Silicon Valley may be in the center of an Artificial Intelligence gold rush but hundreds of former senior programmes and tech employees aren’t feeling it.
Those employees — until not too long ago, used to paychecks between $310-340,000 — say the speedy advances in AI have left residing on financial savings and their spouses’ paychecks, despite having prime corporations on their résumés and PhDs.
“You find a lot of people who lack empathy for the tech worker, because they’re like, oh well, they got laid off but they got these huge severance packages,” ex-Google worker Basem Istanbouli advised The Post.
“My severance package wasn’t huge. It wasn’t big at all … If I didn’t have a partner, there’s no way I would have been able to stay in the Bay Area.”
Basem Istanbouli, a former Google promoting salesman who based (un)PTO, a mountaineering group for the unemployed, is pictured in Silicon Valley. Courtesy of Basem Istanbouli
Silicon Valley took in $92 billion of enterprise capital last 12 months, 83% of it for AI companies, yet lost 13,100 jobs, according to Joint Venture Silicon Valley’s 2026 Index.
Software job postings nationwide are 23% below their pre-pandemic stage, information from job web site Indeed show.
A former Amazon machine-learning scientist with a PhD, who give up to launch a startup that failed, said he utilized for 120 jobs in two months but has not had one offer. One company put him through six rounds of interviews before rejecting him.
“Having run a startup counts against you. They think you weren’t content to just do tech, you went off to do your own thing, and when you come back they’re not very willing to take someone who has run a startup,” the scientist, who requested not to be named, advised the Post.
“In tech you’re a workhorse. You do what you’re told. You’re not supposed to have ideas. You just have to finish writing the code.”
The Google headquarters is seen in Mountain View, California. Bloomberg via Getty Images
He has a youngster, a mortgage and about a 12 months of financial savings left. His spouse, whose job gives the household’s health insurance coverage, has proposed making use of for social help if he still can not discover work.
Before it comes to that, he said, he would swallow his satisfaction.
“I’m embarrassed to tell my friends that my startup failed. If I put ‘open to work’ on LinkedIn and go around asking for referrals, everyone will know my startup died. If it really comes to that, I’ll have to do it and stop caring.”
Meanwhile the honchos at Anthropic and OpenAI are planning trillion-dollar stock market debuts and Anthropic’s co-founders were each value $15.5 billion on paper in May, according to Forbes.
Yang Jin, a biotech PhD laid off in 2024, is pictured in Silicon Valley. Courtesy of Yang Jin
The facade of the places of work of artificial intelligence company OpenAI is seen in San Francisco, California, on March 25, 2026. Gado via Getty Images
But the cuts keep coming. Oracle will lay off 441 employees in Redwood City, Santa Clara and Pleasanton on Nov. 13, state employment information show.
The company’s annual submitting confirmed its headcount fell by 21,000, or practically 13%, which it tied to the “adoption and deployment of AI technologies across our operations.”
Analysts say the growth and the layoffs are linked. AI is so costly to construct that tech corporations are cutting prices elsewhere to pay for it.
Employers have blamed AI for 116,175 job cuts this 12 months, according to placement firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas.
Looking for reduction from the grind, Istanbouli requested on Reddit whether anyone else between jobs needed to go on a weekday hike. Three people confirmed up.
Oracle signage is seen close to the company’s places of work in Redwood City, California, Monday, June 2, 2025. Oracle Corp. is expected to release earnings figures on June 11. Bloomberg via Getty Images
But in less than a 12 months, his group, “(un)PTO,” has grown to 1,783 members, most of them out-of-work tech employees. They meet for weekly hikes, espresso and co-working periods around the Bay Area.
“Obviously people say, oh my God, another recruiter had ghosted me,” Istanbouli said. “But then you have something to look forward to in the week, whether it’s hanging out with people at a coffee shop or going on a hike … to make your time be a little bit more bearable.”
His hikers are not all from software program corporations.
Yang Jin, who holds a PhD in biology, was laid off by a biotech company in 2024. She utilized for dozens of jobs at corporations, but got nowhere.
Xingtao Zhao, a former Google software program engineer, runs a quantitative trading operation in Silicon Valley after being laid off. Courtesy of Yang Jin
“At first it was what everyone imagined a layoff to be: you get cut, you go look for a job in the same field. But unfortunately I never found anything suitable … once you have a gap, it’s even harder to find a job,” Yang advised the Post, pointing out lab work is being automated, too.
“The hands-on work is really too simple. It’s basically mix, mix, wash, mix, mix, wash, in order. Who can’t do that? The robotic arms are here now, so they need even fewer people,” she famous.
Yang Jin and Xingtao Zhao are pictured with their youngsters.
Yang now stays home with her youngsters and is instructing herself to construct AI functions, hoping it leads to a new profession.
Her husband, Xingtao Zhao, spent more than 10 years at Google as a software program engineer before leaving for an augmented-reality startup, but he got laid off.
“You can’t stay in one environment for too long, in a comfort zone for too long,” Zhao advised the Post of his determination to go away Google.
Despite his PhD in machine learning, he went through 10 to 20 interviews with self-driving car and AI model corporations as his major targets. None labored out.
He is now utilizing AI to his benefit, working a quantitative stock trading operation with a longtime buddy, a finance veteran who was also laid off. The buddy handles the trading strategy and Zhao builds the fashions.
An worker is inside the Voyager building at Nvidia headquarters in Santa Clara, California, Monday, June 5, 2023. Nvidia Corp. owns 80% of the market for a specific form of chip called a data-center accelerator, and the present wait time for one of its AI processors is eight months. Bloomberg via Getty Images
“I do quant trading full time and look for a job part time,” Zhao said.
But even in that space, coding instruments are getting more people into quant trading, and the more who pile in, Zhao finds, the thinner his edge gets.
“AI’s impact on the whole job market, on every area, is huge … but I’m still fairly optimistic. AI may make a lot of old jobs disappear. But it will create a lot of new opportunities and new jobs,” he said. “It closes a window but opens a door.”
Istanbouli, who is still trying for work, has advice for anyone newly out of a job.
“A lot of times people’s whole personalities are their work, their whole social circle is their place of work. And when you leave that place of work, you literally end up with nothing,” he said.
“Build community outside of work, build yourself outside of work, so that when you are in a place of pain you have something that can bring you happiness and support.”
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