question I get from my friends, acquaintances, and mentees in the technology industry these days is, by far, variations on the basic theme of, “what the hell are we supposed to do now?”
That does seem to be the million-dollar question right now for anyone who is in, or hopes to enter, the technology industry today. The massive number of layoffs and slow recent job growth in this sector have worried many, and rightfully so. Admittedly, I live in the San Francisco Bay Area where much of the industry is centered, but I hear from friends all over the country and world who express similar concerns.
There have been mass layoffs that leave more tech workers than ever looking for new roles in the worst market we’ve ever seen. Many of the most talented, thoughtful and experienced people in the industry are feeling worried, confused, and ungrounded in a field that no longer looks familiar.
If you’re outside the industry, you may be confused — isn’t there an AI boom that’s getting hundreds of billions of dollars in investments? Doesn’t that mean the tech bros are doing great? What you may have missed is that half a million tech workers have been laid off in the years since ChatGPT was released; the same attacks on marginalized workers and DEI and “woke” that the tech robber barons launched against the rest of society were aimed at their own companies first.
Based on what I know, read, and heard from people within the technology industry, I concur with Dash that the technology job outlook is rather grim and it’s as bad as I’ve seen in my 35 years working in the field.
Something Dash alludes to is the cultural and values shift that’s taken place within tech. Perhaps in the past many companies had lofty goals of contributing significantly to the betterment of humankind, or at least producing useful products that didn’t suck because of runaway feature bloat, rising pricing strategies, or an industry that has bent the knee to profit at all cost and, sadly, sometimes allegiance to horrific government leaders. The software and technology industry of today has a harsher, more cynical, and more rabid capitalist undertone than in past decades.
All that said, how do you proceed if technology is still an industry in which you want to work? To that Dash offers this.
But it’s not the end of the world. The forces of evil have not yet triumphed, and all hope is not lost. There are still things we can do.
Dash then proceeds to offer some superb advice to empower your own agency, insulate yourself from bad actors as much as possible, and maximize your career opportunities.
Worker replaceability, especially with AI, is the first thing Dash addresses. The truth is that no matter what you might hear from corporate CEOs, they are indeed ready to replace as many workers as they can with AI. We know some of those replacements will be unsuccessful, but many will indeed permanently replace jobs.
Dash’s first suggestion is to understand the systems in which your job is positioned. For example, coding isn’t ultimately just writing code. Those skilled and experienced people who are responsible for creating code reliably and efficiently are who will be most valued and less likely to lose their jobs.
That means it’s not just a specific skill (coding) that’s important. Rather, the entire ecosystem around which that coding is strategized, designed, written, tested, deployed, and sold is important to understand. Each employee will need to decide how afar from their original job duties they’re willing to go to maintain their employment. If you love coding, but not everything that surrounds that coding task, remaining employed might be more difficult.
When AI is mentioned at work, be prepared to justify why your job can’t be adequately replaced by AI, or ready to offer your willingness to learn entirely new knowledge domains and skills. Having answers ready for when your boss says “We’re going to replace what you do with AI” is a wise step to more likely ensure continued employment.
Dash mentions the need to have as much power within your company and organization as possible. Exercising collective power within your workplace and with industry peers is vitally important.
There are also ways to exercise individual power.
As a side note, let me recommend the book, The 48 Laws of Power, by Robert Greene. The realities of how power is attained and wielded can get rather ugly sometimes, but forewarned is forearmed.
So, if you’re dissatisfied with where you are, but have not decided to leave your current organization, then your first orders of business in this new year should be to consolidate power through building alliances with peers, and by understanding which fundamental systems of your organization you can define or influence, and thus be in control of. Once you’ve got power, you’ve got options.
Living in the San Francisco Bay Area as I do, the area is awash in technology companies from the mega giants to tiny startups and everything in between. So locally here in my area it seems like these types of companies are where the tech job are.
As Dash points out, most tech-related jobs aren’t necessarily within what we refer to as the “tech industry” itself. Much of my tech career was within the banking, entertainment, and legal fields. Most tech jobs aren’t in the tech industry but instead are tech roles within other business industries.
When I worked in software development, many of my colleagues would end up taking jobs elsewhere in non-tech companies and they often reported more reasonable hours, less pressure, and more job security as a result.
Many of the people I talk to who bring their technology experience to other fields also tell me that the culture in more traditional industries is often less toxic or broken than things in Silicon Valley (or Silicon Valley-based) companies are these days, since older or more established companies have had time to work out the more extreme aspects of their culture.
Planning your career for the long term is wise. Dash believes some companies will return to “what’s real” at some point going forward. I hope Dash’s belief is true that companies will want their products and services to have more meaning that contributes to humanity and that they will want to take better care of their employees. I’m not sure I’d be willing to place a bet on that right now, but I do hope Dash is correct.
Dash offers some other useful advice I’ll let you read in his article. He concludes with the hope that people will stick together and focus on what we can influence and change. Ultimately, he says, power within tech does rest with the workers. I hope he is right about that too because right now things don’t look so great.
Let me point you to another post of mine that I consider relevant. In my “How Are You Preparing?” post I mention four things I’m doing to prepare for an increasingly uncertain future. I think three of them apply to this topic: assume chaos, continue learning, and build community (in this case, a professional community).
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