Maskot/Getty Images
- Gen Z tech workers are starting their careers in uncertain times for the industry and the economy.Data shows young tech workers face a tough time, though many are still optimistic about tech jobs.Layoffs, stress, AI, getting ghosted by employers, and optimism are all part of their experiences.
Recent years of rolling layoffs in tech have some Gen Z tech workers stressed — but not deterred.
"I feel like everyone feels a bit stressed that there are layoffs," said Merc Heredia-Ferran, a 26-year-old brand marketer at Google who joined the company last year. "I get sent articles that Google laid off people that I didn't even know about, like I'm reading that in the news."
The job market has hit Gen Z hard. While older millennials faced higher unemployment rates following the Great Recession compared to Gen Z now, Gen Z experiences unique challenges such as increased Big Tech cost-cutting and AI upending the workplace.
BI spoke to more than a dozen Gen Z tech workers and job seekers about their experiences as they hustle to start their careers and as artificial intelligence and changing corporate and immigration policies transform early-career workers' introduction to the workplace.
A SignalFire report found that entry-level hiring in Big Tech is down more than 50% from pre-pandemic levels; at startups, it's down more than 30%. The percentage of graduates from top computer science programs employed at Big Tech companies has halved since 2022, the report found. As tech companies pull back hiring across the industry, it's become a tighter job market for Gen Z.
The New York Fed reported that unemployment for recent college graduates who majored in computer science was 6.1%, compared to 5.8% for recent college graduates overall.
Layoff concerns also weigh heavily in the tech field. Over 28% of job seekers age 18 to 24 and over 21% of those age 25 to 34 say they were laid off in their last job, a ZipRecruiter survey from the first quarter of this year found.
Tech still remains a popular career choice for Gen Z in part because of its schedule flexibility, which is prioritized by 90% of graduates, said Sam DeMase, a career expert at ZipRecruiter. Tech jobs often pay more compared to many other careers.
"Agencies, you can be cut at any time," Heredia-Ferran said. "You don't even see it coming. Here I feel like, with the high salary, if it happens, I have a cushion now, and the Google name, I can maybe land something if it happens."
Expectations vs. Reality
A software engineer at Amazon says he "got lucky" in landing his full-time job at Amazon. When the 26-year-old India native interned at the e-commerce giant in 2023, the timing was anything but ideal: Their offer coincided with a hiring freeze.
"After September 2022, Amazon just stopped hiring interns for that year," the engineer told BI.
They completed their internship and received an "inclined to hire" evaluation in August 2023. Due to the freeze, they didn't start their full-time role until June 2024. Compared to the thousands of laid-off employees across tech and at Amazon, among them, peers still looking for work, they're grateful.
"I can't give much advice to someone who is looking for a job. I myself can't crack exactly how I landed the job. I just got lucky in that," the engineer said.
Expectations don't always match reality. Nearly 40% of rising graduates believe an internship will help them land a job, yet 9% of recent grads said their internships helped them do that, ZipRecruiter found in a 2025 survey of 3,000 recent and rising undergraduate students
ZipRecruiter found that rising graduates believe they'll earn a salary of $101,500; recent grads earned an average of $68,400.
"The expectation versus reality gap is quite high," said DeMase.
The AI boon and bust for Gen Z
If young workers do get the tech job they seek, a complicating factor is the growth of AI.
A Hult International Business School survey found 37% of HR leaders say they'd rather use AI than hire a recent graduate.
Young workers say AI has helped them and left them feeling uncertain.
"In terms of work, it's gotten to a very interesting place because a lot of things that used to take me a day to do, I can now do them in one hour, but that hasn't translated into my work decreasing. It's just more work," the Amazon engineer said.
"I don't know if we'll reach the point when AI is doing everything I'm doing and finally replace me," they continued with a nervous laugh.
Gen Z job seekers face a tough market
Upon graduation in 2022, Jonathan, a now 26-year-old software engineer, set about applying for tech jobs. He applied to about 300 roles and received 12 responses, some of which were coding tests, before finally landing a full-time job after three months.
Nine months later, he was laid off when his tech company closed the office where he was based, meaning he was once again on the job hunt. This time, he applied to about 600 roles, and he heard back from five.
"I was talking with some other former classmates and people graduating in the same year," said Jonathan, who asked to withhold his last name due to company policies on speaking with the press.
"Most of us were in the same boat. We just graduated, never found anything, and had just gotten laid off from another position. We were all weighing our options. Should we go back and get our master's? It didn't seem like anyone was hiring early-level positions."
Tyler Creach, a 26-year-old senior business development manager at software company Freshworks, also said she found the job market difficult before landing her role, which took about four to five months. The tech industry can be "hard to predict" for young people, and it's tough to "see yourself in it for a long time, she said.
"Young people are struggling to find stable, relatively well-paying jobs," Creach said. "That's creating a lot of resentment or frustration, possibly from young people. Instead of getting a start right away, they're punting it down the line."
The ZipRecruiter survey found that over half of tech job seekers age 25 to 34 and nearly 44% of those age 18 to 24 say they received zero job offers in the past month.
ZipRecruiter found that a majority of job seekers in these age demographics say they've been ghosted by an employer during their job search, an experience that has become more common for Gen Z. Over 30% of them say their job search is going "poor" and over half say it's just going "fair."
Creach found she had to compromise her job expectations, particularly in location. She previously had all-remote roles and ended up taking a job that required going to an office.
She hopes to eventually do something more creative in her career or move into management.
"Now it is super difficult to get a job for those remote roles," Creach said. "I had to think about how I could start getting more interviews. Once I started looking at more jobs based in my area, whether hybrid or fully in-office, I started to get more responses and make more progress."
Jonathan landed his current job after three to four months. It did require moving states, and he now works in defense tech and not his preferred industry, video games. He says he's trying to get any experience he can.
"My dad said when he graduated, it was difficult for him to find a job," Jonathan said. "In the early 90s, there was a mini-recession. To some degree, it has gotten harder over the years to land anything. Everyone tells you to get into computer science. That's where all the money is at, that's where the jobs are at. It's a lot harder than they make it out to be."
Don't count Gen Z out
Despite the job market slowdown, many Gen Z tech workers are still optimistic about working in tech.
Justin Dobey, 27, pursued a master's degree in 2020 as the COVID pandemic began. After graduation, his job search just took about a month since there's a "deep lack of electrical engineers" where he lives in South Carolina.
He works in a federal government engineering job that has rolled back hiring, though he hasn't been affected by cuts. Dobey said his friends with non-engineering degrees are struggling more to find work than his peers in engineering.
"We might not all be in our dream jobs, but they are doing all right, last time I checked."
Dobey said he's optimistic about the future of STEM jobs.
"If you want to live comfortably and not want to work your whole life like, be a doctor or lawyer, get a STEM degree in computer systems, cybersecurity, AI," he said.
Job-seeking tips
DeMase, the ZipRecruiter career expert, said it's important for tech job seekers to learn more about AI and use it ethically. She also advises using their network, getting to know more people in the industry, and tailoring résumés to better align with target roles, which can even include skills from volunteering or part-time work
"When folks think about the roles they'll apply for, it's important to lean into their strengths and target roles that are hyperaligned with their superpowers," DeMase said.
She also said it's important to speak clearly about the impact they've made in their work or in their projects.
"Gen Z approaches the interview as an interrogation rather than a conversation," DeMase said. "It's a conversation, not an interrogation. Come prepared to have an organic chat. Don't be afraid to remember you're interviewing as well."
