Anthropic is rolling out a public version of its Mythos AI model, but with guardrails barring its use in risky areas such as cybersecurity, after a preview earlier this year sent shockwaves globally with its ability to find software flaws https://t.co/S3CLkB2HJP
KPMG is laying off 10% of their audit partners. You might have missed the news amidst today’s announcement that Meta is also laying off 10% of their employees.
I’ll be blunt: If you work in front of a computer, your job isn’t safe.
It doesn’t matter how senior you are (KPMG’s partners literally own the company). Nor does it matter how good you are at your job (Meta’s engineers are among the best of the best in the tech industry).
Your job is at risk, and it’s incumbent on you—and no one but yourself—to plan for what you do in your career to proactively manage that risk.
Four reasons why this is happening:
1. Competition: AI is reducing barriers to entry across every industries, from professional services (such as the audit and advisory services provided by the likes of KPMG) to software and everything in between. Reduced barriers to entry mean increased competition, which means lower pricing power, margin compression, and pressure to reduce costs—especially fixed costs such as labor, which is the number one expense for most white-collar businesses.
2. Need to Invest: As incumbents face increased competition from new entrants to their market and from substitute products (e.g., vibe-coded homebrew SaaS replacing expensive vertical SaaS products that previously enjoyed virtual monopolies within their respective target markets), they are forced to make sizable investments in technology to remain competitive.
In the case of professional services companies, this means large investments in proprietary software (all of the Big Four firms are investing billions in new technology right now); for big tech companies, this means tens of billions of dollars going into data centers and physical infrastructure.
Essentially, capex and opex are in the middle of a zero-sum battle in corporate budgets. As companies face the need to invest more in capex and R&D—and as capital markets become increasingly averse to providing them additional liquidity to fund it, out of concerns that the ROIC on said capex will not be accretive to earnings—opex is cannibalized to fund capex. And, again, the primary lever CFOs in white-collar companies have to instantly reduce opex is layoffs.
3. Automation: These competitive pressures are compounded by AI rapidly automating work faster than incremental revenue is able to be generated. In other words, workers are being made redundant faster than companies are able to come up with the new business that might otherwise save those jobs.
Some in the tech industry (people far smarter than me, I will add) conjecture that, on a net basis, AI will create more jobs than it will destroy, due to an AI-facilitated period of hypergrowth and a corresponding boom in corporate earnings. But with every company I advise, across the worlds of startups, SMBs, and large industrial companies, I’m simply not seeing that yet, and I don’t know anyone who is.
4. It might feel like ancient history at this point, but many companies are still dealing with the excesses of the Covid-era labor market. Money was loose, talent was in short supply, and software companies, financial services firms, and professional services companies hired too many people too fast, with standards that were too low. They’ve made significantly progress in right-sizing their workforces over the past couple years (return-to-office mandates, for example, have essentially created “soft layoffs” at many large companies), but much work still remains.
If you’re picturing your career and your company as you read these words, I can’t emphasize it enough: Plan ahead. Build a network of people outside your company who would want to work with you if your current job were made redundant. Think about businesses you might want to start (it’s a lot easier to keep your job if no one but your customers can terminate you). Set money aside.
Be proactive, not reactive. Be a predator, not the prey.
Because these trends are inexorable, they’re unstoppable, and, chances are, they’re coming for all of us.
Start planning. And start planning now.
Biggest Tech Layoffs in the Last 12 Months
1. Oracle
Layoffs: 30,000
Reason: Took on $58B debt for AI data centers; cut jobs to free up cash flow.
2. Intel
Layoffs: 25,000
Reason: Lost AI chip market to NVIDIA; new CEO restructured the company to become leaner.
3. Amazon
Layoffs: 16,000
Reason: Removed corporate management layers and redirected resources toward AI.
4. Microsoft
Layoffs: 9,000
Reason: Cut gaming and Xbox teams; realigned budget toward AI and cloud.
5. Block, Inc.
Layoffs: 4,000
Reason: CEO Jack Dorsey said AI enables smaller teams; workforce reduced by nearly half.
6. ASML
Layoffs: 1,700
Reason: Eliminated manager roles to reduce bureaucracy; engineers remained untouched.
7. Ericsson
Layoffs: 1,600
Reason: Falling telecom demand after the 5G boom; ongoing cost reduction.
8. Atlassian
Layoffs: 1,600
Reason: CEO cited AI reducing the number of roles needed; capital moved toward AI development.
9. Meta
Layoffs: 1,500
Reason: Reduced focus on metaverse; redirected budgets toward AI after lagging behind OpenAI.
10. Salesforce
Layoffs: 1,000
Reason: AI agents replaced about half of the support team; shift from human to AI support.
9,000 Microsoft employees got an email at lunch today.
Take the money. Go home.
The safest job in tech. Gone in an afternoon.
Nobody called it a firing.
They called it a retirement gift.
This is 2026.
En tant que étudiant et j'ai peur.
Pas peur de l'IA. Peur de me retrouver diplômé avec des compétences que personne ne cherche plus.
On nous forme sur des savoirs qui sont déjà en train d'être absorbés par des outils comme Claude. Et pendant ce temps, les cours continuent comme si rien ne se passait.
Personne n'en parle de façon sincère d'ailleurs, toujours la langue de bois.
On paie des années d'études pour apprendre quoi exactement ? À exécuter des tâches qu'une IA fait en 3 secondes ?
Je ne dis pas que l'école ne sert à rien. Je dis qu'elle forme pour un monde qui est en train de disparaître.
Et ça m'inquiète.
CEO da Anthropic: "50% de todos os empregos em tech, além de advogados, consultores e profissionais de finanças em nível júnior, serão completamente eliminados em menos de 5 anos."
I am feeling jealous whenever I see 40+ (age) guys in tech.
-Got their jobs in IT, when there was no competition.
-Now in senior or managerial roles
-Now might be earning in crores
-Had smooth career, no fear of AI or layoffs
-People respected them for being software engineers
-They are the main reason many parents forced their children to become software engineers...
-They have accumulated enough wealth, they are not fearing layoffs