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“There’s a distinctive signature to authentic people: they prefer meaningful conversations with a few over shallow exchanges with many. Their love is demonstrated rather than declared. Their words and actions align, even when no one’s watching. They bring a quality of presence that makes you feel truly seen, and carry a sense of peace and joy that doesn’t depend on external validation.” -Vex King

👋 Welcome, {{first name | Jobseekers}}

You’re not imagining it, the ladder is moving while you climb it. Goldman Sachs says 16k net jobs vanish every month, layoffs keep stacking, and recruiters are tossing anything that smells AI written. At the same time AI skills are printing 23% salary bumps, NYC is pulling away, and a few companies are still hiring like it’s 2021. Read this, recalibrate fast, and move where the demand actually is.

• 🚨 The Big Story: Goldman Sachs research quantified our fears: 25,000 jobs destroyed, 9,000 created

• 📉 Layoff Report: Meta, Salesforce, ASML, and Ericsson add to 2026's 90,000-person running tally

• 🔎 The Inside Track: Meta's "slow bleed" strategy, hiring managers spotting ChatGPT resumes

• 🧠 The Hiring Manager’s Brain: Two-page resumes are back!

• 💰️ Salary Intel: NYC pulling away from the rest of the country

• ☀️ The Bright Spot: Cloudflare bets on 1,111 interns while everyone else pulls up the ladder

• 🏢 Companies to Watch: Noon's $44M stealth raise, a founding engineer role at Temper, and Sona's fresh $45M Series B

🚨: The Big Story

Goldman Sachs research quantified our fears: 25,000 jobs destroyed, 9,000 created

What happened: Goldman Sachs published research this week showing AI is erasing roughly 16,000 net U.S. jobs per month. The breakdown: automation wipes out about 25,000 roles monthly, while productivity gains create roughly 9,000 new ones. The pain falls hardest on Gen Z and entry-level workers, who are overrepresented in the admin, data entry, and customer service roles that AI handles cheapest. Source

Why it matters: This is the first time a major Wall Street bank has put a specific, monthly body count on AI displacement. Until now, the conversation was all vibes and CEO speeches about "transformation." Goldman's economists attached real numbers: 16,000 net jobs gone, every month, for the past year. That's 192,000 jobs in 12 months. And the gap between jobs destroyed and jobs created keeps widening.

Our take: The cruelest part isn't the number. It's who's absorbing the hit. Gen Z workers are flooding into entry-level roles that companies are simultaneously automating. They're being told to "learn AI" while the ladder they're supposed to climb gets pulled up behind them. Meanwhile, senior workers with AI skills are commanding 23% salary premiums. The market isn't just splitting; it's stratifying by age and access in ways that will take a decade to unwind. Companies love to say "AI creates more jobs than it destroys." Goldman's data says: not yet, and not for the people who need them most.

What to watch:

• Whether the 16,000/month figure accelerates as AI agents (not just chatbots) roll into enterprise workflows in Q2 and Q3.

• Federal response. The MIT study released the same week found AI can handle 65% of text-based tasks at a "minimally acceptable" level. Policy pressure will build.

• Hiring patterns at companies that just raised massive rounds. The $252.6 billion in Q1 2026 VC funding has to turn into headcount somewhere.

Your move:

• If you're early-career, pivot hard toward data science, MLOps, or AI-adjacent infrastructure roles. Goldman's own data shows those categories are growing while generalist positions shrink.

• If you're mid-career, bolt AI fluency onto your existing expertise. The 23% salary premium is real and documented. One deep skill plus AI proficiency is the formula right now.

📉 Layoff Report (Who got cut, how, and why)

Meta, Salesforce, ASML, and Ericsson add to 2026's 90,000-person running tally

• Meta: Cutting 200 more employees across Silicon Valley teams by late May. This follows the 1,500-person Reality Labs cut in January and several hundred more in March across Facebook, recruiting, and sales. The metaverse pivot is bleeding headcount quarter by quarter. Source

• Salesforce: Cut roughly 1,000 positions across marketing, product management, data analytics, and the Agentforce AI product division. The irony: they're laying off the people who were supposed to build the AI product that replaces other people. Source

• ASML: Eliminated 1,700 positions (4% of global workforce), concentrated in management ranks across the Netherlands and U.S. The semiconductor giant cited restructuring, not demand problems. When a company making the machines that make AI chips cuts staff, you know the efficiency religion has spread everywhere. Source

• Ericsson: Axing 1,600 employees in Sweden (12% of its workforce there) as the global 5G buildout slows. Telecom infrastructure roles are drying up faster than expected. Source

Bottom line: The 2026 layoff counter has crossed 90,000 workers at 217 companies. The pace hasn't slowed since Oracle's bomb in late March. AI restructuring is the stated reason in over 20% of cuts now, double the rate from 2025. The "we're investing in AI" press release has become the new "we're streamlining operations" press release.

🔎 The Inside Track (What the press releases don't say)

Hiring managers spotting ChatGPT resumes, Meta's "slow bleed" strategy

• Blind (Meta): Chatter ahead of the latest cuts suggested a 20% reduction was coming. The actual number landed smaller, but employees say the anxiety did its own damage. Multiple posts describe a "slow bleed" strategy: small rounds every few weeks instead of one big cut, keeping everyone on edge. One engineer wrote, "They don't need to fire you if you quit from the stress." If you're at Meta and haven't updated your resume, you're gambling. Blind

• LinkedIn (recruiters): Multiple recruiters posted this week that AI-generated resumes are now a net negative signal. TopResume's blind testing found 33.5% of hiring managers could spot AI-written materials, with Millennial and Gen X hiring managers catching them at a 34%+ rate. The tell: words like "spearheaded," "leveraged," and "navigated complex landscapes" in every bullet. The fix is simple: use AI to generate a draft, then rewrite every line in your own voice with numbers only you would know. Source

• Hacker News: The April 2026 "Who's Hiring" thread is live with a healthy mix of funded startups. Notable postings include Temper (SF, $150K to $250K + equity, founding engineer for AI agent orchestration) and Instinct Science (AI for veterinary medicine, acquired ScribbleVet). The thread skews heavily toward AI-native companies, which tracks with where the money is flowing. Thread

  ---

🧠 The Hiring Manager’s Brain (One thing HR actually cares about)

Two-page resumes are back.

A Dice.com interview with recruiter Ted Hellmuth this week confirmed what multiple hiring managers have been saying on LinkedIn: for experienced engineers (5+ years), a strict one-page resume is costing you interviews. The reason? One page forces you to strip out the project details and metrics that hiring managers actually scan for.

Hellmuth's advice: keep page one tight (your last 2 to 3 roles with impact metrics), and use page two for earlier experience, certifications, and a focused skills section. The key: every line on page two should earn its spot. No padding, no filler, no "proficient in Microsoft Office."

What to do about it: If your resume is one page and you have 5+ years of experience, expand it. Add specific project outcomes, system names, and quantified results to your top roles. Keep the format clean (single column, no icons, no color-coded sections) and you won't lose anyone's attention. Source

💰 Salary Intel (What the market is actually paying this week)

NYC pulling away from the rest of the country

• AI Engineer (Mid-Level, L4/L5), Large Tech: Salaries grew 9.2% year-over-year, the highest increase of any tech role category. LLM developers specifically are averaging $209,000 base. Total comp at top-tier companies pushes well past $350K. Source: Motion Recruitment 2026 Tech Salary Guide. Source

• Senior Platform Engineer, Series B/C Startup, Remote: Comp spiked 8.9% YoY. AI skills add a 23% premium on top of base, per WEF data analyzing U.S. job postings from 2019 to 2025. That premium is now worth nearly double a Master's degree (which adds 13%). Source: World Economic Forum. Source

• Geographic premiums: NYC leads with 10% YoY salary increases. D.C. and Atlanta follow at 6%. Meanwhile, baseline tech salary growth across the U.S. is projected at just 1.6% to 3.5% for 2026. The gap between AI-specialized and generalist comp keeps widening. Source: Robert Half 2026 Salary Guide. Source

The takeaway: AI fluency isn't a nice-to-have anymore; it's a pay grade. A 23% premium on top of an 8.9% base increase means AI-skilled engineers are pulling away from the pack fast. If you're negotiating right now, know your number and cite the data.

☀️ The Bright Spot (Proof that it's not all bad out there)

Cloudflare bets on 1,111 interns while everyone else pulls up the ladder

Cloudflare is hiring 1,111 interns in 2026 (the number is a nod to their 1.1.1.1 DNS resolver). The program spans Austin, San Francisco, New York, London, Lisbon, and Bengaluru, with 12-week placements across spring, summer, and fall. At a time when tech internship postings have dropped 30% since 2023, Cloudflare is running in the opposite direction. They're also giving every U.S. university student with a .edu email a free year of Cloudflare Workers. One company betting on the next generation instead of replacing it. Learn more

👀 Companies to Watch (Fresh money, open roles, and reasons to apply now)

Noon's $44M stealth raise, a founding engineer role at Temper, and Sona's fresh $45M Series B

• Noon: AI-native product design platform that just emerged from stealth with a $44M seed round (one of the largest in design-tech history). Backed by Chemistry, First Round Capital, and design leaders from Stripe, OpenAI, and Apple. Hiring across engineering and design. If you're a designer who can think in code, or an engineer who cares about design systems, this is worth watching. Learn more

• Temper: SF-based startup building AI agents for EDI integrations. Hiring a founding engineer ($150K to $250K + equity) to work on agent orchestration and durable execution runtime. Already has paying enterprise customers. Small team, real revenue, hard technical problems. Careers

• Instinct Science: AI leader in veterinary medicine. They acquired ScribbleVet in early 2026 and are building a clinical intelligence platform used daily by thousands of vets. Hiring for mobile engineering. Healthcare AI with a built-in user base is a solid bet. Careers

• Sona: Raised $45M Series B (April 1) from N47. Workforce management platform for frontline industries. If you've worked in HR tech, scheduling systems, or enterprise SaaS, they're scaling fast and the timing is right. Learn more

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“We spend time chasing money, then spend money chasing time.” -FS

👋 Welcome, {{first name | Jobseekers}}

Oracle just proved you can delete 30,000 careers with a 6 a.m. email to bankroll AI data centers. Epic’s insurance fiasco and the 85,000-plus layoff counter make one thing clear: keep a brag doc, know your severance rights, and file unemployment on day one. We also hit resume voice versus AI sludge, a DOL text-only AI course, funded companies to watch, and LUMO’s instant application packet.

• 🚨 The Big Story: Oracle Axed 30,000 People to Pay for AI Data Centers

• 📉 Layoff Report: Oracle drops a bomb, Epic fires a dying man, and the 2026 counter hits 85,000

• 🔎 The Inside Track: What the press releases don't say about Oracle and Epic
  🧑‍✈️ Career Copilot: What to do when you wake up to a layoff email

• 🧠 The Hiring Manager’s Brain: One thing the person reading your resume actually cares about

• ☀️ The Bright Spot: The Department of Labor wants to teach you AI via text message

• 🏢 Companies to Watch: Saronic, Starcloud, depthfirst, GitLab

• 🧰 Jobseeker Tools: The Claude Cowork for Jobseekers

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“So many advantages in life come from being willing to look like an idiot in the short term.” -FS

👋 Welcome, {{first name | Jobseekers}}

Stop doomscrolling: PM and engineering openings just hit 3-year highs. Meanwhile the layoff counter climbs, and the reasons are getting blunt. Block is already rehiring after its AI cuts; CBS just killed a 99-year radio shop; Atlassian said out loud that AI shrinks teams. In this newsletter we track the cash moving to AI builders, flag hiring at OpenAI plus IBM and Vanta plus Cape and Giga, and hand you LUMO Lab to crank job packets fast.

