While tech giants across the US, Canada, Germany, and Switzerland hammered their talent through mass layoffs and struggled with pandemic aftershocks, one European market quietly defied the chaos and did things differently. The Netherlands. Not dramatically better, just differently.

But here is where it gets really interesting. In a country of just 17.9 million people, they're facing a projected shortage of 1.4 million workers by 2030. That's nearly 8% of their entire population. The Dutch market created some unusual dynamics.

Fang layoffs barely touched the Netherlands. Housing costs are pushing away the very talent they need, and tax salaries are slowly climbing while the rest of Europe is stagnating.

By the end of this deep dive, you'll understand for yourself whether the Dutch model is sustainable and whether it's worth it for you in 2025 for a tech career. This is episode 9 of my series, Where to Run. And on today's episode, we've got the Netherlands.

Please subscribe and give us a thumbs up. We're working very hard to deliver the most accurate and honest information about the tech market in 2025. This video series is for tech professionals already living and working in the US, Canada, the UK, or the European Union.

If you're based outside these regions or in an outsourcing heavy market, the data in this video will not apply to your situation. I do not cover immigration, international job hunting, or topics like how to break into tech without a college degree. If that's what you're here for, this probably isn't the right channel and that's okay.

But if you are operating within these markets, keep watching. There's a lot ahead for various seniority levels and career tracks in tech.

As always, tech scene and culture. Let's start this episode by highlighting the dynamics of growth and investment in Dutch tech because that will dictate how we will go through the layoff data.

The Dutch tech is strong in deep tech fields such as artificial intelligence, quantum computing, and semiconductors. Deep tech startups now make up 12% of the Dutch ecosystem.

And this isn't higher when compared to the UK, Germany, Switzerland, or France. But Holland does have a relatively high scale up ratio. 35% of the Dutch deep tech progressed to scale up status which is significantly higher than others.

The Amsterdam's science park was recently chosen as the site for a new EU quantum computer. The Dutch tech companies got €3.1 billion euros in VC funding in 2024, which is a 47% increase over 2023, opposing the European trend of declining investment.

As of 2025, the Netherlands is the Europe's fourth largest startup hub behind Germany, UK, and France. At the same time, the number of new startups declined by 23% in 2024, and Dutch investor participation in latestage funding dropped, pushing local startups to look abroad for growth opportunities.

I will make a separate video about the VC situation in Europe in the light of geopolitical and political changes of the past 2 years. But long story short, the US is still the land of dreams for tech startups. Whether you like what Trump is doing or not, that trend has not changed.

On to the layoffs. Unlike the US, mass layoffs are less common in the Netherlands due to strict labor laws and employee protection. Companies tend to manage downturns by not renewing temporary contracts rather than large-scale firings.

Now, it is worth noting that there are examples of companies laying off employees on permanent positions as well despite labor laws, but this is very rare. According to the information that I found in local Dutch tech communities, people say that unlawful layoffs are rare because employees can go and sue companies in court.

And by doing this, companies risk losing a lot of money fighting in courts. Now, the flip side of this coin is that the companies now hire temporary contractors to offset those risks. So, that's just something worth noting for trends.

Nevertheless, the Dutch market remains fairly healthy, as healthy as it can be in these realities with a preference for hiring freezes or gradual adjustments rather than abrupt cuts. Let's look closely at the layoff data of the past 3 years.

2022, the Netherlands largely avoided the mass layoffs seen in the US and other parts of Europe. Notable cases, Message Bird, a Dutch company that laid off 31% of its staff, which is about 250 employees in November 2022. And this is considered a high-profile layoff case.

Now, knowing what's happening in the US, 250 does not seem like a substantial figure at all. And to be clear, I'm not trying to downplay the significance of this. Even 250 people means that 250 lives were changed as a result of this.

But please understand where I'm coming from. In my career, I have seen entire floors of people being taken into a room with HR, leaving 5 minutes later in tears, packing everything they have in boxes and leaving the building. So when I say that 250 is low, it's only because I've seen hundreds being laid off within single companies.

2023. For context, 2023 was the worst year on record for global tech layoffs with 263,000 people laid off, which is 59% higher from 2022. The Dutch market remained relatively untouched by global standards.

Less than 4% of software developers surveyed in the Netherlands were laid off compared to 13.2% in the rest of Europe. Now, the one thing that got hit really hard was startups.

Startups in the Netherlands had a 42% increase in attrition rates, both voluntary with employees choosing to leave themselves and involuntary departures compared to a 10% increase across Europe. But what is meant by attrition in this case?

In 2022, there was a sharp decline in VC activity globally and the following year became the worst year for startup funding in nearly a decade. This combined with macroeconomic factors, rising interest rate to offset inflation, the war in Ukraine and the global supply chain disruptions that followed as well as the pandemic market correction. That is what I mean by attrition.

The Dutch startups moved from a growth at all costs approach to a focus on profitability and sustainability which always result in slowdown and reduced hiring. The Dutch startup hiring rates dropped by almost 50% in 2023 compared to a 37.5 drop across Europe.

