The number of layoffs in the tech industry are increasing. More than a quarter million people have been laid off over the course of the last year, according to Layoffs.fyi, a website tracking the industry.
In the fall of 2022, John Deere, headquartered in rural Moline, Illinois, opened a new 36,000-square-foot office in Downtown Chicago to attract recently laid-off tech employees. The office has a large open room that is designed for collaboration. It also features standing desks, complimentary snacks and alcohol: things designed for more traditional tech spaces.
Many people might not associate companies like John Deere, a worldwide leader in producing farming equipment, with technology, but the company has been at the forefront of innovative technology. “You need this stuff to stay competitive,” said Steve Pitstick, a generational farmer located near Dekalb, Illinois. “We have machines that share what they’re doing from a work side. So that overlap [in the field] is shared [between machines], so it knows which machine did something so as the next machine comes in, it would shut off based on that work already being done.”
Boycott.