• 🚨 The Big Story:  Everyone Told You Tech Was Dead. They Were Wrong.

• 📉 Layoff Report: Meta is cutting several hundred, Block is rehiring, & CBS killed a 99-year-old institution
  🧑‍✈️ Career Copilot: How to Cross the Market Split (Before It Crosses You)

• 📊 Trends & Data: Money is flowing toward AI builders and away from everyone else

• 🏢 Companies to Watch: OpenAI, Cape, Giga, IBM, Vanta

• 🧰 Jobseeker Tools: Did we just build the Claude Cowork for Jobseekers?

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“The most prepared person in the room usually says the least.” -FS

👋 Welcome, {{first name | Jobseekers}}

Workday’s AI just got dragged into federal court, and if you’re 40+ this is the loudest crack yet in the black-box hiring wall. While Nvidia talks $1T in chip orders, the job market keeps shedding people via Dell’s slow bleed, Meta’s looming cuts, and EV layoffs in Georgia. We’ll hit the numbers, the lawsuits, the companies stacking fresh funding, and the resume tweaks that beat bots.

• 🚨 The Big Story:  Workday's AI Hiring Tools Are on Trial. If You're Over 40, This Is Your Case.

• 📉 Layoff Report: Dell's quiet bleed, Meta's escalating threat, and the EV market's Georgia gut punch.

• 📊 Trends & Data: $1 trillion in chip orders. 55,000 jobs gone. Someone's math is off.

• 🏢 Companies to Watch: Five companies that just raised billions and need to spend it.

• 🧰 Jobseeker Tools: Four tools to fight the bots, track your rights, and sharpen your resume.

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“The people who want to be better welcome honest feedback. The people who want to stay comfortable fight it. Let this be a filter.” -FS

👋 Welcome, {{first name | Jobseekers}}

If you’re waiting for the market to calm down, stop. Oracle is gutting jobs to bankroll an AI server bet, Nvidia is stuffing cash into the companies still hiring, and Anthropic’s Pentagon brawl shows how wild the AI power struggle is getting. Your lane is clear: morale is shot, layoffs keep rolling, and the people winning right now can prove they use AI to move faster and hit harder.

• 🚨 The Big Story:  Larry Ellison borrowed $100 billion for AI. Now 30,000 employees are paying the tab.

• 📡 Developing Stories: Anthropic sues the Pentagon over its blacklist. Nvidia writes tens of billions in checks to AI startups.

• 📉 Layoff Report: Oracle, Morgan Stanley, Dow, and more. Record revenue keeps producing record cuts.

• 📊 Trends & Data: 47.8% confidence. 56% AI wage premium. The market is splitting in two.

• 🏢 Companies to Watch: Cloudflare, CoreWeave, Nexthop AI, GitLab.

• 🧰 Jobseeker Tools: Know your runway with Offboard’s Financial Runway Calculator

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“We have principles but they're negotiable” -OpenAI

👋 Welcome, {{first name | Jobseekers}}

OpenAI lit a match to its reputation with its Department of War deal and jobseekers are watching the fallout in real time as #QuitGPT gains steam and trust shifts toward Claude. We break down the layoffs still chewing through tech, where AI ethics hiring is actually opening doors, which companies look worth your time, and the sharp career moves to make while the industry fights over its soul.

• 🚨 The Big Story:  OpenAI Nuked It’s Reputation in a Single Tweet

• 🧑‍✈️ Career CoPilot: The AI ethics job boom is here

• 📉 Layoff Report: Block lays off 4,000; half of its workforce

• 📊 Trends & Data: 295% spike in ChatGPT uninstalls

• 🏢 Companies to Watch: Anthropic, CrowdStrike, Databricks, Cloudflare Cohere

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"Just don’t give up trying to do what you really want to do. Where there is love and inspiration, I don’t think you can go wrong." -Ella Fitzgerald

👋 Welcome, {{first name | Jobseekers}}

The Pentagon reportedly tried to strong-arm Anthropic into dropping Claude safety red lines, and that’s your cue to grill employers about defense work before you sign anything. Meanwhile the real AI hiring boom is in boring enterprise rollouts, not flashy demos, as OpenAI taps Big Consultancies to do the heavy lift. Add a layoff wave plus mega-funding and Meta’s monster chip deal, and you’ve got a clearer map of where to run and where to dodge.

• 📰 News: Pentagon to Anthropic: Drop Safety or Get Crushed

• 🧑‍✈️ Career CoPilot: The Enterprise AI Gap Is Your Golden Ticket

• 📉 Layoff Report: FanDuel and DraftKings cutting their workforce. EA, C3, AOL, FireBolt, Ubisoft, Sony

• 🔈️ Top Tech Signals This Week: 17 AI companies raised $100M+ in 2026 already

Pentagon to Anthropic: Drop Safety Guardrails or Get Crushed

This week, the US government allegedly put an AI company in a chokehold over safety guardrails. Every tech worker should treat that as a flashing red warning light.

According to reporting referenced here, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth met with Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei and delivered an ultimatum: sign a document granting the military “any lawful use” of Claude by a set deadline, or face consequences that could materially damage the company.

What the Fight Is Actually About

This is not about refusing all defense work. Anthropic already has a major Pentagon contract, and Claude is reportedly operating in classified environments.

The dispute centers on two guardrails:

• No mass surveillance of Americans

• No fully autonomous weapons without a human making the final decision

That distinction matters. This is about limits, not total withdrawal.

The Pressure Tactics

The concerning part is how leverage was allegedly applied. Reported threats included:

• Invoking the Defense Production Act to compel compliance

• Labeling the company a “supply chain risk,” effectively isolating it

• Terminating existing contracts

• Shifting work to competitors willing to accept broader use terms

Whether each threat materializes or not, the signal is clear: if you build something powerful enough, you may be told your ethics are optional.

Why the Boeing Comparison Falls Apart

One argument raised is that if the government buys planes, Boeing does not control how they are used. Therefore, AI companies should not control how models are used either.

That analogy breaks under scrutiny.

Planes execute commands. AI systems increasingly help make decisions at scale, including surveillance, target identification, and threat prioritization. Remove human judgment from the loop, and you remove a core safeguard between flawed instructions and automated consequences.

Why This Should Matter to You

“Any lawful use” is not a moral standard. In emerging technologies like military AI, the law often trails capability.

If you are job hunting or considering AI roles, ask directly:

• What government or defense work do you do?

• What are your non-negotiable red lines?

• How are employees informed when products are deployed in military or intelligence contexts?

If those answers are vague, that is information.

This is not abstract policy drama. It is a preview of the environments many tech workers will operate in over the next decade.

The Enterprise AI Gap Is Your Golden Ticket

OpenAI's COO said the quiet part out loud this week: AI hasn't actually penetrated enterprise business processes yet. Let that sink in. All those billions, all those demos, all that hype, and most Fortune 500 companies are still running on spreadsheets, legacy systems, and prayers.

This isn't a problem. This is the biggest hiring opportunity in a decade.

Here's what's happening:

OpenAI just brought in BCG, McKinsey, Accenture, and Capgemini as implementation partners. That's not a consulting deal. That's OpenAI admitting they can't do the enterprise rollout alone. And those consulting firms? They're building dedicated AI practices from scratch, which means thousands of new roles for people who can bridge the gap between "cool AI demo" and "this actually works in our ERP system."

Meanwhile, a Google VP warned that two types of AI startups won't survive: thin wrappers on foundation models, and small companies trying to out-compute the hyperscalers. The survivors will be companies with proprietary data, deep domain expertise, or unique distribution. That's your filter for evaluating job offers.

So what does this mean for your job search?

Stop thinking of yourself as "an engineer" or "a product manager" or "a data scientist." Start thinking of yourself as the person who helps enterprises actually deploy AI. That framing is worth more than any specific technical skill right now. The companies hiring aren't looking for people who can build models in a Jupyter notebook. They're looking for people who can sit in a room with a VP of Operations and figure out how to make AI work in their actual workflow.

Your moves:

• Check the AI transformation practices at BCG, McKinsey, Accenture, and Capgemini. They're hiring implementation specialists, not just strategists.

• Frame every bullet on your resume around enterprise value delivered, not models shipped.

• When interviewing at AI startups, ask about their data moat: "What do you do that a foundation model provider can't replicate in six months?"

• Practice your 60-second pitch on how you've helped (or would help) an enterprise team adopt AI tools. That pitch is your new handshake.

The AI gold rush isn't about building picks and shovels anymore. It's about teaching people how to use them. That's where the jobs are.

This Week in Numbers

$100 Billion. That's Meta's chip deal with AMD for custom AI processors.

For context, that's roughly the GDP of Kenya. The infrastructure arms race isn't slowing down. It's accelerating. And it's creating an entirely new category of jobs: chip design, data center operations, thermal engineering, supply chain management, and the program managers who keep it all from catching fire. If you're in hardware-adjacent roles, this is your moment. Read more

17 AI companies raised $100M+ in 2026 already.

In just seven weeks. Anthropic ($30B), ElevenLabs ($500M), Runway ($315M), and fourteen others. Capital follows conviction, and right now conviction says: AI infrastructure and vertical AI applications. Use this list as your target shortlist. Research their products, then reach out to hiring managers directly on LinkedIn with a specific take on their product challenge. See the full list

$10M ARR in 3 months is the new benchmark for AI-native startups.

More companies are hitting this milestone faster than ever. What does that mean for you? These companies hire fast. If a startup hits $10M ARR in a quarter, they'll be staffing up across engineering, product, and go-to-market within weeks. Track Crunchbase for recently funded AI startups announcing revenue milestones. These companies often haven't posted jobs yet but are actively looking. Read more

IBM is tripling Gen Z hiring while rewriting job descriptions for the AI era.

If you're early-career, this is one of the few large companies explicitly expanding junior headcount. They're creating on-ramps, not gatekeeping. Highlight AI literacy and willingness to learn over years of experience.

Companies to Watch This Week

• Wayve (London/US) just closed $1.2B at $8.6B valuation. Self-driving, backed by Nvidia, Uber, Toyota. Hiring ML engineers, simulation engineers, data platform roles. Details

• Freeform (LA) raised $67M Series B for laser-based AI manufacturing. Hardware-software intersection roles are rare and valuable. Details

• Mistral AI (Paris) just acquired Koyeb to build a full-stack AI platform. Post-acquisition integration = cloud infra, DevOps, and platform engineering roles. Details

Source: TrueUp

FanDuel and DraftKings cutting their workforce. EA, C3, AOL, FireBolt, Ubisoft, Sony.

