The AI Layoff Boomerang and Big Carrot Energy

Over 200,000 workers this year have been laid off so far.

And we've seen big tech, and we talked about this before, big tech has pivoted.

entirely to AI.

But here's the hilariously toxic twist.

Companies are now realizing that their new AI agents are hallucinating data, and they are quietly trying to rehire the humans that they fired, or demonetized, three months ago.

So what is now being called the great AI layoff boomerang, that's what we're calling it, you and I are calling it this, is that fair or unfair?

I mean, short answer, unfair, but let's talk about it.

Let's talk about it.

Yeah,

no, like, okay, the most massive cut was the Oracle cut, right? 30,000 people lost their jobs.

And we've been talking about this.

for a while now, Simon, obviously it's the hot topic for the past, since last year, this whole AI thing.

Is it going to really change the way we work? Is it really going to change the landscape of employment? It looks like it has.

And, you know, there's still a lot of questions around that.

And I think I mean, personally, I've had questions from my friends asking, you know, when are you going to talk about AI on the podcast? And what do you want to talk about with AI? There's so many things that you can talk about.

But I think given that we are rejected or selected, we can't avoid talking about the impact it's had on society.

you know, just work in general, like people losing their jobs, people gaining new jobs.

What does it mean

for us

now?

I think it's an interesting second half of the year, 2026, because I've got to be honest, before we started this second season, I thought we're going to talk a lot about AI layoffs this year.

And yeah, we are kind of talking about that now, but we're seeing that boomerang of the realization all of a sudden, hang on, this isn't what we thought it was going to be, people.

And that, look, I want to touch on very quickly that Oracle layoff.

We haven't talked about that.

It has been reported on so much in the media since it happened, the fact that it was an email to all of those staff that were downsized, and we're talking tens of thousands of