Silicon Valley may be in the middle of an Artificial Intelligence gold rush but thousands of former senior programmes and tech workers aren\u2019t feeling it.<\/p>\n
Those workers \u2014 until recently, used to paychecks between $310-340,000 \u2014 say the rapid advances in AI have left living on savings and their spouses\u2019 paychecks, despite having top companies on their r\u00e9sum\u00e9s and PhDs.<\/a><\/p>\n \u201cYou find a lot of people who lack empathy for the tech worker, because they\u2019re like, oh well, they got laid off but they got these huge severance packages,\u201d ex-Google employee Basem Istanbouli told The Post. \u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cMy severance package wasn\u2019t huge. It wasn\u2019t big at all \u2026 If I didn\u2019t have a partner, there\u2019s no way I would have been able to stay in the Bay Area.\u201d<\/p>\n Basem Istanbouli, a former Google advertising salesman who founded (un)PTO, a hiking group for the unemployed, is pictured in Silicon Valley. Courtesy of Basem Istanbouli<\/p>\n Silicon Valley took in $92 billion of venture capital last year, 83% of it for AI firms, yet lost 13,100 jobs, according to Joint Venture Silicon Valley\u2019s 2026 Index<\/a>.<\/p>\n Software job postings nationwide are 23% below their pre-pandemic level, data from job site Indeed<\/a> show.<\/p>\n A former Amazon machine-learning scientist with a PhD, who quit to launch a startup that failed, said he applied for 120 jobs in two months but has not had one offer. One company put him through six rounds of interviews before rejecting him.<\/p>\n \u201cHaving run a startup counts against you. They think you weren\u2019t content to just do tech, you went off to do your own thing, and when you come back they\u2019re not very willing to take someone who has run a startup,\u201d the scientist, who asked not to be named, told the Post.<\/p>\n \u201cIn tech you\u2019re a workhorse. You do what you\u2019re told. You\u2019re not supposed to have ideas. You just have to finish writing the code.\u201d<\/p>\n The Google headquarters is seen in Mountain View, California. Bloomberg via Getty Images<\/p>\n He has a child, a mortgage and about a year of savings left. His wife, whose job provides the family\u2019s health insurance, has proposed applying for social assistance if he still cannot find work.<\/p>\n Before it comes to that, he said, he would swallow his pride.<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019m embarrassed to tell my friends that my startup failed. If I put \u2018open to work\u2019 on LinkedIn and go around asking for referrals, everyone will know my startup died. If it really comes to that, I\u2019ll have to do it and stop caring.\u201d<\/p>\n Meanwhile the honchos at Anthropic and OpenAI are planning trillion-dollar stock market debuts and Anthropic\u2019s co-founders were each worth $15.5 billion on paper in May, according to Forbes.<\/a><\/p>\n Yang Jin, a biotech PhD laid off in 2024, is pictured in Silicon Valley. Courtesy of Yang Jin<\/p>\n The facade of the offices of artificial intelligence company OpenAI is seen in San Francisco, California, on March 25, 2026. Gado via Getty Images<\/p>\n But the cuts keep coming. Oracle will lay off 441 workers in Redwood City, Santa Clara and Pleasanton on Nov. 13, state employment records show<\/a>.<\/p>\n The company\u2019s annual filing showed its headcount fell by 21,000, or nearly 13%, which it tied to the \u201cadoption and deployment of AI technologies across our operations.\u201d<\/a><\/p>\n Analysts say the boom and the layoffs are connected. AI is so expensive to build that tech companies are cutting costs elsewhere to pay for it.<\/p>\n