• Meizu on the brink of exiting the smartphone market — release of new models canceled, staff layoffs and department restructuring planned 

• skate. developer Full Circle announces layoffs 

• Bay Area tech company that 'precisely allocates every human resource' lays off dozens 

• DraftKings cutting jobs in layoffs and reorganization 

• Australia's WiseTech to slash 2,000 jobs as AI ends 'era of manually writing code' 

• TrueCar cuts 30% of workforce 

• Tencent closes TiMi Montreal game studio 

• Jake Solomon-led Midsummer Studios shuts down 

• AOL laying off more than 100 employees in Reston as sale to Italian company looms 

• Unicorn Firebolt slashes workforce as AI reshapes operations 

• FanDuel shuts down Atlanta office, lays off dozens of employees 

• Livspace Fires 1,000 Employees; Cofounder Quits 

• Lucid Motors slashes 12% of its workforce as it seeks profitability 

• Ubisoft Toronto lays off 40 employees as part of major restructuring 

• CoStar confirms layoffs following investor criticism, AI push 

• HCL Tech to lay off nearly 100 employees at Lakeland worksite 

• Sony Shuts Down Video-Game Studio Bluepoint 

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"Focus on the inputs you control and the outputs will follow." -FS

👋 Welcome, {{first name | Jobseekers}}

Seattle tech is in the grinder: layoffs stack up while 2,500+ engineering roles stay open and data science heats up. This newsletter breaks down where the hiring oxygen is coming from, from revenue-backed AI at Snap and Canva to spatial AI’s $1B bet and the data-center power gold rush. Plus local funding wins, Microsoft cooling on Copilot, and a fresh CyberArk layoff gut punch.

• 🧑‍✈️ Career CoPilot: What's Actually Happening in Seattle Tech Right Now

• 📉 Layoff Report: 700 CyberArk employees to lose jobs after $25b exit

• 🔈️ Top Tech Signals This Week: Spatial AI is getting serious money

What's Actually Happening in Seattle Tech Right Now

The Bay Area tends to get most of the attention when it comes to tech layoffs, but Seattle's tech scene is going through it right now. Layoffs, hiring freezes, entire teams dissolved overnight. But it's not all bad news. Here's what actually matters this week.

1. The Layoffs Aren't Slowing Down. Thousands more Puget Sound tech workers got the tap on the shoulder this month. Amazon, Meta, Expedia, Zillow, T-Mobile -- the list keeps growing, and Seattle-area unemployment just crossed 5%. If you're in the thick of it, you're not alone. Not even close.

2. But Companies Are Hiring Engineers. Despite the doom scroll, over 2,500 software engineering roles are open in Seattle right now. Amazon (yes, the same one), Nintendo, Tesla, Palantir, and a wave of startups are actively recruiting. The market is brutal AND full of opportunity.

3. Data Science Is Having a Moment. If you've been eyeing a pivot into data, Seattle companies are hungry for data scientists. AI isn't just taking jobs -- it's creating demand for people who can actually build and interpret the stuff.

4. ZAST.AI Just Raised $6M for AI-Powered Security. Seattle-based ZAST.AI closed a $6M Pre-A round to scale their "zero false positive" vulnerability detection platform. Cybersecurity + AI = one of the few sectors that genuinely can't hire fast enough.

5. Avalanche Energy Pulled In $29M for Fusion. Seattle's Avalanche Energy raised $29M to build desktop-sized fusion reactors. Yes, really. They're building a test facility in Richland, WA and scaling their team. PNW climate tech is alive and funding.

6. Microsoft Is Walking Back Its AI-Everywhere Strategy. After a mountain of user backlash, Microsoft is scaling down Copilot integrations in Windows 11 and rethinking Recall entirely. Engineers have been told to pause new AI features and focus on stability. Turns out people want their OS to work before it thinks.

If you're in Seattle and navigating a layoff, a job search, or just trying to figure out what's next -- we just launched #8-loc-seattle in the Offboard Slack. It's a dedicated space for Seattle tech workers to share leads, swap notes on severance and COBRA, vent when it's rough, and help each other land somewhere good. Real people, no recruiter spam. Come join us.

This week’s map for tech jobseekers

Something is snapping into focus: the companies that can turn AI into real product value are pulling ahead, while everything “cool-but-unclear” is getting pressured. The winners this week fall into two buckets: revenue-backed consumer and product platforms and infrastructure powering the next wave.

Signal 1: Revenue-backed AI products are still hiring

The revenue signal is loud. Snap’s Snapchat+ push hit 25M subscribers and drove direct revenue to a $1B ARR run-rate, and Canva hit $4B in revenue as AI and LLM referral traffic rises. Translation: these teams have oxygen. For mid-level and senior candidates, this is the kind of environment where hiring stays open for product, design, engineering, data, and growth because the business case is already proven.

Signal 2: Spatial AI is getting serious money

Funding is concentrating in high-leverage bets. World Labs raised a massive $1B round with Autodesk participating to bring “world models” into 3D workflows. If you have any blend of 3D, vision, simulation, CAD tooling, or applied ML, this is a real lane, not a vibe.

Signal 3: Data-center power is the new gold rush

The picks-and-shovels story is real again. Data centers are exploding, and power is the constraint. Heron Power raised $140M to ramp production of grid-altering tech and DG Matrix raised $60M to make data-center power smarter. If you are hardware, embedded, infra PM, firmware, or systems, this is one of the clearest near-term hiring pockets.

Caution tape: Volatility, churn, and security drag

Big-tech “moonshots” still get cut fast. Amazon halted its Blue Jay robotics project after less than six months. M&A creates churn too, even when it sounds positive. Etsy selling Depop to eBay likely means shifting roadmaps and uncertainty windows. And if you’re sniffing around fintech, assume security is part of the interview loop: Figure confirmed a data breach, and incidents like that often trigger freezes and reorganizations.

Fast target list from this week’s news

Start here: Snap, Canva, World Labs, Heron Power, DG Matrix, plus Airbnb leaning into AI for search, discovery, and support.

Source: TrueUp

700 CyberArk employees to lose jobs after $25b exit; Telstra to axe up to 650 roles in mass redundancy round, some jobs to be outsourced to India

1. 700 CyberArk employees to lose jobs after $25b exit 

2. Clickout Media, Owner Of The Escapist, Pivots To AI, Holds Mass Layoffs 

3. Axonius cuts 40 employees as CEO steps down 

4. Huawei’s Israeli R&D center cuts 12% of cloud employees 

5. Creator-economy unicorn LTK lays off staff as it doubles down on its new marketing tech for brands 

6. Startup Nation Central lays off 65 of 80 employees amid major restructuring 

7. 10 Chambers co-founders laid off amid 'significant restructuring' 

8. Binance fires top investigators who claim to have uncovered evidence of Iranian sanctions violations 

9. Glossier Lays Off More Than 50 Employees 

10. Hinterland confirms layoffs after delaying The Long Dark sequel 

11. Defense tech firm announces 60+ layoffs at WPAFB amid contract decision protest 

12. Netflix Product Division Undergoes Layoffs 

13. Clari cuts dozens of jobs in Sunnyvale after SalesLoft merger 

14. Telstra to axe up to 650 roles in mass redundancy round, some jobs to be outsourced to India 

15. Ams Osram to cut hundreds of jobs as losses shrink in 2025 

16. Musk reorganizes xAI after SpaceX merger and ahead of blockbuster IPO 

17. Cycurion Announces Restructuring To Cut Costs, Boost 2026 Revenue 

18. ‘Highguard’ Developer Wildlight Entertainment Lays Off Multiple Staffers Less Than a Month After New Game’s Launch 

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👋 Happy Saturday, {{first name | Jobseekers}}

We’re back this weekend with a fresh list of live jobs from high-signal companies.

• 💧 The Offboard Job Drip: Runway, Vega Security, Apptronik, xAI, Tem, Harvey, Monaco, and more

• 📶 Hiring Signal: IBM to Triple Entry-Level US Hiring With Roles Recast for AI Era

💧 The Offboard Job Drip

1. FounderNexus

FounderNexus is a curated community for venture-scale founders already building at scale. Founded by DocuSign co-founder Court Lorenzini, it connects elite entrepreneurs through smart peer matching, high-impact events, and focused masterminds designed to significantly increase your odds of success. Just founders helping founders win bigger. The most valuable hour of your week. 🚀 

• Head of Membership Development - This is a partner-level position responsible for designing, building, and continuously refining the systems that attract, onboard, develop, and retain exceptional venture-backed founders across a global chapter network.

• Head of Partnership Sales -  This is a partner-level position responsible for building and stewarding long-term revenue partnerships.

• Director of Marketing - partner-level position responsible for shaping and executing the outbound narrative of the organization: how we are understood, how interest is generated, and how the right founders and partners find their way into the network.

If you’re interested in any of these FounderNexus roles, reach out to us at info@offboard.co for next steps.

2. Runway - AI video generation and world models

Runway has 32 open positions across Engineering, ML Research, Product, Commercial, and Creative teams. Remote-first with hubs in San Francisco and New York.

• Member of Technical Staff, Data Infrastructure — Runway: Builds and maintains large-scale data pipelines powering Runway's AI video generation and world model research. Remote engineering role.

• Staff Product Manager, Machine Learning — Runway: Bridges ML systems with product strategy, leading ML-based feature development for Runway's creative tools across consumer and enterprise products. Remote.

• Enterprise GTM — Runway: Commercial role driving enterprise customer engagement, identifying AI use cases, and growing Runway's business accounts. New York, San Francisco, or Remote.

• Member of Technical Staff, Applied Research — Runway: Advances Runway's multimodal AI models through applied research on world models, video generation, and simulation technology. Remote research position.

• Director, Creative Tools — Runway: Senior leadership role overseeing the strategy and direction of Runway's creative tools ecosystem, guiding how AI capabilities are packaged for creative professionals. Remote.

3. Vega Security - AI-native security operations

Vega has raised $185M total (including a $120M Series B in December 2025). Positions are based in Israel (Tel Aviv), with careers hosted on Comeet.

• Software Engineer (Senior Full Stack) — Vega Security: Designs and builds scalable, high-performance systems for Vega's Threat Detection Platform. Requires 7+ years with Go/Python backend and React/TypeScript frontend. Israel-based.

• Security Research Team Leader — Vega Security: People-manager leading detection engineers and researchers delivering detection content, hunting notebooks, and posture-gap logic. Requires 8+ years cybersecurity and 3+ years team leadership.

• Cyber Threat Intelligence Researcher — Vega Security: Researches threat actors and adversary behavior, translating intelligence into detections and hunting strategies. Influences the evolution of Vega's Threat Intelligence Hub. Requires 6+ years in security operations.

• AI Engineer — Vega Security: Designs end-to-end AI solutions for the security platform, building and fine-tuning LLM-based applications for intelligent threat detection and response. Part of the founding AI team.

• Senior Product Manager — Vega Security: Owns the complete product lifecycle from strategy to execution, working directly with customers and security leaders to drive innovation in threat detection.

