As Silicon Valley sheds its core talent pool, tech companies outside of the region are finding opportunity from thousands of layoffs.
Household names like Google, Meta and Microsoft have all participated in massive layoffs over the last several months, with most citing that they overhired during the high demand seen at the height of the pandemic.
Companies across Germany that are struggling with a labor shortage are now turning to former Big Tech employees to fill in these gaps.
“They fire, we hire,” said Rainer Zugehoer, Chief People Officer at Volkswagen’s software brand Cariad. “We have several hundred open positions in the U.S., in Europe and in China.”
Much of the world is facing similar economic headwinds due to high inflation and increased risk for a recession.
For a country like Germany that is in dire need of a technological revamp, hiring software engineers and other tech professionals has become a top priority. In fact, data from IT firm Bitkom shows that the country has 137,000 unfilled IT jobs.
To entice new workers, the country’s government is seeking to make the path to citizenship easier and boasting its cheaper cost of living compared to Silicon Valley, which is among the highest in the U.S.
