Tech Workers Seek Jobs Outside Tech

"For engineers and other tech workers, landing a job with one of the industry's best-known companies was long the ultimate professional achievement.

Now, many Silicon Valley veterans are being driven to new paths far from the tech giants, prizing stability and personal values over prestige.

Laid-off tech workers are finding jobs with smaller and midsize firms, landing tech roles at nontech companies and becoming freelance consultants. It is an unconventional mix, at least for a group of people used to having an abundance of choice working for names in tech.

But amid rescinded offers and ghost-job postings as well as round after round of layoffs, the priorities of tech workers have shifted.

"The majority of folks that have been laid off from big tech companies, they've been disillusioned," said Chris Rice, a partner with Riviera Partners, an executive-search firm that places leadership talent in software-engineering, product-management and design positions.

It used to be that people could spend years of their careers at large tech companies without worrying about layoffs. That is no longer true, he said.

These days, because of the state of the job market, more people are pursuing tech jobs outside the tech industry or at startups that align with their passions, in fields such as green energy or artificial intelligence.

The percentage of tech workers who moved to nontech industries when changing jobs started rising late last year, after years of decline, according to an analysis of public online profiles by Revelio Labs Inc., a provider of workplace data.

The overall labor market remains strong, with the unemployment rate falling to 3.5% and employers adding 236,000 workers last month, the Labor Department said Friday. But there are signs of cooling. March's job gains were the smallest in more than two years and less broad-based than they were earlier in the pandemic.

Recruiting senior candidates who have worked for tech's biggest names into unknown companies is easier than it used to be, if you can get them "over the mental hurdle of it not being on-brand," Mr. Rice said. But candidates entertaining the idea of working for a small startup might need to brace themselves for a pay cut, he said.

John Kew, an engineer who lives in Seattle and worked at Tableau Software -- which was acquired by Salesforce Inc. in 2019 -- left his job on his own in January, as Salesforce was going through a round of job cuts.

"I was looking at the people who got laid off, and it was just such a mess," said Mr. Kew, 43 years old. "A lot of the people who were laid off were high performers, people who I certainly respected and were doing amazing work."

His move to an early-stage data-science startup involved taking a 20% pay cut, but Mr. Kew was ready to work somewhere smaller where he could learn something new every day and see his contributions in the product he was helping to build.

"As an engineer, I derive value from doing something useful," he said. "In particular at a large company, it's hard to feel that way."

While some of the largest tech companies in the world -- including Meta Platforms Inc.'s Facebook, Alphabet Inc.'s Google and Amazon.com Inc. -- have announced layoffs, some parts of the industry are still growing. The unemployment rate for tech occupations is still low at 2.2%, which indicates tech employees are being reabsorbed back into the workforce, said Tim Herbert, chief research officer with tech trade association CompTIA.

Technical services and software development, a subsector made up of mostly small and midsize firms, added the most tech workers in the past year, so workers seem to be transitioning from big tech companies to startups, cybersecurity and technical consulting firms, Mr. Herbert said.

For years, there was fierce competition for tech talent, with companies wooing workers with generous compensation packages, in-office perks and a suite of benefits, not to mention job stability. Especially during the pandemic, companies accelerated their hiring and invested in the idea that people would spend more time online for good.

Now, the same companies that contributed to enormous growth are touting the benefits of increasing productivity and becoming leaner. Mark Zuckerberg, chief executive of Facebook parent Meta, has dubbed 2023 "the year of efficiency" as he cut more than 20,000 jobs.

Startups are facing their own pressures, which are also affecting the investors who back the industry. Hiring in startups is a mixed picture, said Julia Pollak, chief economist with the job platform ZipRecruiter. 

Larger and later-stage startups that in a better economy would be scaling and preparing to go public are instead conserving cash and not bringing on new hires.

That said, there is still an appetite for talent at well-funded, early-stage companies in emerging areas, including electric-vehicle batteries, as the auto industry shifts away from gas-powered cars, and artificial intelligence. "There's a gold rush to capitalize on those opportunities and be at the forefront," Ms. Pollak said.

Financial-services firms and those in hospitality and logistics are now having better luck recruiting workers from big tech companies, said Allison Baum Gates, a general partner at venture-capital firm SemperVirens, which invests in workforce technology firms.

"They couldn't compete with tech companies on comp packages for tech employees because they didn't have the same stock value. That was a huge problem for them," she said. "Now they're like, 'This is wonderful, we can actually hire again.'"