4. Apptronik - Humanoid robotics (Apollo platform)

Apptronik has 37 open roles on their Greenhouse board. Most positions are hybrid in Austin, TX, focused on the Apollo humanoid robot.

• Senior Software Engineer, Navigation — Apptronik: Leads development of advanced navigation systems including path planning, obstacle avoidance, and SLAM for humanoid robots. Requires experience with autonomous navigation on mobile/legged robots and modern C++.

• Senior Perception Learning Engineer — Apptronik: Develops advanced perception systems with deep learning models, multi-sensor fusion, and real-time performance in complex human environments for the Apollo robot.

• Senior Software Engineer, Real-Time Controls — Apptronik: Builds advanced real-time control software for general-purpose humanoid robots, ensuring effective hardware-software integration from concept through completion on Apollo.

• Staff Electrical Engineer — Apptronik: Leads electronics development for the Apollo humanoid robot, covering system architecture, PCB design, testing, compliance with safety standards, and mentoring staff.

• Product Quality Manager — Apptronik: Oversees the Quality Team, driving high standards through documentation and corrective actions across manufacturing of humanoid robots.

5. Tem - AI-powered electricity markets

Tem recently raised a $75M Series B (February 2026, led by Lightspeed) at a $300M+ valuation. London-based and fully remote, expanding into Texas and Australia. Their product, RED™, is an AI-powered energy transaction engine.

• Staff Analytics Engineer — Tem: Builds analytics infrastructure and establishes metrics for tem's energy transaction platform, driving data-driven decision-making to make energy systems more transparent.

• Staff Data Scientist — Tem: Applies data science to tem's proprietary pricing engine, developing ML models that predict energy supply and demand for direct renewable energy transactions.

• Technical Lead — Tem: Leads engineering efforts building and scaling the RED™ transaction infrastructure that enables businesses to buy renewable energy directly, bypassing traditional wholesale markets.

• Senior Staff Machine Learning Engineer — Tem: Develops ML models powering tem's Rosso pricing engine, using machine learning and LLMs to predict energy supply and demand across their renewable marketplace.

• Workflow Engineer — Tem: Designs and optimizes operational workflows and automation for contract execution, payments, and invoicing across tem's growing network of 3,000+ business sites.

6. Harvey - Legal AI platform

Harvey serves 1,000+ customers in 58+ countries and has extensive open positions on their Ashby-powered careers page. Most roles are hybrid in San Francisco.

• Senior Software Engineer, Full Stack — Harvey: Owns and leads full-stack engineering projects across Harvey's product suite (Assistant, Vault, Workflows). Hybrid in San Francisco.

• Staff Product Manager — Harvey: Early product team member working with founders on cutting-edge AI product challenges including multi-step agents and real-time retrieval over terabyte-scale datasets. Requires 5–10 years PM or SWE experience.

• Enterprise Account Executive, In-House — Harvey: Drives growth of Harvey's AI solutions for legal teams at large enterprises, owning the full sales cycle from outbound to close. Proven enterprise software sales track record required.

• Legal Engineer — Harvey: Skilled lawyers from top-tier firms who lead product demos, perform customer discovery, and build consultative relationships with law firm partners and in-house counsel. Requires JD and 3+ years at a Vault 50 firm.

• Engineering Manager, Product — Harvey: Leads teams of fullstack engineers building core product surfaces for legal professionals, from complex workflows to collaboration tools. Requires 2+ years SWE management and 5+ years as a fullstack/backend engineer.

7. Monaco - AI-native sales CRM (just exited stealth)

Monaco launched from stealth on February 11, 2026 with $35M in funding led by Founders Fund. Founded by Sam Blond (ex-Founders Fund/Brex), the company has ~40 employees and uses Ashby as their ATS.

• Senior Platform Engineer — Monaco: Builds Monaco's data and ML platform—pipelines, context systems, and infrastructure powering their AI-driven sales product. High-ownership role at the intersection of data engineering, distributed systems, and applied AI. Requires 3+ years building data platforms or ML infrastructure.

8. Inertia Enterprises - Laser-driven fusion energy

Inertia was founded in 2024 by Jeff Lawson (ex-Twilio CEO), Dr. Annie Kritcher (NIF fusion ignition lead), and Prof. Mike Dunne (Stanford). Based in Livermore, CA with ~13 employees and a fresh $450M Series A (February 2026, led by Bessemer). Careers hosted on Ashby.

• Controls Engineer – FPGA Firmware — Inertia Enterprises: Implements high-speed FPGA firmware for target tracking and laser beam pointing systems, designing FPGA architectures and developing deterministic low-latency control loops with optical sensor fusion.

• Materials Scientist or Engineer – Film Production — Inertia Enterprises: Leads mass production of high-performance thin films for inertial fusion energy targets, pioneering techniques for free-standing thin films at 10 Hz manufacturing rate with precision metrology.

• Design Physicist — Inertia Enterprises: Performs simulations to optimize and assess the impact of low-mode asymmetries on implosion performance for Inertia's fusion target designs.

• Design Physicist – LPI and Low-Density Plasmas — Inertia Enterprises: Studies laser–plasma interaction and laser propagation physics relevant to inertial fusion energy, focusing on laser absorption, speckle formation, and parametric instabilities.

• Lab Operations Manager — Inertia Enterprises: Oversees safe and effective operation of research labs at Inertia's 48,000 sq. ft. Livermore facility involving high-power lasers, vacuum systems, precision metrology, and materials processing.

9. xAI - Elon Musk's AI research lab

xAI currently has 286 open positions on their Greenhouse board, heavily weighted toward engineering ("Member of Technical Staff" titles) and data center operations. Offices in Palo Alto (HQ), San Francisco, Seattle, Memphis, and London.

• Member of Technical Staff, Infrastructure Reliability — xAI: Owns 24×7 reliability for the world's largest GPU training superclusters. Designs, implements, and ships systems software and automation in Python/Rust that directly impacts training throughput. Joint xAI/X role in Palo Alto.

• Member of Technical Staff, Pre-training Data Infrastructure — xAI: Works on data infrastructure powering the pre-training of xAI's frontier AI models, contributing to core data pipelines and systems at massive scale. Bay Area (SF/Palo Alto).

• Member of Technical Staff, Safety — xAI: Joins xAI's Applied Safety team driving ML solutions for compliance with platform Terms of Service and user safety. Requires experience in trust & safety, content moderation ML, and LLMs. Palo Alto.

• Member of Technical Staff, Governance Risk Compliance — xAI: Focuses on governance, risk, and compliance for xAI's AI systems at the intersection of technical implementation and regulatory/policy requirements. Palo Alto or Washington, D.C.

• Member of Technical Staff, Enterprise — xAI: Works directly with end customers owning strategy and execution of high-stakes AI projects, functioning similarly to a hands-on AI startup CTO. Small, client-facing team delivering enterprise AI solutions. San Francisco & Palo Alto.

Quick-reference summary

IBM to Triple Entry-Level US Hiring With Roles Recast for AI Era

This chart is the cleanest summary of what the last few years felt like. Startups were pretty steady in 2018–2019, then COVID hit and layoffs spiked hard (April 2020 shows 13,485). 2021 calmed down, rates started rising in early 2022, and then things broke open into the peak. The worst month was Jan 2023: 19,178 layoffs.

The part that matters most right now is the right side. 2024–2025 is a slow fade, not a snap back. Layoffs are lower than the peak, but we’re not back to the old baseline. That’s the real takeaway: startups are still running lean, shifting priorities faster, and cutting earlier when something isn’t working.

How to use this if you’re job hunting:

• Pick companies with a reason to exist in a down market. Revenue, compliance, or mission-critical spend beats “cool idea.”

• Interview like you’re buying a house. Ask about runway, what got funded this quarter, and what roles they’re hiring for because they have to, not because they’d like to.

• Aim for core teams. Product areas tied to reliability, security, infra, and monetization tend to survive when the belt tightens.

If you’ve been feeling like the market is still weird even though the headlines say “recovery,” this is why. The panic is down. The new normal is still tougher.

Join the Offboard Community!

Anything and everything we talk about here can be further discussed in our Slack Community (among many other job-seeking-related topics). Just look for the #newsletter channel to find specific topics to talk about!

Community | Website | Tools

"Nobody's success story sounded calm while they were creating it." -FS

👋 Welcome, {{first name | Jobseekers}}

AI just leveled up from “helpful” to doing real work end-to-end, so your job hunt has to evolve or get crushed. Workday, the HR company, cut 400 people, then waved through a CEO exit package that looks obscene next to severance. Use AI to halve your search time and ship proof fast. Money is still pouring into Runway world models, robotics, security, and energy AI. Also, 2025 hiring got revised down hard. Let’s dive in 🏊️ 

• 🧑‍✈️ Career CoPilot: "Something Big Is Happening": Latest AI models ignite both fear & excitement

• 📉 Layoff Report: Workday to Cut About 400 Employees Focused on Customer Support; Block cutting more than 1,100,

• 🔈️ Top Tech Signals This Week: Runway raises $315M to push “world models”

• 📡 Companies to Target This Week: Vega Security, Apptronik, Tem

• 📈 Trends & Data: 2025 Was Worse Than We Thought

"Something Big Is Happening": AI Is Now Doing Real Work End-to-End

A viral essay from HyperWrite CEO Matt Shumer makes a blunt claim: the “AI is kind of useful” era is over, and the “AI can do large chunks of real work end-to-end” era is here. He compares this moment to February 2020, when the early signals looked optional… until they weren’t.

Whether you buy his intensity or not, the direction is hard to ignore. One of the cleanest data points comes from METR, which measures how long a task (in human expert hours) an AI agent can complete reliably. METR reports that this “time horizon” has been climbing exponentially, with a historical doubling time around ~7 months (and notes it may have accelerated in 2024).

And this is not just blog vibes. Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei told Axios he believes AI could wipe out up to 50% of entry-level white-collar jobs within 1 to 5 years.

What this means for Offboard readers: you do not need to “predict the future.” You need to out-adapt the median worker.

Do this this week (seriously):

1. Upgrade your workflow, not your résumé first. Pick one recurring task (job apps, networking emails, interview prep, recruiter outreach) and make AI cut the time by 50%.

2. Build proof, not opinions. Create 2 to 3 portfolio artifacts fast: a tailored outreach sequence, a company research brief, a role-specific interview prep doc.

3. Become the “AI-forward” candidate. In interviews: “Here’s how I use AI to move faster without lowering quality.”

If you are early, this wave is a weapon. If you are late, it is a layoff multiplier.

Workday proving we’re still not doing enough for people who lose their jobs: lays off 400

This week a company whose entire product is “helping HR leaders take care of people” laid off ~400 employees and spent roughly $40 million on their severance and benefits. That same week, the outgoing CEO walked out the door with $3.5 million — cash + accelerated stock vesting — after less than three years in the role.

The co-founder, Aneel Bhusri, is stepping back in as CEO.

Let me say that again, slowly: A founder of a company that sells payroll and HR software to the world just inherited (or at best, tolerated) a situation in which one executive gets more money for leaving than hundreds of employees get for being asked to leave.

This is shameful.

