“There is no dream job,” even in an industry as lucrative as tech, said Logan, a 26-year-old recruiter who has been laid off twice in three years, most recently from Amazon. “I just don’t see the dream job happening in the setup that we have, where companies can let go of so many people for short-term profits.”
Logan, who asked not to be identified by his full name due to company rules about speaking to the media, said his professional life has been defined by ruthlessness and precarity since he graduated from college in 2018. He had hoped to be a journalist, but all of the magazines in the part of Florida he lived in were closing, so he decided to go into recruiting — maybe he could help other people find their dream jobs, he thought. After he left his first recruiting job in 2019, which paid $35,000, the company sued him, claiming he violated a noncompete agreement (which he denies). In 2020, he was laid off from his second job when the pandemic began and the company’s revenue evaporated. With no emergency fund, no backup plan, debt from college, and a car payment, Logan got by on unemployment benefits until he landed his third job at a small, family-run company that didn’t offer healthcare benefits.
As friends talked about seeking jobs that gave them purpose, Logan made a simple resolution: to make as much money as possible and not work a job that would jeopardize his health. When he received an offer at Amazon in March 2022, he expected things to finally take a turn for the better.
“For so many, the reasons why working for Big Tech is a dream job are stability — that’s the main reason I joined — and prestige,” Logan said. Amazon offered Logan twice his previous annual salary; including bonuses, he was earning more than $100,000 by his mid-20s. “Mental health, dental, vision, whatever I needed was absolutely 100% covered. None of my prescriptions cost anything,” he said. “It was incredible.”
Yet within a year, Logan was laid off once again when Amazon decided to let go of 10,000 employees in December, a figure that later grew to 18,000. He said the turmoil in the first years of his career led him to a simple understanding of what to expect from work: “A job that pays me extremely well, values my time, promotes me for work I do on company time, and then lets me go and enjoy the rest of my life — that’s it. It’s very transactional, and it’s how I want it to be going forward. I don’t want a spiel about how ‘We’re family,’ because at a moment’s notice, anything can be ripped away from you.”
He landed another job with a financial services company after applying to 289 openings in a month and a half. “I really do wish things were different. I wish I could have gotten out of college, found a great company, and then moved up the ladder somewhere,” Logan said. “But it’s just not the way things are.”