Food and beverage maker Kraft Heinz Co. and global retailer Walmart Inc. say they are seeing a new mix of applicants from some of the largest tech companies, including Meta and Amazon.

"We're likely looking a little brighter these days than we might have before," said Donna Morris, chief people officer at Walmart, in an interview at The Wall Street Journal's Jobs Summit.

Kraft previously struggled to recruit some digital talent, said Melissa Werneck, the company's global chief people officer. "Now, we're seeing that they're coming to us," Ms. Werneck said of technology employees. "We're seeing them knocking more on our doors."" [1]

1. Tech Workers Seek Jobs Outside Tech
Bindley, Katherine.  Wall Street Journal, Eastern edition; New York, N.Y. [New York, N.Y]. 10 Apr 2023: A.1.

Kuo naujausi nutekėję dokumentai skiriasi nuo ankstesnių pažeidimų

 „Dokumentų šviežumas – kai kurie atrodo vos 40 dienų senumo – ir užuominos apie artėjančias operacijas daro juos ypač žalingus, sako pareigūnai.

 

     Kai prieš 13 metų „WikiLeaks“ pasipylė didžiuliu kiekiu Valstybės departamento pranešimų, pasaulis suprato, ką amerikiečių diplomatai daro kiekvieną dieną – aštrias alkūnes, abejones dėl svyruojančių sąjungininkų ir žvilgsnį į tai, kaip Vašingtonas ruošiasi galimam Šiaurės Korėjos žlugimui ir Irano branduoliniam proveržiui.

 

     Kai po trejų metų Edwardas Snowdenas išskleidė Nacionalinės saugumo agentūros paslaptis, amerikiečiai staiga atrado, kaip skaitmeninis amžius pradėjo nuostabią naują agentūros stebėjimo erą, leidžiančią jai įsiveržti į Kinijos telekomunikacijų pramonę ir įsigilinti į „Google“ serverius užsienyje, kad pasiimti informaciją iš užsienio ryšių tinklų.

 

     Maždaug 100 naujai nutekintų informacinių skaidrių su operatyviniais duomenimis apie konfliktą Ukrainoje yra labai skirtinga problema. Iki šiol atskleisti duomenys yra ne tokie išsamūs nei tie didžiuliai slaptieji archyvai, bet daug savalaikiai. Baltųjų rūmų ir Pentagono pareigūnams didžiausią nerimą kelia tiesioginė žvalgybos informacija.

 

     Kai kurios jautriausios medžiagos – Ukrainos oro gynybos žemėlapiai ir gilus pasinerimas į slaptus Pietų Korėjos planus pristatyti 330 000 šovinių taip reikalingos amunicijos iki pavasario Ukrainos kontrpuolimo – atskleista dokumentuose, kurie, atrodo, yra vos 40 dienų senumo.

 

     Administracijos atstovai teigia, kad būtent „slaptų“ ir „visiškai slaptų“ dokumentų šviežumas ir užuominos apie būsimas operacijas daro šiuos atskleidimus ypač žalingus.

 

     Daugiau nei 100, puslapių skaidres ir instruktažų dokumentai nepalieka abejonių dėl to, kaip giliai Jungtinės Valstijos yra įsipainiojusios į kasdienį konflikto eigą, ir pateikia tikslią žvalgybos ir logistikos informaciją, kuri padeda paaiškinti Ukrainos sėkmę iki šiol. Nors prezidentas Bidenas uždraudė amerikiečių kariuomenei tiesiogiai šaudyti į Rusijos taikinius ir užblokavo ginklų, galinčių pasiekti giliai į Rusijos teritoriją, siuntimą, dokumentai aiškiai rodo, kad praėjus metams nuo konflikto Jungtinės Valstijos yra labai įsipainiojusios į beveik viską.

 

     Ji pateikia išsamius taikymo duomenis. Ji koordinuoja ilgą sudėtingą logistikos traukinį, kuris pristato ginklus ukrainiečiams. Ir kaip aišku iš vasario 22 d. dokumento, Amerikos pareigūnai planuoja metus, per kuriuos kova dėl Donbaso „greičiausiai eina į aklavietę“, kuri sužlugdys Vladimiro V. Putino tikslą užvaldyti regioną ir Ukrainos tikslą išvaryti rusus.