Not “bad optics.” Not “standard industry practice.” Shameful. Because every single one of us in tech has either lived this, watched friends live this, or quietly hoped it wouldn’t be us next. We keep telling ourselves the next round of layoffs will be handled better, the safety net will be stronger, the founders will finally model something different.

They don’t. We don’t. The collective keeps failing the individuals. That’s why this newsletter exists. Not to rage (though rage is justified), but to make sure you’re not left holding the bag alone. Better job-search resources, real severance negotiation scripts, community connections, mental-health lifelines, and when enough of us are ready, pressure for actual systemic change.

If you’re navigating a layoff right now (Workday or anywhere else), hit reply. Tell me what you actually need this week: résumé help, interview practice, a place to vent, whatever. I read every single one.

We deserve better than this. And we’re going to build it together.

Source: TrueUp

• Fintech startup Fi pivots to focus on B2B tech services, plans layoffs 

• Palo Alto Networks cuts jobs after closing $25B CyberArk merger 

• UK's Ocado to eliminate up to 1,000 jobs in cost-cutting drive 

• Power Integrations cuts 7% of workforce as semiconductor revenue slows 

• Oppo said to begin Realme India layoffs weeks after brand reintegration 

• Riot Games lays off roughly 80 employees from 2XKO team 

• Salesforce quietly laid off workers in a new round of cuts 

• Global tech company to cut nearly 100 remote jobs near El Paso 

• Dorsey’s Block Cutting Up to 10% of Staff in Efficiency Push 

• Scope3 Cuts Engineering and Sales Staff in Second Round of Layoffs in 5 Months 

• Expedia plans 100 layoffs at North Austin office 

• Western Digital cuts 47 more jobs at San Jose headquarters following earlier round of layoffs 

• Denver tech company laying off hundreds, cited AI-driven efficiency 

• Crypto exchange Gemini plans to lay off up to 200 staff, exit Europe and Australia 

• Myntra consolidates Gurugram satellite ops with Bengaluru HQ leading to some transfers & layoffs 

• Consumer loan platform LendingTree lays off staff 

• Workday to Cut About 400 Employees Focused on Customer Support 

• Smartsheet layoffs: Enterprise software giant cuts staff 

• Remitly cuts 110 jobs in Israel and closes R&D hub three years after $80 million 

• Traveloka cuts jobs to reshape workforce for AI, long-term growth 

• Pinterest sacks workers for creating tool to track layoffs 

• Bellevue’s T-Mobile lays off 393 in WA as it ensures ‘right focus’ 

• Aumovio to cut 4,000 jobs as part of R&D spending rollback 

Top Tech Signals this Week

• Runway raises $315M to push “world models” (Score: 5) - Big Series E at a $5.3B valuation signals an aggressive scale phase and near-term hiring across ML, infra, product, and design.

• Vega Security raises $120M to rethink enterprise threat detection (Score: 5) - Series B explicitly tied to product buildout plus GTM expansion, a classic indicator of hiring ramp in security engineering, solutions, and sales engineering.

• Apptronik totals $935M raised at a $5B valuation (Score: 5) - Massive capital for humanoid robotics scale suggests broad hiring across robotics software, controls/perception, hardware, manufacturing, and field deployment.

• xAI co-founder and senior engineer exits amid reorg controversy (Score: 4) - High-profile departures plus reorg talk implies instability but also urgent backfills in AI infra/training/inference and product execution.

•  https://techcrunch.com/2026/02/09/tem-raises-75m-to-remake-electricity-markets-using-ai/ (Score: 4) - Energy + AI funding signals hiring in data, market operations, automation, and growth as the company scales into new geos and utilities.

• Harvey reportedly raising at an $11B valuation (Score: 4) - Legal AI leader staying in “scale mode” usually translates into ongoing hiring for product, engineering, and enterprise GTM roles.

• Monaco launches an AI-native sales platform aimed at Salesforce (Score: 3) - Early-stage entrant in rev-tech likely hiring fast for full-stack builders, data/CRM infrastructure, and early GTM execution.

8 Companies to Target this Week

(Near-term hiring probability: next 3 to 6 months)

1) Runway (AI video + world models)

• Stage: Growth (Series E) on a $5.3B valuation raise.

• Signal: Large round + aggressive roadmap typically drives headcount growth.

• Likely roles: ML, infra/platform, product, design, creative tools, enterprise GTM.

• Careers: https://runwayml.com/careers

2) Vega Security (AI-native security ops)

• Stage: Series B (~$700M valuation).

• Signal: Funding earmarked for product + GTM expansion.

• Likely roles: Backend/data, detection/threat, solutions, sales engineering, PM.

• Careers: https://www.comeet.com/jobs/vega/C9.009

3) Apptronik (humanoid robotics)

• Stage: Late A extension; $935M total raised at ~$5B valuation.

• Signal: Scaling robots implies hiring across hardware, autonomy, manufacturing, field ops.

• Likely roles: Robotics SW, perception, controls, mech/electrical, TPM, QA.

• Careers: https://apptronik.com/careers

4) Tem (AI-powered electricity markets)

• Stage: Growth-ish (fresh $75M raise; expanding).

• Signal: Energy + AI + US expansion usually means multi-team buildout.

• Likely roles: Data/analytics, ops automation, growth, energy policy/regulatory.

5) Harvey (legal AI)

• Stage: Late growth.

• Signal: Reported raise at higher valuation implies scale mode.

• Likely roles: Full-stack, applied AI, product, legal ops, enterprise GTM.

• Jobs: https://jobs.ashbyhq.com/harvey

6) Monaco (AI-native sales CRM)

• Stage: Early (seed/A vibes) launching from stealth.

• Signal: New product + agentic workflows = fast iteration hiring.

• Likely roles: Full-stack, data/CRM infra, PM, growth, sales engineering.

• Site: https://www.monaco.com/product

7) Inertia Enterprises (fusion, laser-driven)

• Stage: Series A.

• Signal: Large round to build core hardware program.

• Likely roles: Optical/mech, controls, materials, simulation, program ops.

• Jobs: https://www.inertia.com/jobs

8) xAI (AI lab)

• Stage: Late-stage scale, but volatile org.

• Signal: Senior churn often creates urgent backfills.

• Likely roles: Infra, training/inference, product, safety/compliance, GTM.

2025 Was Worse Than We Thought

Overview

January’s jobs report looked fine on the surface: payrolls rose by 130,000 and unemployment ticked down to 4.3%. But major benchmark revisions made 2025 look dramatically weaker than previously reported, turning a “soft” year into a near-standstill for hiring. The pattern is getting clearer: job growth is still heavily concentrated in health care and social assistance.

The numbers

• +130,000 nonfarm jobs in January 2026; unemployment rate 4.3%.

• 2025 payroll employment revised down by 403,000, leaving just +181,000 jobs in 2025 (about +15,000/month on average).

• January sector gains: +81,900 health care, +41,600 social assistance, +34,000 professional and business services, +33,000 construction.

• January was basically flat in consumer-facing sectors: ~+1,000 retail and ~+1,000 leisure and hospitality; federal government and financial activities fell.

• Context: the US added just over 2 million jobs in 2024 (about 168,000/month). 2025’s revised total is a fraction of that.

Why this matters for tech jobseekers

• Treat “headline job gains” as noise until you see breadth. The revisions are the story: hiring has been weaker than the vibes, so plan for a longer search and fewer fresh openings.

• Follow the gravity wells: health care, social assistance, and engineering postings are holding up better, so target health systems, payers, services vendors, and regulated-adjacent software (revenue cycle, compliance, scheduling, data).

• Make “budget-proof” your pitch. In low-hire markets, teams buy candidates who can reduce costs, automate ops, protect revenue, or de-risk compliance. Bring 2 to 3 quantified stories.

• Expect slower loops and cautious offers. Build a pipeline that includes contract-to-hire, backfills, and internal tools teams (construction and pro services strength can spill into IT, analytics, and systems work).

• Use the revisions as a networking hook: ask hiring managers what got funding despite 2025’s slowdown, and what metrics they must hit in 2026 to open headcount.

Join the Offboard Community!

Anything and everything we talk about here can be further discussed in our Slack Community (among many other job-seeking-related topics). Just look for the #newsletter channel to find specific topics to talk about!

Community | Website | Tools

👋 Happy Saturday, {{first name | Jobseekers}}

We’re trying a new weekend segment where we surface roles for our community that bring awareness to companies that are showing some green flag signals from a hiring perspective.

• 💧 This Week’s Jobs Drop: Positron, ElevenLabs, Waymo, Skyryse, and more

• 🏆️ Bonus: (Chart) Startup layoffs are down, but the floor is still higher

This Week’s Jobs Drop

These listings are from companies with real momentum, not just building a pipeline. Positron, Waymo, Skyryse, and Lotus are rapidly growing with fresh funding and in-demand products. For better odds and fewer dead-end applications, target companies like these.

Positron (AI hardware)

• ASIC Design Verification Engineer – Austin, TX (Hybrid) / Spokane, WA (Hybrid) / US (Remote) – Salary not listed – Verifies ASIC designs and collaborates across teams to ensure functionality and performance.

• Benchmarking and Performance Specialist – Liberty Lake, WA or US (Remote) – Salary not listed – Profiles inference performance across open-source models, builds dashboards, and supports CI/CD + Linux ops.

• IT Systems Administrator – Spokane, WA (On-site) – Salary not listed – Owns on-prem compute, networking, storage, monitoring, VPN access, and incident response for the lab cluster.

• Lead Emulation Engineer – Location not clearly shown on page – Salary not listed – Leads pre-silicon validation strategy on Cadence Palladium, enabling software bring-up pre-tapeout.

• Head of Business Operations – US (Remote) – Salary not listed – CEO-level operator across finance ops, investor relations, GTM programs, contracts, and company execution cadence.

ElevenLabs (Voice AI)

• Deployment Strategist – Remote (US/Canada) with listed hubs (NYC/SF/LA/Boston/DC) – Salary not listed – Forward-deployed engineer/strategist partnering with customers to ship voice products fast.

Waymo (Autonomous vehicles)

• Senior Software Engineer, Growth iOS – Mountain View, CA – Salary not listed on the snippet view – Builds iOS growth experiences, focusing on acquisition, engagement, and retention.

• Senior Staff Software Engineer, Simulator Efficiency – Location not shown in snippet – Salary not listed – Improves simulation efficiency and scale for evaluation systems used by the Waymo Driver.

• Sr. Software Engineer, Core Platforms – Location not shown in snippet – Salary not listed – Builds core platform software and infrastructure that supports multiple autonomy system components.

• Digital Media Lead – Mountain View, CA – Salary not listed – Runs multi-channel digital media strategy tying brand + growth into a full-funnel plan.

Skyryse (Aviation automation)

• Lead Display Software Engineer – El Segundo, CA (On-site) – $180,000 to $210,000 – Leads architecture/dev of aviation display systems, graphics pipelines, and embedded Linux integration.

• Lead Systems Engineer – El Segundo, CA (On-site) – $190,000 to $250,000 – Leads requirements, integration, certification artifacts, and validation for certifiable flight automation systems.

• Senior Systems Test Engineer – El Segundo, CA (On-site) – $150,000 to $170,000 – Owns electromechanical + avionics system test setups, SIL integration, and anomaly/root cause workflows.

