SAN JOSE, California — The ax fell suddenly and out of the blue for technology worker Nitesh Donti. Less than a year ago, on the networking platform LinkedIn, he’d expressed excitement over his new job as an engineering manager at robot-vehicle company Nuro. Then last month, Nuro laid off Donti and around 300 others as it slashed 20% of its workforce.
“It was a complete shock,” said Donti, 30, of San Francisco, who’d spent five years as a software engineer at Google before moving to the Mountain View-based Nuro.
He was among the thousands of tech workers laid off since October as companies responded to slowing revenue growth, rising inflation and interest rates, and worries of a coming recession. It’s no surprise these tech employees were shocked when the bad news came: Their industry was going gangbusters until it wasn’t, with think-tank Joint Venture Silicon Valley in February reporting that “Silicon Valley’s innovation engine is red hot” and tech was leading a return in employment to pre-pandemic levels.