 

     Vienas aukšto rango Vakarų žvalgybos pareigūnas apibendrino atskleidimą, kaip „košmarą“. Rusijoje gimęs „Silverado Policy Accelerator“ pirmininkas Dmitrijus Alperovičius, geriausiai žinomas dėl novatoriško darbo kibernetinio saugumo srityje, sekmadienį sakė baiminantis, kad yra „daug būdų, kaip tai gali pakenkti“.

 

     Jis sakė, kad tai apima galimybę, kad Rusijos žvalgyba galės naudotis puslapiais, išplatintais per „Twitter“ ir „Telegram“, „išsiaiškinti, kaip mes renkame“ žinias apie Rusijos karinės žvalgybos tarnybos G.R.U. planus ir karinių dalinių judėjimą.

 

     Tiesą sakant, iki šiol paskelbti dokumentai yra trumpas vaizdas, kaip JAV žiūrėjo į konfliktą Ukrainoje. Panašu, kad daugelis puslapių yra tiesiog iš jungtinių štabo vadovų informacinių knygų, o kai kuriais atvejais – iš CIA operacijų centro atnaujinimų. Jie yra dabartinės mūšio tvarkos ir, ko gero, vertingiausių Rusijos kariniams planuotojams, amerikiečių prognozių, kur kitą mėnesį galėtų būti į Ukrainą skubinama oro gynybos sistema, derinys.

 

     Sumaišyta daugybė išankstinių įspėjimų, kaip Rusija gali imtis atsakomųjų veiksmų už Ukrainos ribų, jei konfliktas užsitęs. Vienas ypač grėsmingas C.I.A. dokumente kalbama apie prorusišką įsilaužėlių grupę, kuri sėkmingai įsiveržė į Kanados dujų skirstymo tinklą ir „gavo nurodymus iš tariamo Federalinės saugumo tarnybos (F.S.B.) pareigūno palaikyti tinklo prieigą prie Kanados dujų infrastruktūros ir laukti tolesnių nurodymų“. Kol kas nėra įrodymų, kad Rusijos aktoriai būtų pradėję destruktyvią ataką, tačiau tai buvo aiškiai išreikšta dokumente išreikšta baimė.

 

     Kadangi tokie įspėjimai yra tokie jautrūs, daugelis „visiškai slaptų“ dokumentų yra skirti tik Amerikos pareigūnams arba „Penkioms akims“ – Jungtinių Valstijų, Didžiosios Britanijos, Australijos, Naujosios Zelandijos ir Kanados žvalgybos aljansui. Ta grupė turi neoficialų susitarimą nešnipinėti kitų narių. Tačiau tai aiškiai netaikoma kitiems Amerikos sąjungininkams ir partneriams.

 

     Yra įrodymų, kad Jungtinės Valstijos įsitraukė į prezidento Volodymyro Zelenskio vidinius pokalbius ir net artimiausių JAV sąjungininkų, tokių kaip Pietų Korėja, pokalbius.

 

     Išsiuntimu, kuris labai primena 2010 m. „WikiLeaks“ atskleidimą , viename dokumente, pagrįstame tuo, kas subtiliai vadinama „signalų žvalgyba“, aprašomos vidinės diskusijos Seule, kaip elgtis su Amerikos spaudimu siųsti daugiau mirtinos pagalbos Ukrainai, nes tai pažeistų šalies praktiką tiesiogiai nesiųsti ginklų į karo zoną.  Skelbiama, kad Pietų Korėjos prezidentas Yoonas Suk Yeolas nerimavo, kad Bidenas gali paskambinti jam, prašydamas didesnio indėlio į Ukrainos kariuomenę.

 

     Tai nepaprastai opi Pietų Korėjos pareigūnų tema. Neseniai lankydamiesi Seule, prieš pasirodant nutekintiems dokumentams, vyriausybės pareigūnai vengė žurnalisto klausimų, ar jie neplanuoja siųsti 155 milimetrų artilerijos šovinių, kurių jie gamina dideliais kiekiais, kad padėtų karo pastangoms. Vienas pareigūnas sakė, kad Pietų Korėja nenori pažeisti savo pačios politikos ar rizikuoti savo subtiliais santykiais su Maskva.

 

     Dabar pasaulis pamatė Pentagono tų sviedinių siuntų jūra „pristatymo terminą“ ir apytikslę siuntų kainą – 26 mln. dolerių.