• Cybersecurity Lead - IT – El Segundo, CA (On-site) – $120,000 to $150,000 – Leads security program and audit readiness (SOC 2, ISO 27001, NIST, etc.) in a safety-regulated environment.

Lotus Health (Healthcare AI)

• Founding Data Engineer – San Francisco, CA (On-site) – $200,000 to $250,000 + equity – Builds data pipelines and foundations for product + ops analytics.

• Growth Engineer – San Francisco, CA (On-site) – Salary not clearly shown on the role page snippet – Growth-focused full-stack/data engineering work to drive acquisition and activation experiments.

Fibr AI (AI agents for web)

• Product Engineer - AI – Bengaluru, India – Salary not listed – Backend/platform engineering plus AI integration for agentic personalization and experimentation.

Apeiron Labs (Robotics)

• Test Engineer – Greater Boston Area (Hybrid possible depending on role) – Salary not listed – Builds and executes test plans for autonomous underwater/surface vehicles and mission-level validation.

• Robotics Engineer – Location not shown in snippet – Salary not listed – Designs/builds/characterizes underwater robotic systems (hardware + autonomy).

🏆️ Bonus: Startup layoffs are down, but the floor is still higher

This chart is the cleanest summary of what the last few years felt like. Startups were pretty steady in 2018–2019, then COVID hit and layoffs spiked hard (April 2020 shows 13,485). 2021 calmed down, rates started rising in early 2022, and then things broke open into the peak. The worst month was Jan 2023: 19,178 layoffs.

The part that matters most right now is the right side. 2024–2025 is a slow fade, not a snap back. Layoffs are lower than the peak, but we’re not back to the old baseline. That’s the real takeaway: startups are still running lean, shifting priorities faster, and cutting earlier when something isn’t working.

How to use this if you’re job hunting:

• Pick companies with a reason to exist in a down market. Revenue, compliance, or mission-critical spend beats “cool idea.”

• Interview like you’re buying a house. Ask about runway, what got funded this quarter, and what roles they’re hiring for because they have to, not because they’d like to.

• Aim for core teams. Product areas tied to reliability, security, infra, and monetization tend to survive when the belt tightens.

If you’ve been feeling like the market is still weird even though the headlines say “recovery,” this is why. The panic is down. The new normal is still tougher.

Join the Offboard Community!

Anything and everything we talk about here can be further discussed in our Slack Community (among many other job-seeking-related topics). Just look for the #newsletter channel to find specific topics to talk about!

Community | Website | Tools

"Your greatest competition is yourself."

👋 Welcome, {{first name | Jobseekers}}

California might finally put a human back in the loop before an algorithm can torch your job, and that matters because AI is already buried in hiring and performance scoring. We’ll also track mega-funding in voice AI, chips, robotaxis, and more. Plus the Oracle layoff rumor is ugly and the data is murky with BLS blocked, so you’ll need sharper proof, tighter positioning, and comp in writing.

• 🔦 Jobseeker Spotlight: Angela Prendergast

• 🧑‍✈️ Career CoPilot: California wants to ban “robo bosses” from firing you

• 🔈️ Signals of the Week: ElevenLabs raises $500M at an $11B valuation

• 📉 Layoff Report: Oracle Plans To Lay Off 20,000 To 30,000 Employees

• 📈 Trends & Data: Shutdown Blocks BLS, Indeed Shows a Flat Start to 2026

Community Spotlight: Angela Prendergast (QA Lead)

This week we’re excited to spotlight Angela Prendergast, a seasoned Quality Assurance Lead and one of the most consistently helpful voices in our Slack. She’s also spent time with us at Offboard HQ in Concord, CA, jumping into working sessions and helping teams think more clearly about quality.

Why she’s worth knowing: Angela has spent years leading QA in fast-moving product environments, with a calm, practical approach that helps teams ship with confidence instead of stress.

Join the conversation:
Hiring QA, building a testing process, or just want a second brain on quality? Reply with “QA” and a sentence about what you’re working on. We’ll help make the right connection.

Connect with Angela on LinkedIn!

California Wants to Ban “Robo Bosses” From Firing You

California State Senator Jerry McNerney introduced SB 947, the “No Robo Bosses Act of 2026,” to require human oversight when employers use AI systems in workplace discipline and termination decisions. (Senator Jerry McNerney)

The bill would stop employers from relying solely on automated decision-making systems (ADS) to fire or discipline workers, require human oversight plus independent verification when ADS is used, and ban “predictive behavior” tools that use worker data to forecast future actions.

This is a reboot of SB 7, a similar bill that passed the Legislature but was vetoed by Gov. Gavin Newsom in October 2025 as overly broad. (Mintz)

The numbers

• SB 947 introduced Monday, Feb. 2, 2026

• Prior version SB 7 was vetoed Oct. 13, 2025 (after passing both chambers).

• Sponsor: California Federation of Labor Unions, AFL-CIO.

• Context: 44% of employees said their organization had implemented AI (Gallup, May 2025, up from 33% in May 2024).

• Context: A widely cited estimate says 83% of employers use AI tools in hiring (AP report).

Why this matters & how to protect yourself

• If you are job hunting in California, expect more scrutiny of “algorithmic management” and HR automation. Ask directly: Was any automated system used in screening, performance scoring, discipline, or termination decisions? (SB 947 would push disclosure after the fact in discipline/termination contexts).

• Build a “human review” paper trail now. Save performance feedback, tickets closed, customer notes, and manager praise. If something goes sideways, you want evidence a human can evaluate, not just a score.

• In interviews, pressure-test how the company uses AI in people decisions: Who signs off, what gets audited, and how employees can appeal. This is a practical culture signal, not a philosophical debate.

• If you are targeting HR tech, compliance, legal ops, data governance, or internal tools teams: this is a hiring wedge. Companies will need process design, logging, auditability, and policy implementation if bills like this move.

• Don’t assume “AI did it” is a safe employer excuse anymore. Regulation is trending toward accountability + human ownership, which can strengthen your negotiation posture on transparency and review rights.

Top Tech Signals of the Week

1. Positron raises $230M to take on Nvidia (Read More) - A new AI chip player just pulled in a big round to scale high-speed memory for AI workloads. AI infra hiring stays hot; more roles in silicon, systems, performance, and tooling; “compute efficiency” keeps becoming a product requirement.

2. ElevenLabs raises $500M at an $11B valuation (Read More) - Voice AI is getting mega-funded, signaling real enterprise spend and aggressive expansion. Demand for product, platform, and safety work around voice agents; growth teams need onboarding, docs, and developer experience.

3. Waymo raises $16B to expand robotaxis internationally (Read More) - Massive capital to scale fleets and launch in new cities (including international expansion). Hiring clusters in mapping, autonomy, operations, safety, and fleet logistics; partnerships and city launches create vendor ecosystems.

4. PayPal hires Enrique Lores as CEO (Read More) - Leadership change signals urgency on execution and restructuring. Near-term churn, but also new org charts and new bets; good window for targeted referrals into priority initiatives.

5. Skyryse raises $300M Series C (Read More) - Big funding behind aviation automation and safety tech. Signals continued demand for safety-critical software, autonomy, and certification-minded product work.

6. Lotus Health raises $35M for an “AI doctor” primary care model (Read More) - Healthcare AI is shifting from chat to care delivery workflows. Hiring demand for clinical ops + product + compliance; strong need for UX that builds trust.

Oracle Plans To Lay Off 20,000 To 30,000 Employees

Source: TrueUp

Oracle is considering laying off 20,000 to 30,000 employees, about 10% of its workforce, to fund its AI data center expansion. This move aims to free up $8 billion to $10 billion to support its $300 billion partnership with OpenAI and other AI projects, according to TD Cowen.

• Oracle analyst warns of 30,000 layoffs, asset sale as the cloud firm moves to tackle debt 

• Peloton cuts 11% of staff in cost-cutting push, spokesperson says 

• Zillow lets go of 200 employees in performance-related reductions at real estate company 

• Indian e-scooter firm Ola Electric to lay off 5% of workforce amid profitability push 

• Zupee lays off 200 in second round of job cuts after real money gaming ban 

• Boulder AI company reduces staff, cuts executive salaries to $1 

Shutdown Blocks BLS, Indeed Shows a Flat Start to 2026

Overview

A partial US government shutdown has delayed the December JOLTS release and the January jobs report, leaving job seekers flying without the usual monthly gauges. Indeed’s real-time Job Postings Index suggests 2025 cooled steadily, and early January 2026 looks more like “still slow” than “new rebound.” The next BLS release is also expected to include revisions and a key update to the birth-death model, which could reshape how strong 2025 really was.

The Numbers

• Indeed Job Postings Index: +11.5% vs pre-pandemic on Jan 1, 2025, down to +4.7% by Dec 31, 2025.

• January 2026: job postings essentially flat through the first three weeks (per Indeed).

• Indeed Wage Tracker (posted wages): 3.4% → 2.1% over 2025.

• Context: Indeed’s data portal shows job postings -5.9% year over year (through Jan 23, 2026).

• Context: BLS says the birth-death model will change with the January 2026 data release.

Why this Matters

• Expect fewer “easy yes” reqs. Shift your search toward teams hiring despite cooling: revenue-linked roles, cost reduction, security, data plumbing, and regulated industries.

• Put comp in writing early. With wage growth cooling, employers will lean harder on leveling, bands, and “total rewards”. Ask for the full package (bonus, equity, remote policy, severance) before you over-invest in interviews.

• Tighten your signal. In a low-hire environment, “nice” resumes die. Lead with 1–2 outcomes, quantified impact, and tools that map to the req’s must-haves.

• If you are waiting on macro clarity, don’t. Shutdown-delayed reports mean more uncertainty, not less. Treat Indeed posting trends as the nearer-term read and keep pipelines wide.

• Interview for the 2026 reality: “do more with less.” Prepare stories on automation, process simplification, and measurable productivity gains, not just feature delivery.

Join the Offboard Community!

Anything and everything we talk about here can be further discussed in our Slack Community (among many other job-seeking-related topics). Just look for the #newsletter channel to find specific topics to talk about!

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"The question isn't who's going to let me; it's who's going to stop me." -Ayn Rand

👋 Welcome, {{first name | Jobseekers}}

Big Tech is still cutting (Amazon and friends) while AI pulls money and hiring toward power, infrastructure, and the pick-and-shovel builders. LinkedIn is turning AI tool usage into official skill signals, and Anduril is literally making hiring a contest. Meanwhile, $83B a month in side hustles says “portfolio career” is the new baseline, and bachelor’s filters depend heavily on your ZIP code.

• 📆 Event: Build AI workflows with GTM folks over sundowner

• 🧑‍✈️ Career CoPilot: $83B/Month in Side Hustles: What Tech Should Learn

• 🔈️ Signals of the Week: LinkedIn is adding AI skill certificates tied to real tool usage

• 📉 Layoff Report: Amazon axes 16,000 jobs as it pushes AI and efficiency; Pinterest, Oracle, Autodesk with big cuts as well

• 📈 Trends & Data: The Bachelor’s Degree Isn’t Dead.

