Job seekers get tech career data as hiring slows further

Job seekers can compare tech employers after a 12 million-worker study ranked career outcomes across 1,750 companies as hiring slows.

Burning Glass Institute and the Schultz Family Foundation analyzed worker histories to build a company-level view of career mobility. The work covers six tech occupations: software engineers, data scientists, software quality assurance analysts and testers, computer systems and security engineers, IT project managers, and IT systems analysts.

Three scores for employers

The tool lets workers search by role and see how employers rank on promotion, retention, and salary. Each company is presented by percentile, allowing candidates to compare outcomes rather than rely only on brand, job title, or recruiter messaging.

That matters in a labor market where switching jobs has become a higher-stakes decision. If hiring remains slow, a worker who accepts the wrong role may have fewer near-term options to correct the move.

The database does not say whether a company is universally good or bad for employees. It offers a narrower test: how workers in specific tech jobs have fared after joining a particular employer, compared with peers elsewhere.

Career pivots replace easy exits

The company rankings land alongside another change in the job market: reinvention is becoming less optional for some displaced workers. The current pattern differs from the pandemic-era wave of voluntary quits, when many employees left by choice for different work.

Six job seekers described moves that required new skills, new industries, or a full career reset after losing work. Douglas Craig, a longtime media executive, ended up guiding people through zipline courses at an aerial adventure park.

Craig said it was less like "starting over" and more "like I was shifting to something that just brought more happiness and joy." His case shows how a weaker market can push workers toward roles they might not have considered when openings were easier to find.

For employers, that creates a different hiring pool. Candidates may arrive with experience from adjacent sectors, but they may also need faster training, clearer promotion paths, and stronger evidence that a role will remain viable.

AI reshapes finance exits

Technology is also changing the options available to early-career finance workers. Young bankers who once faced a familiar set of exits, staying in banking, moving to investment roles, or pursuing an MBA, are increasingly looking at AI startups that sell tools to financial firms.

Those moves can offer exposure to fast-growing products, but they also carry tradeoffs. A startup role may bring less institutional structure than a bank, and its value depends on whether financial clients keep spending on AI tools.

OpenAI hired Dean Ball in June to lead its strategic futures team, a policy-focused group tied to the company’s long-range planning. Ball is an alum of President Trump’s AI Action Plan, placing him at the intersection of AI regulation, corporate strategy, and Washington policy debates.

AI is also changing the work of developers already inside the sector. Software developer Andrew Caldwell said AI helped him submit an app to Google and Apple within three weeks, despite having no prior mobile development experience.

Cash and ownership signals

Corporate decisions in finance are adding another layer to the labor picture. At Berkshire Hathaway, Greg Abel oversaw a decline in cash and Treasury bills from a record $380 billion to $365 billion last quarter after becoming CEO at the start of the year.

KKR’s sale of Integrated Specialty Coverages produced employee payouts under a broader push to expand worker ownership. For employees, such programs can turn a corporate transaction into a personal liquidity event, though the size and timing depend on deal terms.

If hiring stays slow, job seekers are likely to put more weight on promotion records, pay durability, and retention scores before moving. If openings broaden instead, the same database may become a negotiation tool, giving candidates more leverage over employers with weaker career outcomes.

For the wider tech and finance sectors, the mechanism is straightforward: talent flows toward employers that can document mobility, compensation, and stability. Companies that cannot show those outcomes may face higher recruiting costs even if their brand remains strong.