This blog post was written by Layoffs.fyi intern Stephan Billingslea, a Yale student majoring in economics and statistics.
At a time when hundreds of startups have laid off employees but many others are still hiring, we wanted to explore – what’s in demand for hiring in this current environment?
To find out, we analyzed usage data from the Layoffs.fyi List, which combines 80+ spreadsheets of laid-off tech employees into a single place that’s easy to filter, search, and sort.
Thousands of recruiters and hiring managers use the Layoffs.fyi List to find candidates for their open roles. How they use the site reveals some interesting takeaways about what tech employers are hiring for:
- Engineering is the function in greatest demand – by a lot. There are 4x as many searches for laid-off engineers as there are for the next most popular function (Design).
- The most popular locations for tech hiring are the San Francisco Bay Area and New York City.
- The most searched-for job titles (laid-off Software Engineers, Product Managers, Data Scientists, and Product Designers) are all related to product development.
Search Filters
Recruiters and hiring managers primarily use six search filters to browse the 16,000+ laid-off employees on the Layoffs.fyi List.
Prior Department and Location are the filters used most often, based on the percentage of pageviews using each filter.
Department
Engineering is by far the most sought-after function, accounting for over 35% of all pageviews using the Prior Department filter. There are 4x as many searches for laid-off engineers as there are for the next most popular function (Design).
Location
Not surprisingly, demand for tech hiring is clustered around the major startup hubs. The San Francisco Bay Area dominates the domestic search with almost 30% of all pageviews with a Location filter, followed by New York City and Boston. Internationally, Toronto, London, and India are the most searched-for locations.
Job Title
Software Engineers and Product Managers are the job titles with the highest hiring demand. In fact, the four most searched-for job titles (laid-off Software Engineers, Product Managers, Data Scientists, and Product Designers) are all related to product development.
Prior Company
Former Toast, Uber, and Airbnb employees are the most sought after on the site, suggesting that these companies have a strong reputation for attracting talented employees.
Skills
The most searched-for skills are all related to product development. JavaScript and Python are the programming languages with the highest demand.
Final Thoughts
The world has changed drastically over the past few months, but one thing remains the same: tech companies still focus their outbound recruiting efforts on engineering.
There’s reason to believe that the coronavirus pandemic may have even amplified this trend. Our previous analysis showed that tech layoffs have affected sales and customer success roles the most, as startups face a new reality of slower customer growth. This may be allowing companies to focus more on product development initiatives instead, leading to sustained interest in hiring engineers.
Data is based on Layoffs.fyi List usage between 5/8/20-6/16/20.