This week, Nine News reported that at least 23,000 tech jobs have already gone in 2026. The list reads like a roll call of the industry’s biggest names. Amazon cutting around 16,000 roles. Block dropping 4,000. Atlassian is removing 10 per cent of its global workforce in one go. WiseTech, Salesforce, eBay and Pinterest are all adding to the total.
And experts are saying it’s not over yet.
Some of this is structural. Companies that overextended during the post-pandemic hiring boom are pulling back. Some of it is genuine AI-driven change. Some of it, according to USYD’s Raffaele Ciriello, is companies responding to expectations about AI that were always going to be difficult to meet. The truth is probably a messy combination of all three.
But the conversation that isn’t happening is the one I think matters most right now.
Who is actually going to want to work in tech?
The Tech Council of Australia tells us the sector contributes $167 billion to our GDP, employs around 980,000 Australians, and has grown at nearly double the national average since 2005. They have a whole policy agenda built around Skills and Talent. They run a program called Next Wave specifically to get more women into the industry.
All good work.
But when I look at their newsroom today, the headline story is that tech leaders see a “real and immediate opportunity” in AI. And maybe they do. The problem is that the mainstream media most Australians actually read is running a very different story this week.
Those two narratives are not sitting comfortably alongside each other right now.
I’ve spent years watching great people build a career in the tech space. But right now, I’m genuinely wondering what we’re doing to make sure that keeps happening.
Because the pipeline problem isn’t coming, it’s already here.
The Australian Government’s own STEM Equity Monitor surveyed nearly 3,000 young Australians in 2023-24. Among the findings: 29 per cent of young people said that AI developments have made them reconsider their study or career choices. Boys, traditionally the more likely group to pursue tech careers, were the most unsettled, with 35 per cent saying AI had prompted them to reconsider, compared to 23 per cent of girls.
And this data was collected before the current wave of layoffs gathered pace. Those numbers have almost certainly moved.
It’s not just the kids either. The same research found that 86 per cent of parents believe generative AI will have a significant impact on work and careers. But only a third of them had actually spoken to their children about AI and what it means for jobs.
Parents shape career choices. A parent who has watched colleagues go through a tech redundancy, or who has been through one themselves, is not going to be pushing their kid towards the sector. I dont think that’s cynicism, that’s just how people work. Teachers and career advisers are part of this picture too. Believing that STEM skills matter for the economy and confidently recommending tech as a stable career are two very different things.
So what’s actually being done about this?
The Tech Council’s 2025 policy priorities list “the future of work” and “AI in the workforce” under Skills and Talent. Good. Those conversations need to happen. But they need to happen loudly and publicly, not just in policy documents that most people will never read.
When Atlassian’s Mike Cannon-Brookes says that AI changes the number of roles required in certain areas, and he was being honest, which I respect, that’s the quote that lands on a 16-year-old’s feed and shapes how they think about their future. Honesty without context is just noise. Somebody needs to be out there providing the context, the nuance, the longer-term picture. Loudly. Repeatedly. To parents, to teachers, to kids.
I’m not asking for spin; I’m asking for advocacy.
Yes, the World Economic Forum suggests 170 million new jobs could be created by 2030 as AI eliminates 92 million others. Net positive, on paper. But that’s a hard sell when the redundancies are happening today, and the new jobs are still theoretical.
The tech industry has a serious credibility problem forming. It might not feel like a crisis yet. But reputations erode slowly and then quickly. If we don’t have a generation of young Australians choosing to build careers in this sector, the numbers the Tech Council are rightly proud of are going to get a lot harder to maintain.
There’s real work to be done here. By the Tech Council. By the companies doing the layoffs. By anyone in the industry with a platform and a reason to care about where this is all heading.
I’m one person with a newsletter. But this feels like a question worth asking out loud.
Who’s going to talk this industry up, and when do they plan to start?
Sources:
https://techcouncil.com.au/ https://techcouncil.com.au/policy/ https://techcouncil.com.au/next-wave-women-in-tech/
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