Startups find better access to talent as top tech companies cut jobs, freeze hiring
10’000 Hours | Digitalvision | Getty Images
When Briana Bell was looking to switch jobs this year after stints at Salesforce and Snap, her approach to the market had changed from prior years.
With layoffs hammering the tech industry for the first time in well over a decade and hiring freezes making their way across Silicon Valley, Bell took a look at her options. She landed on a lesser-known private company called Everlaw, which provides cloud-based litigation software.
“I was looking at a few other larger, enterprise-size companies in the San Francisco Bay Area,” Bell said in an interview. “Everlaw was probably the smallest company I was interviewing with.”
It wasn’t the first time she’d heard of Everlaw. The company originally reached out to her back in 2019, but at the time she chose to join Salesforce as a senior analyst.
Everlaw’s Briana Bell
Everlaw
The environment looks a lot different now.
After a decade-plus of unfettered expansion, the tech industry hit a major snag in 2022. Layoffs hit some of the biggest companies, with others implementing hiring freezes. In November, Meta, Amazon, Twitter, Salesforce and HP announced significant cuts to their workforces.
More than 50,000 tech workers were let go from their jobs in November, according to data collected by the website Layoffs.fyi. The total for the year has surpassed 150,000.
“Given the tech layoffs and lower hiring by the big-tech companies, folks are looking for smaller tech companies to join,” said Christopher Fong, founder of Xoogler.co, a network for ex-Google employees.
In the absence of the stability that the largest tech companies once offered, workers are looking to startups and midsize companies that offer greater flexibility and, in some case, the opportunity to have a bigger impact.
Bell said the many headlines about job cuts at top companies in the industry played a role as she was considering her options.
In looking at startups, she had to have confidence in the business. The meltdown in tech stocks this year and tumult in the broader economy led to a dramatic drop in venture funding and a complete freezing of the IPO market.
“I tried not to think a lot about tech layoffs when interviewing,” Bell said. But she admitted, “this is something that’s going to be very important in my job decision process, and I need to make sure the company is in good financial standing and that executives are being pragmatic.”
Startup recruiters are busy
Rich Liu was hired as Everlaw’s chief revenue officer shortly before Bell joined. Liu previously had the same role at TripActions, a high-valued startup that provides travel software.
“From where I sit, we’re really seeing this market shift could usher in a heyday for startups acquiring top talent, particularly for ones like us that are maturing,” Liu said. “It’s been a big-tech talent loss but startups’ gain.”
Recruiters told CNBC that the tech job market remains competitive, even if workers are entertaining fewer offers at a time than they were in recent years.
Lauren Illovsky, talent partner for Alphabet’s CapitalG venture firm said “hiring has gotten a little easier” for the group’s portfolio companies. She highlighted cloud data analytics vendor Databricks as a company that still has dozens of job openings.
“They’ve still got product they need to build and ship, so they need people,” Illovsky said.
Coming into 2022, the tech giants appeared as impenetrable as ever. Shares of all of the FAANG (Facebook, Amazon, Apple, Netflix and Google) companies had reached record highs between June and December of last year, and their dominant position in their respective industries appeared mostly secure.
They’ve all been roughed up this year, to varying degrees. Facebook (now Meta) has lost two-thirds of its value and said last month it was laying off 13% of its workforce. Amazon is down by half and recently paused hiring for its corporate workforce. Netflix has eliminated around 450 jobs over two rounds of cuts, and Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai told employees in July the company would be slowing hiring investments through 2023.
“It’s a good time for startups to access talent when you’re not competing against one of the FAANG companies,” said Megan Slabinski, West Coast district president for staffing firm Robert Half.
Barry Padgett, CEO of customer data platform Amperity, echoed that sentiment.
“It’s also easier to retain folks right now because they’re not getting 17 calls a day from recruiters,” said Padgett, whose 6-year-old company is headquartered in Seattle, putting it in the same market as Amazon and Microsoft.
Cybersecurity firm Expel CEO Dave Merkel said his 470-person company is planning on hiring for more than 50 roles in the coming months.
“This time of year is usually not very busy for our recruiters, but right now they are super busy, because we are seeing an influx of people from some of these kinds of companies,” Merkel said. “Whether they’re in a role but nervous about what might happen next year or they were caught up in a layoff, they’re more interested.”
