What Next TBD: The End of the Tech Boom

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Slate Podcasts

News, News Commentary, Politics

4.6 • 6K Ratings

🗓️ 20 November 2022

⏱️ 30 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

After decades as America’s booming industry, tens of thousands of tech workers have been laid off in November alone. Is the venture-capital, low-interest-rate wind leaving the sails temporary or is this the end of the hunt for “the next big thing?” Guest: Timothy B. Lee, reporter for Full Stack Economics covering labor markets, technology, and housing. Host: Lizzie O’Leary If you enjoy this show, please consider signing up for Slate Plus. Slate Plus members get benefits like zero ads on any Slate podcast, bonus episodes of shows like Slow Burn and Dear Prudence—and you’ll be supporting the work we do here on What Next TBD. Sign up now at slate.com/whatnextplus to help support our work. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	On the morning that Julia got laid off, she walked out of the gym and checked her email.
0:09.5	The actual day I went to my gym, I come out of the gym, it's like 8.30 in the morning,
0:14.8	I just come out of Pilates class, I just checked my phone as I do and it's like,
0:18.9	stripe HR, your rule at stripe.
0:24.2	That's not a note anyone wants to get and it was a shock.
0:27.9	There were no rumor mill, there was nothing.
0:32.4	Like I'm telling you, I've been in companies, you know, there usually is some sort of water
0:37.2	quit like this was stealth.
0:40.0	Absolute stealth.
0:41.8	Julia, by the way, is not her real name, but that's what we're calling her today.
0:46.8	She knows her way around tech, she's worked at a bunch of the big name companies, including
0:50.4	Amazon and Microsoft.
0:52.7	And she joins stripe, the online payment processor, a little over a year ago to work on company
0:57.7	partnerships just before a big expansion.
1:01.7	It was the highest valued privately held company.
1:05.4	I think it was at that time, it was like 95 billion, you know, as a rocket ship.
1:13.0	Initially, COVID lockdowns and the subsequent online shopping boom propelled that rocket
1:18.3	ship even higher.
1:21.8	But then gravity kicked it.
1:24.1	stripe laid off 14% of its workforce earlier this month, including Julia.
1:29.7	In a note to employees, the company's founders blamed inflation, rising interest rates,
1:35.0	and their own bad business decisions.
	...

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