> I keep hearing stuff like this, but it doesn't seem to be widespread enough to seem to matter, at least in my circle.
It also hasn't fully hit yet. The layoffs are in progress, already awarded grant money is still paying salaries. 3-6 months is when the pain will really begin. Until then, I think a lot of people are still thinking that it either won't really happen to them, or that Trump will somehow make an exception just for their particular federal money pipeline.
I work as a software engineer in the non-profit sector, within education. It's going to be a wild ride as to whether I have a job or not in a year. We are (almost) entirely dependent on grants. The money we get that isn't from grants is tiny (like less than 1% of our total budget). We applied for a few government grants recently and it sounds to me like they are definitely not something we will be getting now so it's back to the private foundations we have to go to for funding. With all the mixups happening it's going to be interesting to see how private foundations pivot, will non-profits like ours see big grants or will we die because other areas are more important?
On top of that, I am no expert top of the job market software engineer. If I lose this job I am going to be competing against people significantly better than me because so many others have (or will) be losing their jobs. Basically, this is the potential beginning of the end of my career.
Thankfully, I think I'm okay through this year, and probably next... but after that, completely a mystery. And that's only because we have agreements for funding through 2026. There are no guarantees beyond that.
It also hasn't fully hit yet. The layoffs are in progress, already awarded grant money is still paying salaries. 3-6 months is when the pain will really begin. Until then, I think a lot of people are still thinking that it either won't really happen to them, or that Trump will somehow make an exception just for their particular federal money pipeline.