  It’s Regional.

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Top Signals of the Week

Tech is in whiplash mode: the giants are still cutting to get leaner, while AI is lighting a fresh money fire under everything that powers it, from data centers to nuclear fuel. The takeaway is simple: chase the AI gravity wells and the pick-and-shovel builders, and be extra skeptical of “generalist” roles sitting far from revenue or infrastructure.

• Big Tech is still cutting while “strategic hiring” continues. Amazon announced 16,000 layoffs as it keeps flattening org layers and pushing teams toward higher ownership and speed. This is the clearest reminder that “brand-name stability” is not a plan right now.

• Consumer platforms are trimming to fund AI priorities. Pinterest is laying off under 15% of staff to redirect resources toward AI-focused roles and product bets. The pattern is repeating across the market: cut the nice-to-have, double down on AI roadmap.

• AI is driving a second-order boom in power and infrastructure. Redwood Materials extended its Series E to $425M, bringing in Google, as AI data centers push electricity needs higher. This is a major signal that “AI jobs” include the physical backbone: energy storage, grid software, supply chain, manufacturing, and data-center ops.

• Autonomous driving is showing real momentum again. Waabi raised $1B and is expanding into robotaxis with Uber, with plans for a large-scale rollout. That kind of funding plus a platform partnership typically translates into hiring across autonomy stacks, simulation, safety, and fleet tooling.

• Nuclear is back, pulled forward by AI’s energy appetite. Standard Nuclear raised $140M to produce fuel for small modular reactors, part of a broader rush into “picks and shovels” for next-gen power. Deep tech and regulated industries are quietly becoming growth zones again.

• AI skills signaling is getting more official. LinkedIn is adding AI skill certificates tied to real tool usage (including coding and creative AI apps). Expect hiring filters to increasingly reward demonstrable tool fluency, not just claims.

• Some hiring funnels are turning into competitions. Anduril launched an “AI Grand Prix” drone contest where top performers can skip the hiring line. Skill-based recruitment is spreading in AI, robotics, and defense tech.

Amazon laying off about 16,000 corporate workers in latest anti-bureaucracy push 

Source: TrueUp

Amazon said Wednesday it plans to eliminate about 16,000 corporate jobs, marking its second round of mass job cuts since last October. In a blog post, the company wrote that the layoffs were part of an ongoing effort to “strengthen our organization by reducing layers, increasing ownership, and removing bureaucracy.” That coincides with a push to invest heavily in artificial intelligence.

• Amazon laying off about 16,000 corporate workers in latest anti-bureaucracy push 

• ASML Plans to Cut 1,700 Jobs to Reduce Management Layers 

• NetEase Games is cutting jobs in Montreal 

• Pinterest laying off 15% of workforce in push toward AI roles and teams 

• Gaming unicorn Moon Active cuts 5% of workforce as it reshapes operations 

• Expedia Group lays off employees in latest cuts at Seattle travel giant 

• Entropy, a16z-backed decentralized custody startup, is winding down and returning capital to investors 

• One of the oldest NFT trading platform which facilitated over $300 million in sales at its peak shuts down 

• Autodesk Cutting 1,000 Jobs As Part of Restructuring 

• Shopify makes more job cuts, this time targeting partnerships team 

• Vimeo lays off ‘large portion’ of staff after Bending Spoons buyout 

• Wildgate maker Moonshot laying off unspecified number of staff 

• Code.org lays off 18 employees ‘to ensure long-term sustainability’ at education nonprofit 

• Layoffs Hit Payday 3 Developer Starbreeze 

• Oracle plans to cut over 250 jobs in Bay Area in latest layoff round 

$83B/Month in Side Hustles: What Tech Should Learn

Side hustles are not only not going away, but they’re evolving into “portfolio careers.” More people will mix full-time work with freelance, fractional roles, and paid projects to reduce risk, keep skills current, and create options in a market shaped by layoffs, high costs, and rapid AI change. The big shift isn’t just having a side hustle. It’s treating multiple income streams as a normal, intentional strategy.

The data

• 73% of Americans say side hustles are a financial necessity.

• One-third of Americans have a side hustle.

• Side hustlers collectively earn $83.1B extra per month.

• 51% started their side hustle within the past year.

Why this matters for tech jobseekers

Hiring managers are increasingly comfortable with non-linear careers (if you can show proof of impact). Experts predict that gig work will be more recognized in career progression (“gig portfolios”), and that side hustles will become part of mainstream financial planning. Translation for tech: shipped work + measurable results can carry as much weight as titles, especially when companies are cautious about full-time headcount.

As AI rapidly changes the game, the safest posture is building resilience: upskilling, testing new domains, and stacking small wins that make your next role easier to land.

What to do with this: treat your job search like a portfolio. Keep a main track (full-time roles) and a second track (contract/fractional/project work) so you’re building recent, verifiable outcomes while you interview. The candidates who win in 2026 won’t just say they’re adaptable. They’ll have receipts.

The Bachelor’s Degree Isn’t Dead.
It’s Regional.

“Skills-first” hiring is growing, but bachelor’s degree requirements are not disappearing. Indeed data shows the share of US job postings requiring a BA+ rose meaningfully from late 2023 to late 2025, and even when you control for shifting job mix, degree requirements have been inching up since March 2024. Where you live matters a lot: some states and metros still screen heavily on degrees, even for similar job titles.

The numbers

• 19.3% of US Indeed job postings required a bachelor’s degree or higher in Nov 2025, up from 16.6% in Nov 2023.

• 51% of postings listed no formal education requirement (meaning 49% listed some requirement).

• After adjusting for job-title mix, BA+ requirements hit a 5-year low of 18.5% (Mar 2024) and ticked up to 18.6% (Nov 2025).

• State raw BA+ share: Washington, D.C. 43.7% vs Mississippi 11.3% (Nov 2025).

• Adjusted by identical job-title mix: D.C. 22.4% vs Alaska 10.6% (Nov 2025).

Why this matters for jobseekers

• Treat “skills-first” as a messaging trend, not a guarantee. Expect degree filters to persist, especially in policy-heavy, regulated, and professional-services hubs.

• If you are non-degree or career-switching, target geographies and employers where BA+ requirements are lower, then use proof packets: portfolio, work samples, shipped projects, certs, and references.

• In degree-heavy metros (DC, Boston, NYC, Chicago), assume tougher screening. Lead with keywords that match the JD, and add a “Comparable experience” line near the top of your resume.

• If a posting says “BA required” but the work is practical, try a backdoor entry: referrals, contractor-to-hire, adjacent titles, or teams with more skills-based managers.

• For recruiters: ask directly, “Is the degree a hard requirement or a preference?” The methodology notes many ads mention degrees but accept lower levels.

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"Everyone discovers an extra gear in a crisis. The rare skill is accessing it without one." -FS

👋 Welcome, {{first name | Jobseekers}}

This week’s tape is clear: AI still has the oxygen. Humans& just pulled a $480M seed at a $4.48B valuation, Parloa jumped to $350M at $3B, and Runpod hit $120M ARR after starting from a Reddit post, which is exactly what “we need infra that works” looks like. On the flip side, the market is still cutting where conviction is weaker: Ericsson is proposing 1,600 layoffs in Sweden. Layer on the bigger shift and you get the playbook for 2026: companies want results fast, which is why fractional leadership is rising and why you should pitch yourself like an operator with a 30-day plan, not a résumé with vibes. Let’s dive in 🏊️ 

• 🧑‍✈️ Career CoPilot: Fractional Leadership Is Rising as Full-Time Stability Fades

• 🔈️ Signals of the Week: Humans& reportedly raised a $480M seed round at a $4.48B valuation

• 📉 Layoff Report: Ericsson to layoff 1,600 jobs in Sweden

• 📈 Trends & Data: The job “bundle” is the new battleground (and you should interview for it)

Top Signals of the Week

AI is still where the oxygen is, and the numbers this week were loud.

• Humans& reportedly raised a $480M seed round at a $4.48B valuation (yes, seed). That’s “build a real company fast” money, with heavyweight investors like Nvidia and Jeff Bezos involved.

• Parloa raised $350M at a $3B valuation, just 8 months after raising $120M at a $1B valuation. That kind of step-function jump usually means big enterprise demand and urgent hiring.

• On the consumer side, Higgsfield claims 15M+ users and a $200M annual revenue run rate, doubling from a $100M trajectory in about two months. That’s rapid scaling pressure across product + infra.

• And on the “boring but durable” end of the market, Runpod hit $120M ARR after starting from a Reddit post. Infrastructure companies that reach that scale tend to hire steadily because reliability becomes existential.

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Ericsson to layoff 1,600 jobs in Sweden

Source: TrueUp

Ericsson, the Swedish telecommunications-equipment company said the proposal to cut around 12% of its workforce in the country forms part of its global plans to improve its cost base while maintaining investments in technology and executing its strategy.

• Vega Cloud enters receivership, with millions in debt 

• Vimeo begins winding down its Israeli operations after broad layoffs 

• Polygon Labs said to have laid off 60 staff following new $250 million acquisition 

• Ericsson to shed 1600 jobs in Sweden 

• Meta layoffs hit Seattle-area VR studio Camouflaj, developer behind ‘Batman’ game 

• Private-equity Buy Leads to Layoffs at Jepp ForeFlight 

• Tipalti laying off dozens of employees 

• Informatica lays off workers, including CEO, after Salesforce acquisition 

• Ericsson lays off hundreds of employees in Spain 

• MANTRA cuts staff amid restructuring as OM token remains 99% below peak 

• Aleph Alpha cuts around 50 jobs 

Source: https://www.forbes.com/sites/carolinecastrillon/2026/01/13/why-fractional-leadership-is-exploding-as-full-time-jobs-fade/

Fractional Leadership Is Rising as Full-Time Stability Fades

Overview

A growing number of companies are shifting away from traditional, full-time executive hires and toward fractional leaders—senior operators brought in for a defined scope, timeline, and outcome. The logic is simple: businesses want top-tier expertise without long-term fixed costs, and leaders want more control after seeing how quickly “stable” roles can disappear in a reorg.

Key Points

• Executive stability is shrinking. Tenures are shorter, and leadership roles are increasingly treated as outcome-based engagements rather than long careers.

• Fractional turns fixed cost into variable cost. Instead of paying a full C-suite package year-round, companies pay for the leadership capacity they need, when they need it.

• Business problems are more specialized—and urgent. Companies often need deep expertise for discrete moments: fundraising prep, a product launch, market expansion, a turnaround, or building go-to-market.

• Speed beats hiring cycles. Fractional leaders can start in weeks, while full-time executive searches can take months.

• Leaders diversify for security. Fractional work spreads risk across multiple clients, replacing “job security” with “demand security.”

Why This Matters (for tech jobseekers)

This is a preview of how more roles will be hired: shorter time horizons, clearer deliverables, and faster proof of impact. Even if you’re aiming for full-time, you’ll win more interviews by presenting yourself like a fractional operator: “Here’s the problem I solve, the 30-day plan, and the metrics I’ll move.”

