During the same period, real‑estate platform Zillow laid off over 500 employees, while Etsy cut roughly 12% of its workforce. Upon seeing the news, many people’s first thought is: “Why are layoffs still happening? When will the tech winter finally end?”

Have you noticed?

TikTok’s Nashville office, which filed its WARN notice back in August, was officially shut down in early October.

The layoffs eliminated 250 positions outright.

An office closed with little advance warning.

During the same period, real‑estate platform Zillow laid off over 500 employees, while Etsy cut roughly 12% of its workforce. Upon seeing the news, many people’s first thought is: “Why are layoffs still happening? When will the tech winter finally end?”

Yet if you dig into which departments were hit, a stark reality emerges: the vast majority of impacted roles are support‑function positions.

01 Why Safe Havens for Support Roles Are Vanishing Rapidly

When planning job searches, many students — especially those from humanities, social‑science or business backgrounds, or career‑changers — often adopt a roundabout strategy:

“I will first get into a big‑tech firm through moderation, customer support or entry‑level operations roles, secure visa sponsorship, and get my foot in the door. After 12‑18 months, once I understand internal workflows, I will transfer internally to core business teams.”

This path was fully viable three to five years ago. Today, however, this strategy no longer works, for two key reasons:

1️⃣ Real‑world AI deployment has drastically reduced manpower demand for support roles

Previously, tech firms needed hundreds of staff working shifts to moderate massive volumes of videos, images and text, performing basic data labeling and content‑violation classification. Thanks to advances in large language models and multimodal recognition, automated systems can now handle over 90 % of routine moderation work at one‑hundredth of the cost and hundreds of times faster. Only the remaining 10 % of complex judgement cases require review by a small pool of senior specialists.

2️⃣ Big‑tech firms are not short of capital — but budget reallocation is ruthless

A close look at earnings reports and corporate moves shows layoffs do not stem from a lack of money. Capital is simply being redirected. Companies trim headcount and budgets for non‑revenue‑generating, low‑barrier support teams, while pouring billions of dollars into AI infrastructure, GPU compute capacity and the race for top‑tier algorithm talent.

In short: within modern big‑tech organizational structures, roles that generate no direct revenue and are vulnerable to automation carry the lowest risk resilience.

02 How Should International Students Adapt Their Job‑Search Strategies?

Many students ask: “Does this mean there are no opportunities for those majoring in marketing, operations, humanities or social sciences?” Opportunities still exist, but you must upgrade your role positioning and skill sets.

① Move beyond pure manual execution; become an AI orchestrator

Future‑proof marketing and operations roles no longer reward candidates who merely complete repetitive tasks. What matters is leveraging AI tools to multiply output.

Example:

Old content‑operations standard: producing 2 social‑media posts per person per day.

Current expectation: using AI‑assisted tools to deliver 10 channel‑tailored content strategies daily, while interpreting backend metrics and iterating rapidly.

On your resume, do not only state “managed social‑media accounts”. Include concrete metrics demonstrating efficiency gains achieved through specific tools or workflows.

② Align yourself as closely as possible with core business lines

Prioritize core‑revenue departments such as commercialization, core ad monetization and growth teams over purely back‑office offshore sites or peripheral project groups. The closer you are to a company’s profit centers, the higher your role’s moat.

③ Build hybrid human‑AI collaboration competencies

Even for non‑technical roles, basic Python data‑processing skills, familiarity with how large models operate, proficiency in high‑quality prompt engineering, and basic SQL for data extraction will set you apart from other applicants.

The tech industry is transforming faster than many anticipated. Dwelling on “tech‑winter anxiety” solves nothing. The real solution lies in swiftly adjusting your job‑hunting approach and skill portfolio to match market trends.