Whether it’s 10 years into your career or before you’ve even had your first day at work, getting laid off sucks. The loss of income and the fear of what comes next can be overwhelming and stressful.
But it’s not all doom and gloom.
In this article, we’ll look at how the wave of layoffs across tech companies like Twitter, Meta, and Amazon has affected UX writers and what you can do to stay on track with your career.
Right now, we know that more than 35,000 tech workers across 72 companies have been laid off in November, adding to a total of over 128,000 tech jobs lost worldwide in 2022.
It’s difficult to blame the wave of large-scale layoffs on any one factor. But many of the companies making public statements have cited at least one of the following primary causes:
- A pandemic-induced recruiting boom: when life migrated online and lockdowns drove up demand for tech products and online services, companies hired a huge number of employees, which have become too expensive to retain, now that offline life has picked up again
- Mounting interest rates: tech companies, especially startups, are under huge pressure with banks raising rates and reversing pandemic-era monetary easing to ward off soaring inflation.
- Loss in ad revenue: Apple’s privacy policy changes, which now allow users to opt out of targeted ads, have made a massive dent in the once enormous source of revenue for many companies. Snap, Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube have reported a loss of about $10bn in the third and fourth quarters of the year.
- A kerfuffle of economic and political issues: the ongoing war in Ukraine, high fuel costs, supply chain issues, and a decline in personal PC sales have made companies look to job cuts as a way of reducing operating costs.
It’s hard to find a breakdown of layoffs by department since most news outlets have focused on their general impact on the tech industry.
While layoffs.fyi gives a more worker-level insight, it’s important to note that the layoff lists there are opt-in, so they aren’t reflective of the real numbers. The difference between the layoff count reported in the press and the layoffs.fyi lists can be huge.
Interviewing.io did a great job last month of analyzing the data on layoffs with a breakdown by department. According to their findings, product & design departments across tech companies in the US, which would include UX writers, lost 12% of their staff in 2022.
Sources like layoffs.fyi, We Worked at Shop, and Crunchbase, show that layoffs have affected nearly all types of UX roles, including:
- UX/UI designers
- Product designers
- Product managers
- UX/UI writers
- Content designers
- Content strategists
- Content developers
- UX researchers
However, product & design wasn’t affected nearly as bad as other departments. According to interviewing.io, the hardest hit were:
- Recruiting, which lost 50% of its staff
- HR (48%)
- Finance (30%)
Even though they’re opt-in, a quick trawl through the lists on layoffs.fyi shows that roles in the above departments are in the majority.
It’s also important to note that it wasn’t just junior staff who have been affected. Many who are now jobless had years of experience, some even over a decade.
The turbulent post-pandemic economy has made a lot of companies shift from a growth model to a more conservative “maintain and survive” approach.
This means that while they tighten their belts to adjust to a reduced customer base by slowing down growth and changing their offerings, they will most likely also impose a hiring freeze, leading newly laid-off workers, especially those at junior level and those requiring a work visa or permit, to face more competition on the job market.
It’s hard to predict just how the UX landscape will shift. Since many businesses will steer away from expansion or product development because of sky-high interest rates, we might see fewer UX personnel assigned to new work.
But this doesn’t mean job opportunities will disappear.
Those laid off can still avail of many opportunities at mid-size and small companies in tech and non-tech areas, such as health care, retail, government, and financial services.
UX writing is still a flexible, in-demand skill that’s valuable in just about any industry. And luckily, more and more companies are catching on to the value of investing in good UX.
But if you’re ever feeling doubtful about your contribution to the world, just try imagining any digital product with zero words…
