Nina McCollum has been laid off so many times that the 55-year-old is basically an unofficial expert. That’s how she describes herself, at least.
The marketing writer, who went viral in 2019 for documenting how she submitted over 200 applications during her two-year unemployment period, eventually landed her dream job at a major human resources tech company in the Bay Area. But then, in March 2023, she was let go — and suddenly back at square one.
“My chances of obtaining another great-paying FT job are next to zero,” she wrote to SFGATE in an email.
McCollum is not alone. Over the past two years, major tech companies in the Bay Area have hemorrhaged high-salaried workers, sending a chill throughout an industry that once seemed untouchable. Meta has let go of at least 21,000 workers, while Google has handed pink slips to hundreds of employees across San Francisco, Sunnyvale and Mountain View. Though the state government boasts about California’s growing economy and low unemployment rate, multiple people who spoke with SFGATE painted a bleak picture.
Archive link: https://archive.ph/rxOwe
Remind me never to be a newspaper columnist, at the mercy of cringey copy editors’ dumb-ass headlines.
In the first dot-com bubble burst and in the Great Recession, many quit the business and moved to cheaper locales around the country. Given that COVID-19 has made remote work more acceptable, in some ways it’s now easier to lower your C.O.L. while staying in the business. But it also means you’re competing with others who can also afford to work for less because they also live in cheaper locales.