 

     Su kiekvienu slaptų dokumentų atskleidimu, žinoma, kyla baimės dėl ilgalaikės žalos, kartais per daug išpūstos. Tai atsitiko 2010 m., kai „The New York Times“ pradėjo leisti seriją „Valstybės paslaptys“, kurioje išsamiai aprašomi ir analizuojami atrinkti dokumentai iš daugybės kabelių, kuriuos paėmė Chelsea Manning, tuomet armijos eilinis Irake, ir išleido Julianas Assange'as, WikiLeaks. įkūrėjas. Netrukus po pirmųjų straipsnių paskelbimo valstybės sekretorė Hillary Clinton išreiškė baimę, kad niekas daugiau niekada nekalbės su Amerikos diplomatais.

 

     „Tokie atskleidimai ne tik kelia pavojų konkretiems asmenims, bet ir suardo tinkamos atsakingos vyriausybės funkciją“, – sakė ji žurnalistams Valstybės departamento Sutarčių salėje. Žinoma, jie kalbėjo toliau – nors daugelis užsienio pareigūnų sako, kad kalbėdami šiandien jie redaguoja save žinodami, kad ateityje gali būti cituojami departamento laiškuose, kurie nutekės.

 

     Kai ponas Snowdenas išleido didžiulius kiekius duomenų iš Nacionalinio saugumo agentūros, surinktų, naudojant 100 dolerių vertės programinę įrangą, kuri ką tik surinko archyvus, prie kurių jis turėjo prieigą Havajuose, panašiai buvo baiminamasi dėl nesėkmių, renkant žvalgybos duomenis. Agentūra daug metų keitė programas, kurios kainavo šimtus milijonų dolerių, o pareigūnai teigia, kad dabar, praėjus dešimtmečiui, vis dar stebi žalą. Rugsėjo mėnesį V. Putinas suteikė P. Snowdenui, žemo lygio žvalgybos kontraktininkui, visišką Rusijos pilietybę; Jungtinės Valstijos vis dar siekia grąžinti jį ir iškelti jam kaltinimus.

 

     Tačiau tiek M. Manning, tiek S. Snowdenas teigė, kad juos paskatino noras atskleisti, ką jie laiko JAV nusižengimais. "Šį kartą tai neatrodo ideologiška", - sakė ponas Alperovičius. Panašu, kad kai kurie dokumentai pirmą kartą pasirodė žaidimų platformose, galbūt, siekiant išspręsti internetinį ginčą dėl kovos Ukrainoje statuso.

 

     „Pagalvok apie tai“, – pasakė ponas Alperovičius. „Interneto kova, kuri baigiasi didžiule žvalgybos katastrofa“.

 

 

How the Latest Leaked Documents Are Different From Past Breaches

"The freshness of the documents — some appear to be barely 40 days old — and the hints they hold for operations to come make them particularly damaging, officials say.

When WikiLeaks spilled a huge trove of State Department cables 13 years ago, it gave the world a sense of what American diplomats do each day — the sharp elbows, the doubts about wavering allies and the glimpses at how Washington was preparing for North Korea’s eventual collapse and Iran’s nuclear breakout.

When Edward Snowden swept up the National Security Agency’s secrets three years later, Americans suddenly discovered the scope of how the digital age had ushered in a remarkable new era of surveillance by the agency — enabling it to pierce China’s telecommunications industry and to drill into Google’s servers overseas to pick up foreign communications.

The cache of 100 or so newly leaked briefing slides of operational data on the conflict in Ukraine is distinctly different. The data revealed so far is less comprehensive than those vast secret archives, but far more timely. And it is the immediate salience of the intelligence that most worries White House and Pentagon officials.

Some of the most sensitive material — maps of Ukrainian air defenses and a deep dive into South Korea’s secret plans to deliver 330,000 rounds of much-needed ammunition in time for Ukraine’s spring counteroffensive — is revealed in documents that appear to be barely 40 days old.

It is the freshness of the “secret” and “top secret” documents, and the hints they hold for operations to come, that make these disclosures particularly damaging, administration officials say.

The 100-plus pages of slides and briefing documents leave no doubt about how deeply enmeshed the United States is in the day-to-day conduct of the conflict, providing the precise intelligence and logistics that help explain Ukraine’s success thus far. While President Biden has barred American troops from firing directly on Russian targets, and blocked sending weapons that could reach deep into Russian territory, the documents make clear that a year into the conflict, the United States is heavily entangled in almost everything else.

