SINGAPORE – Big tech companies once represented the best of both worlds in corporate life – the boundless optimism of working in a field of seemingly endless growth and a great work-life balance filled with lavish perks and luxurious offices.

But employees say the post-pandemic period has been a wake-up call for those who believed in the promise of big tech. Tech industry cutbacks have hit close to home, affecting offices, benefits and career opportunities.

Eleven current and former Singapore-based employees of Apple, ByteDance, Microsoft, Google and Meta, who spoke to The Straits Times on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak to the press, shared a common lament: The golden era of big Tech perks and benefits may be coming to an end – and their companies are now increasingly resembling the established corporate outfits they once tried to differentiate themselves from.

Most trace these changes to the end of 2022, when tech giants like Google and Meta realized that the pandemic-driven surge in digital services would not last. As economic uncertainty increased, layoffs began.

Thomas (not his real name), 39, a former Meta employee laid off during the company’s first round of cutbacks in November 2022, recalls how his team disbanded overnight.

“My entire organization of about 30 engineers and 10 cross-functional staff were informed that day that we were affected.”

Thomas was among over 11,000 people who lost their jobs, amounting to about 13 percent of Meta’s global workforce at the time. This set the tone for what Meta founder Mark Zuckerberg would later call his company’s “efficiency year” in 2023, in which another 10,000 jobs were cut.

In retrospect, the signs were there. Thomas’ team had been reassigned to new, lower-value-chain work a few months earlier, and he began noticing cuts in employee benefits.

Starting in 2022, news of tech giants’ cutbacks began making global headlines — from Meta cutting back on its free laundry service to Google cutting back on its free massage and gym services.

For Thomas, a major highlight of working at Meta was the employee-run clubs, which the company sponsored at about $US75 ($100) per person each quarter. “You’d have a lot of activities and events happening all over the place all the time – like a bubble tea club or mala club where they’d organize outings, or a sports club with free coaching,” he recalls.

He adds: “Every tech company makes layoffs, so the tech sector is definitely not as secure as it used to be, but it’s not so much the layoffs that changed the way I look at the industry — it’s supply and demand.”

A CNN analysis showed that between 2019 and 2022, Meta and Google’s parent company Alphabet had increased their number of employees by 103 percent and 64 percent, respectively. Big tech had misjudged the sustainability of its growth – and employees paid the price.

“With thousands of fresh ratings being pumped out every year, I don’t think demand will catch up to what it was,” says Thomas. “But the benefits, even though they’re maybe 60 percent of what they used to be, are still best in class.”