On Tech Layoffs

It’s the end of the second week at Network School in Malaysia, and I’m thinking about the recent wave of tech layoffs. People keep saying “AI is killing jobs,” but that doesn’t feel right. I think they’re confusing jobs with employment.

Jobs aren’t disappearing. Employment is.

Employment is a steady paycheck, a stable position, a comfortable spot on a large team. But comfort isn’t always productive. At companies like Google, they earn almost all their money from just a few products: Search, Ads, Maps, Android, Google Suite, and increasingly YouTube. Yet they employed tens of thousands of people who didn’t significantly move the needle. AI isn’t reducing the amount of work—it’s just exposing what really matters and what’s excess.

Companies are shifting from permanent roles to temporary specialists because innovation-driven work doesn’t need large, stable teams. It needs experts who can step in, deliver quickly, and move on. This results in fewer permanent positions, but not fewer opportunities.

The most interesting part to me is how AI is forcing transparency. It reveals clearly who or what contributes value, prompting companies to trim unnecessary roles and refocus resources on innovation. The outcome isn’t less work—it’s smarter, more transparent, project-focused work.