It is providing detailed targeting data. It is coordinating the long, complex logistical train that delivers weapons to the Ukrainians. And as a Feb. 22 document makes clear, American officials are planning ahead for a year in which the battle for the Donbas is “likely heading toward a stalemate” that will frustrate Vladimir V. Putin’s goal of capturing the region — and Ukraine’s goal of expelling the Russians.

One senior Western intelligence official summed up the disclosures as “a nightmare.” Dmitri Alperovitch, the Russia-born chairman of Silverado Policy Accelerator, who is best known for pioneering work in cybersecurity, said on Sunday that he feared there were “a number of ways this can be damaging.”

He said that included the possibility that Russian intelligence is able to use the pages, spread out over Twitter and Telegram, “to figure out how we are collecting” the plans of the G.R.U., Russia’s military intelligence service, and the movement of military units.

In fact, the documents released so far are a brief snapshot of how the United States viewed the conflict in Ukraine. Many pages seem to come right out of the briefing books circulating among the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and in a few cases updates from the C.I.A.’s operations center. They are a combination of the current order of battle and — perhaps most valuable to Russian military planners — American projections of where the air defenses being rushed into Ukraine could be located next month.

Mixed in are a series of early warnings about how Russia might retaliate, beyond Ukraine, if the conflict drags on. One particularly ominous C.I.A. document refers to a pro-Russian hacking group that had successfully broken into Canada’s gas distribution network and was “receiving instructions from a presumed Federal Security Service (F.S.B.) officer to maintain network access to Canadian gas infrastructure and wait for further instruction.” So far there is no evidence that Russian actors have begun a destructive attack, but that was the explicit fear expressed in the document.

Because such warnings are so sensitive, many of the “top secret” documents are limited to American officials or to the “Five Eyes” — the intelligence alliance of the United States, Britain, Australia, New Zealand and Canada. That group has an informal agreement not to spy on the other members. But it clearly does not apply to other American allies and partners.

There is evidence that the United States has plugged itself into President Volodymyr Zelensky’s internal conversations and those of even the closest U.S. allies, like South Korea.

In a dispatch that is very reminiscent of the 2010 WikiLeaks disclosures, one document based on what is delicately referred to as “signals intelligence” describes the internal debate in Seoul over how to handle American pressure to send more lethal aid to Ukraine, which would violate the country’s practice of not directly sending weapons into a war zone. It reports that South Korea’s president, Yoon Suk Yeol, was concerned that Mr. Biden might call him to press for greater contributions to Ukraine’s military.

It is an enormously sensitive subject among South Korean officials. During a recent visit to Seoul, before the leaked documents appeared, government officials dodged a reporter’s questions about whether they were planning to send 155-millimeter artillery rounds, which they produce in large quantities, to aid in the war effort. One official said South Korea did not want to violate its own policies, or risk its delicate relationship with Moscow.

Now the world has seen the Pentagon’s “delivery timeline” for sea shipments of those shells, along with estimates of the cost of the shipments, $26 million.

With every disclosure of secret documents, of course, there are fears of lasting damage, sometimes overblown. That happened in 2010, when The New York Times started publishing a series called “State’s Secrets,” detailing and analyzing selected documents from the trove of cables taken by Chelsea Manning, then an Army private in Iraq, and published by Julian Assange, the WikiLeaks founder. Soon after the first articles were published, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton expressed fear that no one would ever talk to American diplomats again.

“In addition to endangering particular individuals, disclosures like these tear at the fabric of the proper function of responsible government,” she told reporters in the Treaty Room of the State Department. Of course, they did keep talking — though many foreign officials say that when they speak today, they edit themselves with the knowledge that they may be quoted in department cables that leak in the future.

When Mr. Snowden released vast amounts of data from the National Security Agency, collected with a $100 piece of software that just gathered up archives he had access to at a facility in Hawaii, there was similar fear of setbacks in intelligence collection. The agency spent years altering programs, at a cost of hundreds of millions of dollars, and officials say they are still monitoring the damage now, a decade later. In September, Mr. Putin granted Mr. Snowden, a low-level intelligence contractor, full Russian citizenship; the United States is still seeking to bring him back to face charges.

But both Ms. Manning and Mr. Snowden said they were motivated by a desire to reveal what they viewed as transgressions by the United States. “This time it doesn’t look ideological,” Mr. Alperovitch said. The first appearance of some of the documents seems to have taken place on gaming platforms, perhaps to settle an online argument over the status of the fight in Ukraine.

“Think about that,” Mr. Alperovitch said. “An internet fight that ends up in a massive intelligence disaster.””