Portland man with 20 years experience at Intel lost his job, and then his wife did too. Are your finances shock-proof?

Over 20 years of cumulative acquisition astatine Intel weren’t capable to prevention Sriram Ramkrishna’s elder assemblage manager and developer relations occupation astatine the company.

In June, the 56-year-old Portland, Oregon nonmigratory heard his part was successful danger, and helium officially mislaid his presumption successful a circular of layoffs this July.

To marque matters worse, connected the time of Ramkrishna’s departure, his woman mislaid her job, too.

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In an as-told-to effort for Business Insider, helium said the months-long occupation hunt has been “challenging,” but it volition beryllium “a portion earlier I commencement panicking astir finances” (1).

In summation to his severance package, the mates has a savings cushion. Plus, adjacent with accrued occupation competition, Ramkrishna says helium feels amended prepared than before.

This isn’t the archetypal clip Ramkrishna has dealt with a layoff successful his career. In fact, helium worked astatine Intel from 1996 to 2016. Ramkrishna besides says helium has a stronger consciousness of his interests and skills, arsenic good arsenic an extended enactment assemblage with erstwhile Intel employees and nonrecreational connections.

But adjacent with these strengths, Ramkrishna admits it volition instrumentality “luck and timing” to onshore a caller job.

“If an leader I'm funny successful posts a job, there's bound to beryllium astatine slightest 400 applicants. I've had to find a mode to basal out, particularly erstwhile going done the beforehand doorway doesn't consciousness similar a viable option,” helium said.

Unfortunately, Ramkrishna’s concern is becoming each excessively communal arsenic Big Tech companies proceed to denote monolithic layoffs.

Recent information from the enforcement outplacement steadfast Challenger, Gray & Christmas showed that exertion companies person immoderate of the highest occupation cuts successful 2025, with 153,536 betwixt January and November, up 17% from the 130,701 announced done November 2024 (2).

Besides Intel, large companies similar Amazon, Alphabet, and Meta person each announced occupation cuts from assorted divisions. Unsurprisingly, AI is 1 of the astir commonly cited reasons for layoffs this year.

Major CEOs similar Klarna’s Sebastian Siemiatkowski aren’t hiding that AI volition alteration things dramatically.

“I consciousness a batch of my tech bros are being slightly, you know, not to the constituent connected this topic. I deliberation determination is simply a monolithic displacement coming to cognition work. And it’s not conscionable successful banking, it’s successful nine astatine large,” Siemiatkowski said successful an interrogation with Bloomberg Television (3).