So, like I said before, the Dutch dealt with the crisis through hiring freezes and termination of contracts that they were able to legally terminate or not continue, not layoffs.

And then 2024 and 2025, the global tech layoff wave continued with over 150,000 jobs cut in 2024 and more than 22,000 layoffs in the first 5 months of 2025. The Dutch, however, continued its trend of low layoff rates.

There were isolated cases such as Amsterdam-based bird laying off 33% of its workforce, which is about 120 employees in early 2025. But mass layoffs remained rare and the overall labor market stayed tight with a high job vacancy rate.

The main employment challenge for the Dutch tech companies was not layoffs, but the difficulty in hiring and retaining skilled talent with 56% of tech job openings considered hard to fill.

Now, what's also very interesting is that over the past 2 years, the number of fang layoffs, specifically in the Netherlands, has been extremely limited with no large-scale or headline grabbing cuts reported from Dutch offices.

Yes, Dutch teams and fang are modest in size, but headcount is much lower than in the UK, Germany, or Ireland. The Netherlands is a location for logistics, sales, and a very limited number of product roles. It is not the primary engineering or R&D center for fang in Europe.

But there are other countries in Europe where these roles are dominant and they suffered a lot more. For example, Spain, Belgium, and Italy. The Dutch fang teams were among the least affected by layoffs in Europe in the past 2 years thanks to a combination of robust labor protection laws and smaller, less engineering heavy local offices.

So overall, the Netherlands consistently avoided mass tech layoffs seen in the US, UK, and Germany. Layoffs in the Dutch tech have been isolated and not systematic. Attrition and hiring freezes have had a larger impact than the layoffs themselves.

Onto the characteristics of the Dutch tech. Let's talk about the most prominent Dutch tech companies and their global impact.

ASML. Semiconductors. Photoiththography. ASML is the world's leading supplier of photoiththography machines used in semiconductor manufacturing. Its extreme ultraviolet machines are essential for producing the most advanced computer chips. The company supplies all major chip makers worldwide, including TSMC, Samsung, and Intel 145.

Booking.com, online travel and hospitality. I mean, we all know what Booking is. It's headquartered in Amsterdam. Booking.com is one of the world's largest online travel platforms serving millions of customers daily in over 220 countries.

Aden, Fintech, and Payments. Aden is a global payment processing company enabling seamless transactions from major international brands like Uber, Spotify, and Microsoft. Its unified commerce platform supports payments in almost every country, making it a backbone for global e-commerce.

Mali, another fintech company. Mali is one of Europe's fastest growing payment service providers, supporting tens of thousands of merchants with simple, scalable payment solutions.

Picnic online groceries. Picnic has revolutionized grocery delivery with its innovative app-based electric vehicle-powered logistics model and Fastend electric vehicle charging infrastructure.

Fastend electric vehicle charging infrastructure. Facet operates a rapidly growing network of fast charging stations for electric vehicles across Europe.

Onto the outsourcing trends in Holland. Near shoring is on the rise. 40% of Dutch organizations plan to increase outsourcing with only 6% expecting a decrease and 54% for seeing no change.

Nearshoring primarily to Eastern Europe has become the most common model for IT and customer service roles favored for proximity, cultural similarities, and time zone alignment.

Traditional offshoring, for example, South Asia is expected to decline with organizations preferring EU or near EU partners for data security and regulatory reasons.

Now, what are the motivations for outsourcing? Well, the main reason, the most obvious one is cost savings, which gives businesses the ability to focus on core business functions.

I'd like to add here that even though Holland is known to be a country where English is very commonly spoken with the shift of local rules towards business operational technical leadership functions knowing Dutch is a big asset. Outsourcing and especially nearshoring helps Dutch companies address acute local tech talent shortages and optimize costs.

Automation and AI adoption have shifted outsourcing from traditional call centers to more IT data security and digital service functions.

quality of talent. Let's talk about education and then about the skill gaps. Digital skills including media literacy and cyber security are embedded in the national curriculum for secondary school onward.

The Netherlands cyber security strategy mandates continuous updates to tech curricula at both primary and secondary levels, ensuring that students are introduced to early digital competencies and emerging technologies. I think such an early introduction to tech for kids is fantastic.

The Dutch system includes 14 research universities and 34 universities of applied sciences with strong tech and engineering programs. The higher education in the Netherlands is more expensive than in Germany and France but more affordable than England and Scotland.

The Delft University of Technology or TU Delft ranked number one globally for engineering and technology by QS World University Rankings 2022 and consistently in the top 20 worldwide. Actually here in Canada I worked with folks who graduated TUD Delft and they were very skilled all around.

Einhovven University of Technology or TU Einhovven ranked number 13 globally for engineering and technology and awarded digital university of the year in 2024.

University of Tuente and University of Amsterdam home to cutting edge research in nanotechnology, AI and medical technology. They excel in AI, data science and computational science with high research output which is over 24.9 million citations from 640,000 academic papers in computer science.

