From coder to shuttle driver: Where Seattle's laid off tech workforce is now

Three years ago, Daniel DePaolo was working as a software engineer on Sports Illustrated’s web team.

“The company was a pretty good size, pretty good benefits and pay, and I was like, wow, this is great,” he said. “Maybe I could support a family, maybe have a second kid, and live some sort of ideal American dream.”

It was a short-lived fantasy. Sports Illustrated went through a major layoff, but DePaolo landed on his feet at a startup a few months later. Then, after six months, he was laid off again. This time, it took longer to find a new job. He ended up in a position that he said burned him out. DePaolo decided to quit. It was a risk, but it in his 20-year career as a software engineer, there had always been work for people with coding skills.

“It was kind of a spur of the moment decision,” he said. “Would I make it again? Maybe not. Maybe I wouldn't.”

After about seven months of looking for another tech job, DePaolo threw in the towel. He took a position driving a private shuttle for Microsoft employees.

“ I kind of just applied for it on a whim … it seemed like definitely a step up from just getting like a restaurant job because you've got corporate riders and you're on this beautiful Microsoft campus … I think they were ramping up hiring because Microsoft just returned to the office.”

DePaolo is far from the only laid off tech worker leaving the field altogether, according to Andy Challenger, of the outplacement firm Challenger, Gray and Christmas. Fortune 500 companies often hire outplacement firms to help laid off employees find new roles. Challenger said laid off workers are increasingly turning to fields like finance and health care because of the difficult job market in tech.

“ We've seen tech be an area where we've seen the highest layoffs announced for three years in a row,” he said. “It's been an area that's experienced a lot of downsizing, removal of whole departments, a lot of changes in the last couple years. And so a lot of people within tech are looking outside of their specific industry where they also might be able to apply their skillset.”

This year started off with the most layoffs we’ve seen in a January since the Great Recession — and the lowest hiring on record, according to research by Challenger’s firm. In the Seattle area, about 9,000 people lost their jobs in tech over the past year. That environment, coupled with the specter of artificial intelligence, has workers with tech backgrounds moving to other industries and taking freelance work instead of full-time gigs. And those who are still employed are “job hugging” — that is, hanging onto their positions for dear life even if they would prefer to leave.

Tech workers turn to temp jobs

Last year, Microsoft laid off more than 15,000 employees. Russell Ollie was one of them. He lost his job as a data analyst in talent acquisition after about 10 months with the company. It was the third time Ollie had been laid off since 2018.

“ I've seen teammates of mine be let go,” he said. “I've been let go, and I certainly don't appreciate it. I'm under no illusion that just because you work for a company, you'll be there forever, but the basic contract you expect is, if you perform well and you're a good teammate, you'll stay here. Right? And that doesn't seem to be the case anymore. There's no seemingly visible logic to how these layoffs are going.”

After Microsoft, Ollie took a contract position as a talent acquisition operations specialist for CoreWeave, an AI cloud computing company.

“I have done contract work in the past … it was when I was laid off from Zapier,” Ollie said. “Nothing else was available, so I took the contract. I always prefer full-time work. It's more stable and secure. I prefer that stability over the option of overtime. I want the benefits, personally, but when you don't have a choice that's sort of what you do.”

Despite the bumpy road, Ollie remains optimistic. His current employer has promised to convert him to a full-time employee. For others in tech, a string of temporary contract jobs may be the new normal, according to Megan Slabinski of Robert Half, a temp agency that specializes in highly skilled workers. She is the regional president overseeing technology and marketing roles.

“ There is a higher influx of people that have been traditionally employed for full-time opportunities considering consulting roles,” Slabinski said, because there are more “companies looking to increase and shift full-time headcount to contract headcount.”

Slabinski says the rise of contract work is a product of the artificial intelligence age.

“ The type of work someone's doing in the AI data cloud computing space is evolving so quickly and the skill sets that companies need to implement those project opportunities today might not be the same skills they need in a full-time employee in the next year or two,” she said. “So contract work makes more sense for some of those bleeding edge technology roles.”

From job hopping to job hugging

Layoffs, hiring freezes, and the rise of AI have tech workers who are still employed staying put, even if they would prefer not to.

That’s the predicament Derek Tellin finds himself in. He’s a systems administrator at a mid-sized tech company in Seattle, and after an acquisition by a private equity firm, his entire team was laid off.

“ It was a team of four, and now it's a team of me,” he said.

Tellin was offered optional severance, and after being demoted and asked to pick up the slack from laid off coworkers, he was tempted. Still, he decided it was too risky to leave without another job lined up.

Like Ollie and DePaolo, Tellin has been through a layoff before. He lost his job in 2018, but was able to find another one a few months later.

“ It was like a four month period, but I had interviews all the time,” Tellin said.

In 2026, it’s a different story. He’s still looking for a new job, but hasn’t seen much traction.

“So far I've applied to 180 jobs and I've had one interview in the last three months,” he said. “It's like a completely different landscape.”