US Tech Geeks Cry Over Big Tech Hiring Freeze... Greater Impact on International Students

Internships Canceled Amid Severe Big Tech Layoff Freeze

[Asia Economy Reporter Yoojin Cho] #. Eva Si, who recently graduated from the Department of Computer Science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), suddenly became a highly educated unemployed person. She was notified of her termination during an internship at Meta, the world's largest social media company. It was a recruitment-linked internship program where interns would be officially hired after completing several months of internship and passing a regular employee conversion review, but the outcome did not go as planned. Having attended Bronx Science High School and double-majored in Mathematics and Computer Science at MIT, Si was an AI talent with impressive credentials, but the big tech hiring freeze was also severe. Si said, "All interns working at Meta, including the one who received the highest evaluation during the internship, were laid off," and added, "I have been running for 10 years just to get into Silicon Valley big tech, but my life and goals collapsed in an instant due to the big tech layoffs."

Top engineering students in the U.S. are shedding tears over the hiring freeze in the big tech industry. As big tech companies such as Google, Meta, and Amazon have entered ultra-tight management and are conducting additional layoffs, cases of recruitment-linked internships, which are employment pathways for graduates of prestigious universities, being postponed or canceled are increasing. International students who must convert to work visas to stay in the U.S. after graduation have faced even greater damage, including the risk of deportation due to employment failure.

◆ 'Hiring Freeze' Puts Graduating Students from Prestigious U.S. Universities at Risk of Unemployment = According to a recent report by The New York Times (NYT), Amazon, which operated an internship program for 18,000 people last year, is considering reducing the number of interns this year to less than half of last year's. Amazon conducted the largest workforce reduction in its history earlier this year, laying off 18,000 employees. Google, which laid off 12,000 people last month, also plans to reduce the scale of internship recruitment compared to previous years, according to Andrea Florence, Google's internship manager.

[Image source=Reuters Yonhap News]

As it becomes difficult to find jobs due to the hiring difficulties in big tech, attempts to switch to other fields to overcome the hiring freeze are also continuing. Claire Ralph, the career counseling manager at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech), recently said that counseling sessions with engineering graduating students worried about their career paths due to big tech layoffs have significantly increased, and there is a strong trend of these students shifting to other industries such as healthcare and finance rather than technology companies. According to last month's hiring report by the Computing Technology Industry Association (CompTIA), the number of job openings in the U.S. technology sector was 269,000, which is only about two-thirds of the record high of 394,000 in March of last year.

◆ International Students and Foreign Workers Face Deportation Risk = The impact on international students and foreign workers from overseas was even greater. Most international students and foreign workers employed by big tech companies have been working under the H-1B visa, a professional employment visa. Those holding H-1B visas must find another job within 60 days if laid off, or they face deportation and cannot continue to reside in the U.S. In particular, since a significant number of employees in technology companies, including big tech, are international students or foreign-born, the impact of the big tech layoffs was substantial.

[Image source=Reuters Yonhap News]

The American Immigration Council (AIC) estimates that foreign-born workers account for nearly one-quarter of visa holders, permanent residents, and naturalized citizens working in the science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) fields. A computer science major whose internship at Coinbase, a U.S.-based virtual asset exchange located in Silicon Valley, was canceled said, "I decided to stay at school for one more semester instead of working to extend my H-1B visa, which expires next month."