Relocation startup platform Gullie is so young that it has fewer than five employees. Founder Rachael Annabelle Yong, a former fellow at Andreessen Horowitz-backed incubator Launch House, said she’s had more luck recruiting potential employees in the last few months.
Yong said it’s a theme that’s running across much of her network.
“A lot of my friends are startup founders, and they all say it’s a really good time to be hiring,” said Yong, who started Gullie last year. “I’ve spoken to people from big-tech firms more lately, and they’re all very open to opportunities at early-stage startups, and some are even reaching out to us.”
Bell and others in the industry who spoke to CNBC said they’re looking for companies that offer a stronger sense of values or a clearer mission, which often gets lost over time. They also wanted to have a bigger impact than what’s often possible at the industry giants.
“When I was looking at companies, I thought about how much can the work I bring to this company really impact their go-to-market strategies,” Bell said. “If you have a role at a larger company, especially like we’ve seen at Facebook and Twitter, some of their roles don’t seem like they were as impactful across the company.”
Bell said she was also influenced by the emotionally charged events of the last couple of years. Her first week at Salesforce coincided with the murder of George Floyd, who was killed in May 2020 while in police custody.
That “really reignited that fire I had from studying political science and policy,” she said, adding that she paid more attention to a company’s values in her job searches.
In addition to themes of racial justice and equality, Liu said that during the Covid-19 pandemic, “it became important to look for a company whose mission resonated with me personally.”
Amperity’s Padgett said the pandemic changed a lot in how people think about their jobs.
“It seems like if you need something more inspiring than sitting in your house all day as a part of a 100k-person company feeling like a number, then you’re looking for more like-minded individuals in a more personal setting,” Padgett said. “People are wondering, ‘how do I have a bigger impact if I’m going to be working my guts out 12 hours a day from my spare bedroom.”
Xpeng CEO He Xiaopeng speaks to reporters at the electric carmaker’s stand at the IAA auto show in Munich, Germany on September 8, 2025.
Arjun Kharpal | CNBC
Germany this week played host to one of the world’s biggest auto shows — but in the heartland of Europe’s auto industry, it was buzzy Chinese electric car companies looking to outshine some of the region’s biggest brands on their home turf.
The IAA Mobility conference in Munich was packed full of companies with huge stands showing off their latest cars and technology. Among some of the biggest displays were those from Chinese electric car companies, underscoring their ambitions to expand beyond China.
Europe has become a focal point for the Asian firms. It’s a market where the traditional automakers are seen to be lagging in the development of electric vehicles, even as they ramp up releases of new cars. At the same time, Tesla, which was for so long seen as the electric vehicle market leader, has seen sales decline in the region.
Despite Chinese EV makers facing tariffs from the European Union, players from the world’s second-largest economy have responded to the ramping up of competition by setting aggressive sales and expansion targets.
“The current growth of Xpeng globally is faster than we have expected,” He Xiaopeng, the CEO of Xpeng told CNBC in an interview this week.
Aggressive expansion plans
Chinese carmakers who spoke to CNBC at the IAA show signaled their ambitious expansion plans.
Xpeng’s He said in an interview that the company is looking to launch its mass-market Mona series in Europe next year. In China, Xpeng’s Mona cars start at the equivalent of just under $17,000. Bringing this to Europe would add some serious price competition.
Meanwhile, Guangzhou Automobile Group (GAC) is targeting rapid growth of its sales in Europe. Wei Haigang, president of GAC International, told CNBC that the company aims to sell around 3,000 cars in Europe this year and at least 50,000 units by 2027. GAC also announced plans to bring two EVs — the Aion V and Aion UT — to Europe. Leapmotor was also in attendance with their own stand.
There are signs that Chinese players have made early in roads into Europe. The market share of Chinese car brands in Europe nearly doubled in the first half of the year versus the same period in 2024, though it still remains low at just over 5%, according to Jato Dynamics.
“The significant presence of Chinese electric vehicle (EV) makers at the IAA Mobility, signals their growing ambitions and confidence in the European market,” Murtuza Ali, senior analyst at Counterpoint Research, told CNBC.
