What goes up must come down

Younger workers in the tech industry were in elementary school when the dotcom bust rattled the tech industry at the turn of the century, so they have no significant memory of a time when companies like Amazon, Microsoft and Google were not hiring hordes of new employees and seeing stock prices soar.

Now they know.

The boom in online services created by the COVID-19 pandemic has lost steam. The easy money that facilitated the billions of dollars of borrowing that fueled tech company expansion has disappeared as the Federal Reserve has jacked up interest rates to fight inflation. As a result, stock valuations of many companies have plummeted, and a startling number of layoffs have hit tech employees who thought they would have their pick of jobs with generous stock options for as long as they wanted to work.

As one of the leading tech centers, Seattle has been walloped by this reversal of fortunes. Amazon is trimming 18,000 workers nationwide, including 2,300 in Seattle and Bellevue. Microsoft is saying goodbye to 10,000 employees across the country with 878 or more being laid off locally. Google is dismissing 12,000 workers globally; as of yet, it is unclear how many of the company’s 7,200 employees in Washington state will be affected.

Amazon’s stock market valuation has shrunk by an eye-popping $1 trillion. It is far from the only tech firm that has suffered a precipitous decline in stock prices. Vroom, a Houston company, has seen its stock fall from $65 per share in 2020 to $1 today. Half of Vroom’s employees have gotten the proverbial pink slips.

All the new high-rise buildings in downtown Seattle that emptied out when techies got sent home to work during the pandemic have not filled up again because it has taken time to coax those employees back into the office. Now, the skyscrapers may stay empty even longer since many of those folks no longer have a job.

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