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| Alexander Valen has been searching for a project manager role since 2023, when he was laid off from his job at Accenture. Alexander Valen |
Alexander Valen never imagined that his two decades of experience in the tech industry would feel like a disadvantage in his job search but nearly two years after being laid off, that’s exactly what it feels like.
In November 2023, Valen was let go from his role as a project manager at consulting giant Accenture. He had spent years overseeing teams of up to 150 developers, architects, and testers across major software projects. But since then, he’s struggled to re-enter the workforce.
Over the past 21 months, Valen says he’s gone through more than two dozen interviews without landing a single offer. He and his wife, a stay-at-home mom, have been relying on DoorDash deliveries, unemployment assistance, and support from family just to get by. Still, it's not enough and they’ve fallen behind on their mortgage.
“Lately, it’s just been dead I don’t hear anything at all,” said Valen, 51, who lives in Florida. “It’s like a black hole, and I have no idea what’s happening.”
In recent months, even getting interviews has become rare. Between the abrupt end of his time at Accenture and the feedback he's received from recruiters, Valen has reached a difficult conclusion: the job market has become particularly unfriendly to seasoned professionals with senior-level compensation.
“The first thing recruiters say when they see my profile is that I’m too expensive,” he said.
1. Experience Is an Asset Until It Isn’t
Valen’s experience is emblematic of a larger trend reshaping the U.S. labor market. Across industries, companies are scaling back their management layers. Tech giants like Google, Microsoft, Intel, Amazon, and even Walmart have all announced plans to reduce middle management. Smaller companies are following suit.
According to Gusto, a payroll and benefits firm for small and mid-sized businesses, layoffs among managers aged 45 to 54 increased by 66% between January 2022 and September 2024. For managers aged 35 to 44, the increase was over 400%.
This so-called "Great Flattening" reflects a corporate push to streamline decision-making and cut costs by trimming management layers. Leaders say these moves increase efficiency but for those caught in the cuts, like Valen, finding a new role has been anything but efficient.
With ongoing economic headwinds from global trade uncertainty to the growing impact of artificial intelligence hiring across the U.S. has slowed to one of its lowest paces in over a decade.
2. Struggling to Find Openings That Match His Skill and Pay
During his final year at Accenture, Valen says he began to notice a shift: clients increasingly requested lower-cost talent. He spent up to two months “on the bench,” unassigned to any active client project.
Now, that trend seems to have followed him into his job search. At Accenture, he earned roughly $87 an hour. Since then, he’s been targeting roles in the $65–$85/hour range or about $135,000 to $177,000 per year. But even that, he says, often feels out of reach.
Recruiters have told him outright that his expected compensation is too high for many of their clients.
“I applied to one job, and they told me it would pay $35 an hour,” Valen said. “That’s really, really low.”
Although he stayed in the running for that position, he never received a callback. While he’s open to adjusting his expectations slightly, he says there’s a hard floor: no less than $50 an hour about $104,000 annually.
3. A Saturated Market Is Making the Search Harder
Valen says the past few months have been especially frustrating. Even when he finds a posting that seems like a good fit, it’s often already flooded with applicants sometimes hundreds of them.
Recruiters he’s spoken with describe a chaotic hiring environment, with their LinkedIn inboxes overflowing with connection requests and resumes. AI-powered application tools, he says, are partly to blame, making it easier than ever for people to apply en masse and possibly even inflate their qualifications.
“It’s hard to know who’s being honest anymore,” Valen said.
In response, he’s broadened his search beyond project management to include business analyst and even sales roles. At one point, he even applied to work as a kitchen team member at Chick-fil-A. Still, he didn’t get an interview.
To stay relevant, Valen has been experimenting with AI tools and trying to sharpen his tech knowledge. But he admits it’s difficult to know if any of it is helping.
If he were to offer advice to others in the same position, he says it would be to stay persistent and find ways to keep learning. Still, with nearly two years of job hunting behind him and no offers in sight, Valen says it’s hard not to feel discouraged.
“It’s a crazy market,” he said. “I honestly don’t know what to do right now.”