Now on to the skill gaps. To me, this was a fairly unexpected fact, but I found plenty of data resources indicating a chronic shortage of qualified tech professionals in the Netherlands.

To be honest, when I saw it, I started questioning the source, thinking that I misread something. But then, as I started reading, my eyes were opening wider and wider because I had no idea Holland had such interesting local trends.

The labor market scarcity is projected to triple by 2030, potentially resulting in a shortage of 1.4 4 million workers across sectors with information technology sector being affected the most.

And that's in a country with a 17.9% population. Meaning for them to fill the gap, they need 8% of the population to get into tech. As of 2025, the job openings in the ICT in the information technology and tech consistently outnumber available workers.

In 2021, there were 26 vacancies for every IT worker in the Netherlands. The talent shortage is not uniform across all roles. It is particularly acute in specific areas. Full stack devs, DevOps, data engineering, data analytics, and product engineering folks with expertise in niches, fintech, food tech, and AI.

Not surprised. A very similar trend is being seen in England and Switzerland. You're welcome to check those episodes as well.

There's a paradox. Even though the number of tech workers in the Netherlands is growing by 6.9% year-over-year, nearly doubling over a decade and projected to surpass 1 million by 2030, plenty of positions still remain very difficult to find or recruit.

Scarcity doesn't mean that the number of tech workers is small in absolute terms. It means that there is still more open positions than qualified people to fill them. Holland ranks at the bottom of the world 89 global economies for ease of finding qualified personnel and is considered to be one of the hardest places to find talent.

The postings that require only English dropped. This combined with a severe housing shortage in tech hubs makes it harder for foreign professionals to relocate and stay.

The vibe Holland considering its location on the continent takes something from different tech cultures around it and it has a lot of local and regional culture. It's collaborative and flat. For those who watch the Nordics episode, that's a huge distinction of the Nordic sector.

Work life balance is everything. It's a very European and also a very Dutch thing. It's quite diverse and it offers a good mix of professional and social life.

Of all the European countries outside of England, I'd say Holland is the biggest of networking, which reminds me personally of North American culture because a substantial percentage of jobs is filled through networks and connections. That's a very North American thing.

Events, meetups, and conferences are very active and accessible. Amsterdam hosts multiple conferences and industry events. Go to Amsterdam. It's a multi-day software development conference for AI, machine learning, DevOps, and cloud computing folks. Texo Amsterdam, React Summit, JS World, Level Up, Holland High-Tech Events, and many more. Lots of opportunities to network.

Cost of living. Between 2022 and 2025, the cost of living in the Netherlands has risen sharply with housing at the center of these changes. Housing costs already high by European standards soared further, 33.8% above the EU average.

And by 2025, the rent in cities like Amsterdam skyrocketed. House prices hit new records with an 8.7 increase in 2024 and forecasted 7% increase on top of that in 2025. Driven by a persistent housing shortage, which is a European problem, not specific to Holland.

The lower mortgage rates and higher household incomes, meaning more people being able to afford more expensive housing. But the higher household income is primarily concentrated in large tech hubs. Other living costs also climbed. food and non-alcoholic beverages, healthcare, mandatory insurance, and transport, making it the third largest expense after housing and food.

While economic growth was modest and household finances remained generally stable, the main challenge for tech workers and newcomers was the acute difficulty in finding affordable quality housing in major cities. A problem exacerbated by limited new construction and high demand.

Overall, the Netherlands became an even more expensive place to live, especially in urban tech hubs with housing affordability and availability as the most pressing concern for residents.

Conclusion: The Dutch tech market in 2025 is defined by both resilience and clear structural challenges as it navigates the post-pandemic, post layoff, and AI first era.

The ecosystem demonstrated its strengths by securing 3.1 billion in venture capital at the time when most of Europe saw declining investment. Deep tech, including AI, quantum computing, and semiconductors, now comprise a substantial chunk of the Dutch tech landscape.

So, when is Holland a good idea? If you work in high demand fields like AI, cloud computing, data science, or deep tech. If you value a flat, collaborative work culture with strong work life balance with flexible work options.

If you're attracted by a welcoming, diverse community with frequent tech meetups, events, and networking opportunities. If you want strong employee benefits, including amplification, professional development, and relocation support for international workers, the Netherlands might not be a good idea for tech workers if you are highly sensitive to cost of living.

the Netherlands might not be a good idea for tech workers if you are highly sensitive to cost of living. If you prefer lower taxation as Dutch income taxes are progressive and substantial for high earners,

and if you're seeking rapid US- style startup scaling or a move fast, break fast culture. The Dutch approach is more measured and consensus driven. If you have founders ambitions and you want easy earlystage startup funding as recent years have seen a drop in early stage investment and more cautious VC landscape.

If you need extremely fast career progression or expect the fastest possible salary growth. And that's a wrap for Holland. As always, I hope this was helpful and we'll see you in the last episode of Where to Run. Till next time. Bye.