“Absolutely horrendous,” is how one former tech worker describes the job market at the moment. “So saturated,” adds on another former tech employee Dylan Reiling. For Krysten Klosowski, the reasons for her former employer’s cutbacks were simple: “They grew too big too fast.”
These stories are becoming ever more familiar in the tech industry, which not long ago was seen as almost bulletproof. The COVID era saw wild growth that precipitated giddy rounds of hiring: both Amazon and Meta doubled their headcount from 2019 to 2021. But a storm of factors described by Deloitte as “high inflation, elevated interest rates, and considerable macroeconomic and global uncertainties” soon led to industry-wide cutbacks.
The speed of the turnaround was astonishing. According to job loss tracker Layoffs.fyi, the first quarter of 2022 saw an estimated 9,909 lay-offs across the industry. By the first quarter of 2023, that figure had skyrocketed to 167,574.
Yet education has long provided an escape route for people in times of economic strife. By the time industry lay-offs peaked in early 2023, business schools had already started making moves to attract those displaced workers. Application windows were wedged open indefinitely, test waivers waved in front of applicants, while the normally-premium admissions consulting was offered for free.
But when we hear about industry lay-offs, it can be easy to focus on the headline numbers rather than the personal stories of the thousands who lost their jobs. What happened to those ex-tech workers who made the bold leap into an MBA? And what does it say about the wider winds of change in the industry?
Career reset
Dylan Reiling had never considered an MBA before. In his thirties, and holding down a senior tech role in San Francisco, it didn’t seem like he would ever need one. “Truthfully, at that point in my career I assumed I wasn’t going to get an MBA,” he tells QS Insights Magazine. “I feel like tech – compared to other industries like consulting or finance – you don’t need an MBA as much.”
Up until that point, Reiling’s career had followed the Silicon Valley playbook. Having worked for some top-tier tech names in the Bay Area region since 2017, he joined a bright young San Fran startup in October 2021. It had just attracted Series C funding and was seemingly heading towards a bright future. So far, so Silicon Valley. But within a year, that growth capital gradually shrunk away. Reiling was laid off a year later, his future suddenly uncertain.
“It definitely wasn’t a great time,” he recalls. “For context, I had just moved into a one-bedroom in San Francisco, which is very expensive. But once I was laid off, I only received three weeks of severance, I didn’t really have health insurance, so it immediately became a big financial burden. I was almost immediately draining my savings just trying to pay rent and health insurance and very basic things.”
The timing couldn’t have been worse. Tech lay-offs were almost at their peak, with budgets withering and hiring halted. Reiling started job hunting straight away, but discovered a very different market to the one he had known. He reached the final round of interviews five or six times, but was knocked back each time. “There was always another applicant from a bigger company with more experience,” he laments.
Eventually, Reiling faced one rejection too many. “I remember exactly which final round it was when it happened again. I thought: ‘This obviously isn’t working.’ It wasn’t until the market beat me down that I realised I needed a plan B.” Reiling started seriously considering an MBA, and ended up winning a place on the programme at Kellogg School of Management in Illinois.
Eventually, Reiling faced one rejection too many. “I remember exactly which final round it was when it happened again. I thought: ‘This obviously isn’t working.’ It wasn’t until the market beat me down that I realised I needed a plan B.” Reiling started seriously considering an MBA, and ended up winning a place on the programme at Kellogg School of Management in Illinois.
Others faced similar headwinds at similar times. Krysten Klosowski had held down sales roles at the likes of Salesforce and DocuSign, but was laid off from her job at Airtable in December 2022. Most of her team had been there for less than a year. It was a similar story for Risa Ichwandiani, who had been Head of Commercial at the air logistics provider Teleport until May 2024.
Like Reiling, it wasn’t a pleasant time in Klosowki’s life. “Amid the layoff, it was tough dealing with the unknown and uncertainty that it comes with,” she recalls. But unlike Reiling, an MBA had long been swimming around her thoughts. “An MBA was something that I had always planned to get, but being laid off helped me put that plan into action.”
For Ichwandiani, the lay-off also represented a chance to reset. “Normally, I would feel nervous with the uncertainty,” she says. “But I had long thought about doing an MBA, so the timing aligned perfectly.”
After Texas McCombs waived test requirements and extended their third application round, Klosowski successfully applied for the school’s full-time MBA programme. Ichwandiani, meanwhile, joined the MBA programme at the Asia School of Business in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. A new chapter was about to begin.
The paths followed by these students are becoming increasingly common – and those winds of change are also being felt at the other side of the admissions table. Gale G. Nichols is the Executive Director of the full-time MBA programme at Kelley School of Business in Indiana. Although Kelley didn’t see a surge of applications amid the lay-offs – “It normally goes the other way” – she acknowledges that a once-boiling industry has now reduced to a simmer.
“Tech has definitely become more popular over the time that I’ve worked here,” she says. “It is a very hot area, but it has been a bit more challenging for students to get jobs in tech over the last year or so. It has been more competitive and they have been cutting back on hiring.”
With more and more tech workers starting an MBA, it feels like we’re on the verge of a culture clash. “I think people in tech are generally under the view that an MBA doesn’t add a lot, that it’s more valuable to have experience… they really value more where you worked than where you went to school,” says Reiling.
Read the full article on QS Insights Magazine.