I have a really good friend who is an incredible product marketing manager. He's done great work at a few different companies, is in his mid-30s, and has 5 kids.

To no fault of his own, he has been laid off twice in 6 months. But that's not an isolated incident.

I've read in a few news articles and heard on a few podcasts this is the toughest job market in years to find a job.

Are other people feeling this squeeze?

Layoffs (My Anecdotes)

• This buddy from above: 6 months ago, their CMO left and they hired a new CMO... who decided to bring in her own team. He was laid off. 4 months later, he found a new job, and they fired the entire marketing team today (yes, he's less than 2 months in).
• A former employee of mine was laid off, so I hired her. 3 months later, my CEO told me I had to remove that position. So someone who didn't know her or her worth as an employee told me I had to lay her off.
• My entire managerial team at a previous company was laid off just over a year ago. 3/4 took at least 8 months to find a job, the other one is still looking.
• My team was laid off 4 months ago. I'm the only one who has a job (because I saw it coming and started looking 3 months before they did the layoff).
• They just laid off 50% of the sales team at my last company.
• 2 companies ago for me, they offered stock options to 50% of the employees. Right before it vested, they laid off 15% of those employees.

And these are highly successful businesses. They replace the jobs within a few months. I think they're just doing continuous round-robin layoffs so their salary-liability looks better for boards. But it's a nasty business... and they're laying off high-performers.

Non-Disparagement Issue
I think part of the problem is this: I signed a non-disparagement clause for my last company who laid me off, which has replaced 50% of the marketing, product, sales, and support teams three times over the last 3 years. I signed it because they gave me $15k to do so. So there's no way to warn prospects from signing on to a sure layoff (0 marketers at that company have lasted more than 1 year in the last 5 years. 90% were laid off, 10% get off the sinking ship. Only 2 sales guys have lasted more than a year and 1 product person... even the C-Suite has had 3 iterations in the last 5 years).

Finding a Job (My Anecdotes)

• I have a friend with a PhD in marketing that wanted to leave education and pursue tech roles. He's been looking for 1 year, but can't find a job.
• Another friend has 15 years of experience in product and has been looking for 8 months, nothing's out there.
• Pathrise, the company that I've worked with before that helps people find jobs, has a waiting list before they reach out. When I worked with them 1 year ago, they called me in 15-seconds and gave huge incentives for referrals.
• Ken Coleman, the Ramsey host who coaches on jobs, said it's very difficult for people to leave crappy work situations right now because they can't find anything to replace it.

It's insanely hard to find a job right now. Several companies are posting jobs that aren't actually available just to (1) get a list of future potential employees, (2) show their boards they are hiring/growing, and probably other reasons. I've talked to people looking for jobs, I told them it typically takes 50 applications to jobs you're qualified for to get 1 interview, and that's if you're trying to get warmly introduced to the hiring manager by someone in the company. It takes about 4-5 interviews to land a position, and that's only after doing huge projects for these companies trying to prove they should hire you (doing hours and hours of work for free).

It's crazy. Combine that with inflation, a tough housing market... I don't know if it's just tech. But my sense is tech is insane right now. Are other people getting that sense?