Tech and gadgets in focus
Many of the Chinese car firms have positioned themselves as technology companies, much like Tesla, and their cars highlight that.
Many of the electric vehicles have big screens equipped with flashy interfaces and voice assistants. And in a bid to lure buyers, some companies have included additional gadgets.
For example, GAC’s Aion V sported a refrigerator as well as a massage function as part of the seating.
The Aion V is one of the cars GAC is launching in Europe as it looks to expand its presence in the region. The Aion V is on display at the company’s stand at the IAA Mobility auto show in Munich, Germany on September 9, 2025.
Arjun Kharpal | CNBC
This is one way that the Chinese players sought to differentiate themselves from legacy brands.
“The chances of success for Chinese automakers are strong, especially as they have an edge in terms of affordability, battery technology, and production scale,” Counterpoint’s Ali said.
Europe’s carmakers push back
Legacy carmakers sought to flex their own muscles at the IAA with Volskwagen, BMW and Mercedes having among the biggest stands at the show. Mercedes in particular had advertising displayed all across the front entrance of the event.
BMW, like the Chinese players, had a big focus on technology by talking up its so-called “superbrain architecture,” which replaces hardware with a centralized computer system. BMW, which introduced the iX3 at the event, and chipmaker Qualcomm also announced assisted driving software that the two companies co-developed.
Volkswagen and French auto firm Renault also showed off some new electric cars.
Regardless of the product blitz, there are still concerns that European companies are not moving fast enough. BMW’s new iX3 is based on the electric vehicle platform it first debuted two years ago. Meanwhile, Chinese EV makers have been quick in bringing out and launching newer models.
“A commitment to legacy structures and incrementalism has slowed its ability to build and leverage a robust EV ecosystem, leaving it behind fast moving rivals,” Tammy Madsen, professor of management at the Leavey School of Business at Santa Clara University, said of BMW.
While European autos have a strong brand history and their CEOs acknowledged and welcomed the competition this week in interviews with CNBC, the Chinese are not letting up.
“Europe’s automakers still hold significant brand value and legacy. The challenge for them lies in achieving production at scale and adopting new technologies faster,” Counterpoint’s Ali said.
“The Chinese surely are not waiting for anyone to catch-up and are making significant gains.”
Marc Benioff is keeping an eye on Palantir.
The co-founder and CEO of sales and customer service management software company Salesforce is well aware that investors are betting big on Palantir, which offers data management software to businesses and government agencies.
“Oh my gosh. I am so inspired by that company,” Benioff told CNBC’s Morgan Brennan in a Tuesday interview at Goldman Sachs‘ Communacopia+Technology conference in San Francisco. “I mean, not just because they have 100 times, you know, multiple on their revenue, which I would love to have that too. Maybe it’ll have 1000 times on their revenue soon.”
Salesforce, a component of the Dow Jones Industrial Average, remains 10 times larger than Palantir by revenue, with over $10 billion in revenue during the latest quarter. But Palantir is growing 48%, compared with 10% for Salesforce.
Benioff added that Palantir’s prices are “the most expensive enterprise software I’ve ever seen.”
“Maybe I’m not charging enough,” he said.
It wasn’t Benioff’s first time talking about Palantir. Last week, Benioff referenced Palantir’s “extraordinary” prices in an interview with CNBC’s Jim Cramer, saying Salesforce offers a “very competitive product at a much lower cost.”
The next day, TBPN podcast hosts John Coogan and Jordi Hays asked for a response from Alex Karp, Palantir’s co-founder and CEO.
“We are very focused on value creation, and we ask to be modestly compensated for that value,” Karp said.
The companies sometimes compete for government deals, and Benioff touted a recent win over Palantir for a U.S. Army contract.
Palantir started in 2003, four years after Salesforce. But while Salesforce went public in 2004, Palantir arrived on the New York Stock Exchange in 2020.
Palantir’s market capitalization stands at $406 billion, while Salesforce is worth $231 billion. And as one of the most frequently traded stocks on Robinhood, Palantir is popular with retail investors.
Salesforce shares are down 27% this year, the worst performance in large-cap tech.
Salesforce and Palantir year to date stock chart.
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