Big Tech may be losing some of the charm that once helped lure fresh engineers in the industry.
For years, Big Tech companies like Amazon, Apple, Microsoft, Google, and Meta) have served as a stable, often lucrative career option for budding engineers and other IT pros. In addition to top-notch brand recognition and paychecks, these tech giants offer the opportunity to work on projects that would potentially impact billions of people.
But these days, Big Tech has become synonymous with <a href="https://www.brewmarkets.com/stories/2026/04/24/layoffs-are-everywhere-in-tech-right-now” rel=”nofollow noopener” target=”_blank”>big layoffs. In the past year alone, Amazon and Meta have collectively laid off more than 27,000 employees, according to data from Layoffs.fyi. Tech enterprises like Oracle have cut their workforces by tens of thousands of workers this year alone.
“Historically, you would have thought big companies were more stable places to go work, but as we’re seeing with Meta, that’s not the case,” Nis Frome, chief revenue officer at Coderbyte, told IT Brew. (Meta has laid off more than 10,000 employees in 2026)
Go big. While less stable these days, software career experts told IT Brew larger tech companies still offer several benefits to IT pros in the early stages of their careers. Timothy Thomas, executive coach at Coaching Technology Group said that Big Tech is still known for its generous compensation packages to prospective employees.
“That’s what everybody wants,” Thomas said. “They want to get in there. They want that big pay.” He added that Big Tech allows new engineers to develop specialized skills that can be used to further their careers.
Georgios Diamantopoulos, founder and CEO of product engineering studio Zero to MVP, said Big Tech is best suited for engineers who like to learn from others as opposed to self-education, as well as those who prefer to work on large projects: “There are startups that can cater to bigger or more ambitious projects, but those are usually run by [large tech companies].”
Good start. The tide is also changing for startups, which were once viewed as a riskier option than Big Tech due to their high failure rates and volatile funding. That may no longer be the case, given the turbulence and layoffs in Big Tech, and startups still offer a variety of perks to prospective employees, including equity and the ability to steer cutting-edge projects. Startups also offer the chance to work with the latest tools, along with comparatively little tech debt.
Diamantopoulos said engineers tend to encounter legacy systems at large tech companies due to being in business for several years already: “In a startup, usually you have none of that. You get to pick the architecture because there isn’t any, so you can drive the product a bit more.”
He added that startups are best suited for employees that want to work independently without being micromanaged, and are okay with uncertainty.
“They have to be comfortable knowing that the project might die in six months, and they might have to go look somewhere else for work,” Diamantopoulos said. “They’re okay with not having a ton of support because a lot of the time people in startups are just so busy that they don’t have time to spend time with everyone on the team.”
Middle ground. While mid-size businesses might not have the buzz of Big Tech or startups, Frome said they can be a very rewarding work environment for new talent.
“It’s often one of the best places that young talent can get more hands-on experience that they would not be able to get at a Fortune 500, because the Fortune 500 gives that to the most prestigious and most tenured developers there,” Frome said, adding that mid-size businesses have a variety of solid niches and markets that could help engineers to build up expertise in a specific industry.
“A ‘B talent’ at a Fortune 500 is an ‘A talent’ at a mid-size company,” he said.
Big Tech vs. startups?Budding developers considering where to land for their next gig shouldn’t be too caught up on the size of their future workplace, but instead focus on making sure that they are going to work on a product with “real-world applications.”
“If you can go work on something with real users and real applications, I don’t think it matters if it’s a startup or a big company. That experience will be worthwhile,” Frome said. “However, if you’re going to join something that’s really, really early and doesn’t necessarily have real-world applications and doesn’t necessarily have real users, I think that’s a high-risk proposition.”
