San Francisco Is Booming Again — Unless You’re a Laid-Off Tech Worker
The AI boom promised jobs, but many San Francisco engineers are still waiting for work. Meanwhile, one job title has gained popularity.
Key Takeaways
- In December, former Google employee Basem Istanbouli created un(PTO), a community for people in the San Francisco area trying to navigate life between jobs.
- The community now has more than 1,700 members, some of whom get together for weekly hikes.
- For workers, the AI shift is changing the skills that employers want and causing roles like forward-deployed engineers to gain traction.
On a Monday morning this month, more than 50 laid-off tech workers met for a hike on Mount Tamalpais, the towering peak that looks out over San Francisco Bay. They made their way down the quiet trail in small groups, following Basem Istanbouli, a former Google employee.
The hikers were all figuring out what comes next, Bloomberg recently reported. One former Meta employee was thinking about walking away from tech to focus on illustration. Another, a software engineer who had been unemployed for over a year, carried a large camera he had bought just days before losing his job.
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