The current tech layoffs are pandemic over-hiring correcting itself, with AI as the convenient excuse.
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26 Aug 2026
David Heinemeier Hansson quoted
Their wordsAnd I think what we're seeing right now with some of the layoffs is a testament to that, not AI. It's just that during the pandemic, a bunch of overhiring went on, and now AI is a convenient excuse to slim down. But I do also think AI is going to expose some roles as just not being productive ways for humans to spend their time, and therefore we must come up with new ways of spending their time.
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Amodei reads the labour market as being reshaped by AI. Hansson reads the same layoffs as pandemic over-hiring correcting itself with AI supplied as the cover story. Both can be true at once — a forecast about the coming years is not refuted by a different cause for this year’s cuts — and the disagreement is about which one the current evidence supports.