The Great Stay — Here’s the New Reality for Tech Workers

Just a few years ago, the tech industry looked unstoppable. As companies rushed to digitize during the pandemic, tech roles like engineers and data scientists became the most sought-after hires on the planet.

While other sectors were shrinking, tech ballooned with a surge in job creation and hiring. A CNN report found that between 2019 and 2022, Amazon’s workforce doubled by 106%, and Meta’s grew by 103%. With remote work and record compensation, tech workers gained real leverage. Job hopping become the pathway to freedom, as workers chased opportunities with better pay, perks, and purpose.

Then, the same companies that couldn’t hire fast enough started pulling back, erasing the workforce gains they made during the pandemic. As the same report from CNN noted, many realized they had overspent and overhired. The layoffs came hard and fast, reversing years of unchecked expansion.

Now, the job-hopping era is over and labor market growth has stalled. And many in tech are staying put — not because they want to, but because there’s nowhere else to go. Now comes The Great Stay: a reversal of the Great Resignation that had workers quitting in search of better opportunities.

On paper, staying rooted to your current job may reflect stability, but it’s no longer about satisfaction, but survival.

Staying in your job may seem like it’s not anything new. But in tech, the context and reasons behind it are far more nuanced. For one, tech workers are clinging to their jobs not out of comfort but out of abundant caution. Even as open tech roles persist, they’re taking longer to fill, and every other week seems to bring news of another round of layoffs.

According to Indeed’s Tech Talent Report 2025, nearly one in three (31%) tech workers worries about layoffs. But layoffs and hiring freezes do not paint the full picture.

Indeed’s survey reveals that over a third (35%) are now more concerned about AI replacing their roles than a human competitor. Among Gen Z tech workers who are younger and less experienced than other cohorts, that number jumps to 38%.

Even as confidence in “tech” as an industry remains relatively stable, the individual calculus has changed. The risk of moving outweighs the reward of leaving. As discussed in our previous article, AI Has Workers Clinging to Dead-End Jobs, AI hype has only intensified that hesitation, creating a culture of job-hugging — the instinct to cling to whatever role still feels safe.

However, it’s worth noting that the job-switching confidence and declining quit rates associated with the Great Stay are more nuanced, especially in tech. This phenomenon even reveals a paradox in tech workers’ behavior and the overall labor market.

The continued AI disruption has created a strange contradiction within the tech workforce. As ZDNET notes, workers fear being replaced by AI, yet many are staying precisely to help build the systems that could one day replace them.

It’s a paradox driven by skill scarcity. Indeed found that AI-related skills, such as distributed computing, machine learning frameworks, and model deployment, are in-demand, but notoriously difficult to fill. That pressure forces many employees to stay, upskill, and future-proof themselves rather than risk being left behind.

Another paradox: despite record-low job satisfaction across tech, productivity hasn’t cratered. While dissatisfied workers often result in higher turnovers and lower yield, workers are still performing. However, fear and uncertainty — not motivation — have become their performance drivers.

For companies, this fear-fueled stability may look like a win for KPIs and profit targets, but it’s at the expense of employee health and wellbeing. The rise of extreme work cultures — like the 996 system creeping into Silicon Valley AI startups — shows how “stability” now comes with a cost. Some reports even describe tech employees working 100-hour weeks to stay relevant in the AI race.

Clearly, teams are stretched thin as layoffs pile more work on fewer people. What once looked like freedom — flexible work, lucrative roles, endless options — now feels like a trap.

But when fear dictates behavior more than ambition, long hours and fast-paced work environments no longer lead to innovation, but to disengagement and burnout.

The Great Stay might sound like a pause, a cooling-off period after the frenzy of the Great Resignation. But in tech, it’s something more troubling: a reflection of an industry that’s lost its identity and sense of balance.

Workers are no longer chasing purpose or passion. They’re calculating risk, watching LinkedIn feeds fill with layoff posts, and hoping the next algorithm won’t make them obsolete.

The irony is that an industry built on disruption has made its own workforce afraid of change.

Whether The Great Stay is a temporary lull or a lasting shift will depend on how tech employers respond; whether they will simply turn a blind eye to the looming cloud of dissatisfaction or act now to retain their talent, not out of fear but out of purpose, motivation, and freedom.