There's a quietly disturbing trend happening in tech and finance right now: companies are hiring people they don't have immediate roles for, just to keep them away from competitors. Call it talent hoarding, strategic hiring, or defensive recruiting—whatever the label, it's creating artificial scarcity in already-tight talent markets and making everyone else's jobs harder.

And yes, it's as petty as it sounds.

What Talent Hoarding Looks Like

This isn't about maintaining a bench of candidates for future roles. This is actively hiring people, putting them on payroll, and basically warehousing them until you figure out what to do with them—primarily so your competitors can't have them.

According to research from consulting firm Robert Half, 34% of large tech companies admit to making hires in Q4 2025 specifically to prevent competitors from accessing that talent. That's not a small number. That's a deliberate strategy being deployed at scale.

Data from Blind, the anonymous workplace app, shows employees posting about being hired into "strategic roles" where their responsibilities are vague, their teams are still "forming," and they're essentially on paid standby while the company figures out what to do with them. Some report waiting months for actual work.

Why Companies Are Doing This

The talent shortage for specialized roles (AI/ML engineers, security researchers, senior IC roles at staff+ levels) is real and persistent. When there are only 50 people in the country who can do a specific type of work, and you're competing against three other companies for those same people, the math gets competitive fast.

Companies are essentially playing defense, reasoning that paying someone $300K to sit around is cheaper than letting a competitor hire them and potentially gain a significant advantage. It's talent acquisition as strategic warfare.

In AI specifically, reports from The Information indicate that companies are hiring AI researchers with no immediate project assigned, just to keep them out of competitors' hands. One startup reportedly hired three senior engineers from a competitor specifically to slow down that competitor's product roadmap—not because they needed those engineers for their own work.

It's the corporate equivalent of buying all the Tickle Me Elmos in 1996 just so other parents can't have them.

The Financial Reality

This only works when you have stupid amounts of money to burn. And right now, a handful of companies do.

Tech giants sitting on massive cash reserves and strong balance sheets can afford to hire speculatively. Meta, Google, Microsoft, and Amazon all have the resources to absorb 50-100 "strategic" hires whose value isn't immediately clear.

Startups with recent funding rounds are doing this too, though at smaller scale. VCs are reportedly encouraging portfolio companies to "lock in key hires now" while they have cash, even if the exact role isn't defined yet. The logic is that when funding gets tighter (and it will), you'll be glad you secured that talent.

The problem is this creates a distorted market where compensation and hiring decisions aren't based on actual business needs, but on competitive paranoia.

Who Gets Hurt

Spoiler alert: everyone except the talent being hoarded.

Mid-sized companies get squeezed: If you're not a tech giant or a well-funded startup, you can't compete with "we'll pay you $400K to do nothing for six months while we figure out your role." You're trying to hire for actual positions with real work, and you're losing candidates to companies that are basically offering paid sabbaticals.

Recruiters waste time: When companies are hiring without clear role definitions or real urgency, the recruiting process becomes a nightmare. Requirements are vague, hiring managers can't articulate what success looks like, and the bar keeps moving because they're not actually sure what they need.

The market gets inefficient: Talent hoarding removes skilled people from the active market without them actually contributing productively. That's bad for everyone. Economists call this labor market inefficiency, and it ultimately slows down innovation and productivity across the industry.

Even the hoarded talent loses: Getting paid to do nothing sounds great for about three months. Then it becomes boring, demoralizing, and career-stagnating. Developer communities are full of posts from people who took these roles and now regret it because they're not learning, growing, or building anything meaningful.

The Ethical Questions Nobody's Asking

Is this even okay? Like, ethically?

Companies will argue this is just smart business strategy—no different from securing inventory or locking in supplier contracts early. But people aren't inventory. Hiring someone with no intention of fully utilizing their skills just to deny a competitor access feels... off.

Legal experts point out this is completely legal as long as you're actually employing people (versus contracting them with non-compete clauses, which is increasingly restricted). But legal doesn't mean ethical.

There's something dystopian about a labor market where companies treat human capital like strategic resources to be hoarded during times of plenty, only to lay them off when the market shifts. And we know that's coming—these "strategic hires" will be the first ones cut when budgets tighten.

What This Means for Recruiters

If you're competing against talent hoarders, you're playing a game you probably can't win on compensation alone. The companies doing this have deeper pockets and less urgency to get ROI quickly.

Your advantage is offering real, meaningful work. Emphasize:

• Actual projects and responsibilities: "You'll be leading X initiative starting day one" beats "we're still figuring out your role."
• Impact and growth: People want to build things and develop skills, not sit idle collecting paychecks.
• Company stage and trajectory: Working at a company with clear direction and momentum is more appealing than being a strategic pawn at a giant corporation.

According to talent research from LinkedIn, 68% of senior candidates prioritize "meaningful work" over "maximum compensation" when comparing similar offers. Use that.

When Does This End?

Probably when the money dries up. Talent hoarding is a "we have excess capital and need to deploy it somehow" strategy. When funding becomes scarce and companies face pressure to demonstrate efficiency and profitability, these strategic hires will be the first to go.

Industry analysts predict we'll see a wave of layoffs in mid-2026 as companies that over-hired in 2025 (both for real roles and "strategic" roles) course-correct. The talent that was hoarded will be released back into the market all at once.

Until then, this is the game. Companies with money are using it to create artificial scarcity, candidates with leverage are cashing in, and everyone else is dealing with the fallout.

It's not a sustainable strategy long-term, but it doesn't need to be—it just needs to work long enough to give companies a competitive edge right now. Whether that edge is real or imagined doesn't really matter as long as the CFO approves the headcount.

Welcome to late-stage capitalism recruiting, where the talent is hoarded and the actual productivity doesn't matter. Good luck out there.