Corporate Recruiters specializes in building technology companies, and we are at the epicentre of the supply & demand for tech talent in Vancouver. What we read in the news often doesn’t reflect what we see on the ground. We thought you might be interested in hearing about our experiences.

In December 2022, we provided a summary of our tech labour market, and it is time to give an update for June 2023. The tech layoffs of 2022 and 2023 made great headlines, but in reality, they had a minor impact on the tech labour market.

Hiring Freezes? Perhaps a few, but …

The Big 5 Tech companies have laid off anywhere from 5% to 20% of their workforce in the last 12 months. However, this is not the whole story. From 2018 to 2021, the same tech firms grew headcount by 50% to over 100%. This represents a net growth of well over 50% over the last five years. The demand and shortage created by this growth made it difficult for small and midsized technology companies to grow. Now these companies are picking up the slack, even though the Big 5 are reducing their demand for new talent.

Flexible Upwards Sticky Down

The law of pricing in economics is “prices are flexible upwards but sticky downwards,” which we are witnessing in the market. Even though more people are interested in discussing new employment opportunities, there has been no change in their compensation and benefits demands. Fewer people are chasing money, and they are more risk-averse.

CEO Talent Survey Data

We surveyed Technology CEOs in the early Spring and confirmed our December conclusions. More good quality talent was on the market, but difficult and expensive to hire. Only 20% of the CEOs responded positively to picking up some high-quality talent from the large tech companies; 30% indicated a distinct mismatch in compensation demands vs actual ability, and the majority did not see any exciting candidate resumes.

Even with the SVB news, over 60% of CEOs still listed access to talent as their number one pain point and access to capital as a second or third concern. Working from home and managing culture was the least concerning, indicating that flexible & hybrid work models continue to be favoured.

Access to Capital

The collapse of SVP caused more than a ripple in the financial markets, and we witnessed decreased demand for tech talent with companies seeking financing at the series A to C ranges. Anecdotal data suggested that earlier seed-stage companies were getting access to capital, indicating that investors were more comfortable placing investments in companies raising Series A funds after we pass through the current economic down cycle. Aside from anything AI-related, Hydrogen, Health Care, and Health Tech sectors are seeing interested investors.

Early Indicators of a Rebound

In our business, sales and marketing are the first to scale back when facing economic headwinds and the first to scale up at the bottom of the market. While some fund managers have indicated declining sales in their portfolios, we see a modest increase in demand for sales and marketing people. It is too early to predict, but we are more optimistic.

The Nitty Gritty of Engineering and Developer Talent

June Tech market musings :

Higher response rates and a higher number of ‘active’ candidates 
Quantity does not equal quality – this requires increased processing time to work through these ‘active’ candidates with often limited results
High-quality candidates (combining in-demand and current tech skills with EQ) are still hard to find, and when you do, they are in multiple interviewing processes 
US companies continue to be active in recruiting local candidates 
Continued demand for fully remote or hybrid scenarios – onsite requirements limit the pool significantly 
Stability and true collaborative culture are higher on priority list now
Salary requirements for senior and experienced folks are not seeing significant changes; entry-level and intermediate-level engineers seem more flexible on compensation than six months ago, with training and growth opportunities being more important.

Continue to be in demand skills:  

Experienced ML Engineers – with software coding skills in at least Python; even better if Java is added 
Cloud/SaaS Senior Developers and Architects 
Experienced Frontend Developers with B2B Enterprise level product experience – working with current JS frameworks and libraries, i.e. React/Redux, VUE, Typescript etc.  
Scientifically oriented optimization engineers with a focus on mathematical optimization 
Software engineers with firmware exposure (C/C++ languages) with ROS experience 
Engineering executives with hands-on experience in NPI and moving products through the design phase to the development and scaling process.  
Engineering executives with experience in the financing and fundraising process.

Easier to hire:

Microsoft ecosystem engineers
Manual QA analysts as well as BA’s
Net new entries into the Canadian work market- the flow of immigrants opened up post-Covid. More folks with relevant qualifications and tech experience but lacking North American work experience and perhaps communication skills are still available to companies with a culture to embrace the diversities.