The Silicon Valley AI Boom Is Leaving Some Workers Behind
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.
As OpenAI and Anthropic prepare to go public, their employees expect to get rich. However, not every tech worker in San Francisco works for an AI startup. Many are unemployed and looking for work, illustrating the other side of the AI boom.
Since December, Istanbouli has been bringing unemployed workers together for weekly hikes through un(PTO), a community he created for people trying to navigate life between jobs. What began with just three people, including himself, a friend and someone he met through Reddit, has grown into an online group of more than 1,700 members. Some of its outings now draw more than 80 people.
Falling demand for software engineers
Bay Area tech companies notified more than 14,500 workers of layoffs in the year ending in June, nearly twice as many as the previous fiscal year, according to Bloomberg’s analysis of California employment data.
The broader regional picture has pros and cons: San Francisco and San Mateo County added more than 10,000 jobs over the past year, yet they remain down more than 60,000 jobs from February 2020 levels.
For workers, the AI shift is changing which skills employers want. Demand for Bay Area software engineers has fallen 42% since 2022, data from labor market analytics firm Lightcast shows. At the same time, postings tied to AI-focused IT and computer-science roles have increased 37%.
An obscure role is now one of tech’s most popular jobs
One job gaining traction across the tech industry is the forward-deployed engineer (FDE), a role Palantir helped popularize in the early 2010s.
These engineers do more than build software: They work closely with customers to understand their problems and help turn AI tools into something companies can actually use.
The role has quickly become one of the Bay Area’s hottest tech jobs. Openings for the position have surged nearly 600% since 2022, reaching a median advertised salary of $202,300, according to Lightcast.
AI companies are competing aggressively for that talent: OpenAI lists compensation of $185,000 to $300,000 plus equity for a San Francisco-based FDE role, while Anthropic advertises $280,000 to $320,000.
Meanwhile, Salesforce has said that it plans to build a 1,000-person FDE team.
Hao Li, who runs the North American FDE team for AI software company Taktile, said FDEs increasingly handle work for engineering, product and business-development teams.
“You can combine these three things into one role and that becomes this unicorn called FDE,” Li told Bloomberg.
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.
As OpenAI and Anthropic prepare to go public, their employees expect to get rich. However, not every tech worker in San Francisco works for an AI startup. Many are unemployed and looking for work, illustrating the other side of the AI boom.
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