Source: https://www.hiringlab.org/2026/01/19/2025-indeed-workforce-insights-survey/

The job “bundle” is the new battleground (and you should interview for it)

1) Pay is still #1… but it’s not the only lever

Yes, compensation leads: 69% of US/Canada jobseekers say higher pay is their top reason for searching.
But the bigger shift is how people judge roles now: as a package deal that includes pay plus benefits, flexibility, stability, and meaning.

2) Benefits are the underrated negotiation win

“Better benefits” ranked #2 motivator in 6 of 8 countries — and 49% of employed US jobseekers said it’s a key reason they look.

In the US, the most valued benefits are basic but decisive:

• Health insurance: 63%

• Vacation days: 63%

• Paid sick days: 59%

• Flexible hours: 47%

• Remote work: 39%

Jobseeker takeaway: if salary bands are tight, benefits are often where companies still have room to move. Negotiate them like comp.

3) Flexibility is in demand — but getting harder to find

Flexibility matters more than ever (especially for women, per the report), yet the supply is stalling. In US job postings, mentions of “flexible schedules” peaked at 14.4% (Nov 2023) and dipped to 13.7% by Oct 2025.

Jobseeker takeaway: don’t treat “flexible” as a vibe. Treat it as a feature you verify.

4) The smartest screening question in 2026: “How do you support AI?”

The report describes a widening split between workers who are supported and trained in AI (and gain productivity) vs. those who are disengaged — and employer encouragement is strongly tied to adoption.

Ask early:

• “What AI tools are approved internally?”

• “What training or enablement do you provide?”

Join the Offboard Community!

Anything and everything we talk about here can be further discussed in our Slack Community (among many other job-seeking-related topics). Just look for the #newsletter channel to find specific topics to talk about!

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"Edit yourself for approval and you become a minority shareholder in your own life." -FS

👋 Welcome, {{first name | Jobseekers}}

Welcome to the week where Meta lights another pile of cash on fire (hello, empty $58B metaverse mall) and then hands out 1,500 pink slips like it’s “streamlining season.” Meanwhile, the real hiring gravity is back in the boring, expensive, grown-up stuff: AI in healthcare, security, infrastructure, and the companies actually in build mode (Swap, Cyera, Deepgram, Anduril).

• 🧑‍✈️ Career CoPilot: Zuck’s Metaverse: A $58B Empty Mall

• 📅 Events: FounderNexus’ The Art of the Scrape: Doing More With Less

• 📡 Company Radar: Swap, Cyera, DeepGram, Anduril

• 🔈️ Signals of the Week: OpenAI + Anthropic push into healthcare AI,

• 📉 Layoff Report: Meta lays off 1,500 in the Metaverse

• 📈 Trends & Data: Best Jobs in the US for 2026

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Meta lays off 1,500 in the Metaverse

Source: TrueUp

Meta is laying off 10% of staff in its Reality Labs division, which is core to developing the company’s VR and metaverse products. Reality Labs had roughly 15,000 employees, and the cuts could impact over 1,000 people.

• Meta Lays Off 1,500 People in Metaverse Division 

• Playtika to lay off about 500 employees in 15% workforce cut 

• Ubisoft confirms layoffs at Abu Dhabi studio 

• Ericsson lays off hundreds of employees in Spain 

• eToro to lay off 7% of workforce 

• StoreDot lays off dozens as it prepares for $800 million SPAC merger 

• MercadoLibre lays off 119 employees amid AI expansion 

• Layoffs at Devoteam 

• Crypto exchange OKX cuts institutional staff amid global restructuring 

• Bay Area semiconductor testing company to lay off more than 200 workers 

• Warner Bros. Games eliminates roles at San Francisco studio 

• Kaseya Lays Off 5 Percent Of Workforce, Says The Move Is Aimed At Aligning ‘Go-To-Market Teams’ 

• Foretellix lays off about 18% of its workforce as AI adoption reshapes operations 

• Rad Power Bikes closing stores in Vancouver, B.C., and Florida; 7 more will remain open 

• AI chip unicorn Hailo to lay off nearly 10% of staff as it refocuses on robotics and Physical AI 

• Tailwind lays off 75% of its 4-person engineering team, citing 'brutal impact AI has had on our business' 

• Angi to eliminate 350 jobs, citing ‘AI-driven efficiency improvements’ 

• Ubisoft closes its recently-unionized Halifax studio, says it's not because of the unionizing 

Source: TrueUp

FounderNexus Event: [Founders Only] The Art of the Scrape: Doing More With Less

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Top Signals of the Week

1. OpenAI + Anthropic push into healthcare AI. Both are launching health-focused experiences and positioning them as “serious tools,” not chat toys. Why this matters: healthcare has budgets, urgency, and compliance requirements. That combo forces hiring across product, security, data, and applied ML.

2. Anthropic’s $10B raise is a hiring gravity well. When a lab raises that kind of cash, it buys three things: compute, distribution, and talent. Why this matters: even if you do not want to work at a frontier lab, their spending creates second-order hiring in vendors, partners, and startups building on their models.

3. IPO window is cracking open (Discord, others). IPO prep usually triggers “adulting” hires: finance ops, analytics, security, enterprise GTM, reliability. Why this matters: late-stage companies often resume hiring to hit cleaner growth narratives before listing.

4. VC is back in frontier sectors. Big funds are raising massive pools and pointing them at AI, defense tech, security, and infrastructure. Why this matters: those sectors translate funding into headcount faster than consumer apps right now.

5. Rapid back-to-back funding rounds signal real demand. E-commerce enablement, cloud data security, and voice AI are getting stacked rounds.Why this matters: this is where near-term hiring shows up first, especially in product, platform engineering, and enterprise customer teams.

Zuck’s Metaverse: The World’s Most Expensive Empty Mall

Mark Zuckerberg renamed the whole company “Meta,” poured a comical amount of money into the metaverse… and then (oops) started treating it like that treadmill you buy in January and quietly turn into a coat rack by February.

The “Subsidized Ghost Town” Scorecard

According to the PDF’s roundup of reports and chatter:

• Reality Labs burn: roughly $58B+ spent since 2019 (with some estimates pushing higher).

• Horizon Worlds scale: peaked at under ~200k monthly users, with engagement described as withering after that.

• Retention: only ~11% of users come back after week one, aka “one awkward VR hangout and I’m out.”

• Creator economy, but make it lonely: fewer than 9% of worlds ever get 50+ visitors, which is an impressive way to build 10,000 unvisited rooms.

If you do the cursed math the PDF tees up, you get a vibe like: “We spent luxury-car money per user to create… legless avatars standing around in digital silence.”

The Pivot That Says Everything (Without Saying Anything)

After publicly doubling down on the metaverse vision, Meta’s Reality Labs cuts (around ~1,500 roles) are the quiet admission phase, with budgets shifting toward AI.

Career Signal (the part that’s not just comedy)

If you’re job hunting: Meta’s priorities look like AI-first funding and headcount, with VR “nice-to-have” bets getting treated like yesterday’s hype cycle.

Translation: follow the spend, not the speeches.

Teams Ready to Hire

Here are four targets that scream “build mode,” plus how to position yourself.

Swap (e-commerce platform expansion)

• What’s happening: big funding, fast follow-on round, global commerce angle.

• Likely roles: product (merchant tools), full-stack, platform, growth, partnerships, solutions.

• Your angle: talk about scaling workflows, payments, logistics, and reducing friction for merchants. Show you can ship features that move GMV.

Cyera (cloud data security)

• What’s happening: monster round, major enterprise traction, security is non-optional.

• Likely roles: security engineering, cloud infrastructure, data classification, enterprise product, solutions engineering, sales ops, data analytics.

• Your angle: emphasize trust, compliance, and measurable risk reduction. If you can translate messy data estates into clean systems, you are valuable here.

Deepgram (voice AI, real business use cases)

• What’s happening: large raise, product expansion, acquisition to broaden vertical coverage.

• Likely roles: ML engineering (speech), infra, API product, developer experience, enterprise implementations, integrations.

• Your angle: show you can make complex tech usable. Portfolio wins here include real-time systems, developer tools, or shipping APIs people love.

Anduril and the defense-tech ecosystem 

• What’s happening: defense tech is getting sustained funding and serious contracts.

• Likely roles: real-time software, computer vision, robotics, systems, product for hardware-software workflows, program management.

• Your angle: highlight reliability, security mindset, and comfort with real-world constraints. Bonus points for any gov or regulated-industry experience.

Pattern: the hiring heat is in companies selling into enterprises or governments, not vibes-based consumer products.

Best Jobs in the US for 2026

Indeed’s “Best Jobs in the US for 2026” points to concentrated growth: opportunity hasn’t vanished, it’s pooling in roles that combine specialized expertise with real-world accountability and trust.

Tech takeaway

Tech is in a rebalance. Many broad titles face tougher competition, but companies still hire for work that protects revenue, reduces risk, and keeps critical systems running.

Where jobseekers can still win

1) Specialize (don’t sound generic)

Lead with a clear wedge, not a catch-all title:

• Security / privacy / compliance

• Platform, reliability, and cost efficiency

• Data science that ships to production

• Enterprise systems + workflow automation

2) Get closer to “must-have” work

Target teams tied to core outcomes: uptime, risk reduction, fraud/pricing/ops analytics, and mission-critical software.

3) Follow growth gravity without a full pivot

Healthcare is a major growth engine overall, which boosts demand in healthcare-adjacent tech: providers/payers, benefits, revenue-cycle, regulated data, security, and interoperability.

Moves to make this week

• Pick one lane (one-sentence positioning).

• Pick 15 target companies where that lane is essential.

• Build one proof artifact (case study, architecture note, dashboard demo, PRD teardown, or postmortem).

• Update your headline + top bullets to quantify outcomes (cost, uptime, revenue, risk).

Bottom line

In 2026, interviews come from clear positioning + credible proof, not from spraying more applications.

Discuss this newsletter in the Offboard Slack!

Anything and everything we talk about here can be further discussed in our Slack Community (among many other job-seeking-related topics). Just look for the #newsletter channel to find specific topics to talk about!

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"Your goals are not big enough." -FS

👋 Welcome, {{first name | Jobseekers}}

Welcome to 2026, where AI funding is infinite and layoffs are the bill. Today we’re naming the leaders and power brokers who sell “progress” while workers eat the cost, then turning the chaos into action: the WARN wave and Microsoft cut rumors, the new war chests at Anthropic and xAI, what a frozen JOLTS market means for your job hunt, and a couple tools to sharpen your story fast.

• 🧑‍✈️ Career CoPilot: Holding Leadership Accountable: Funding AI at a Human Cost

• 📡 Headlines from the Valley: Anthropic’s $10B is a ridiculous war chest; hiring on the horizon, xAI raises $20B - is money even real?

• 📉 Layoff Report: Microsoft's Rumored Mega-Cut, 100+ Companies file for WARN in January

• 📈 Trends & Data: Everyone’s Staying Put. That’s the Problem.

• 🛠️ Jobseeker Tools: Resyfy, Linkedin Profile Optimizer

Microsoft's Rumored Mega-Cut, 100+ Companies file for WARN in January

Source: TrueUp

The first week of 2026 sees projections of massive cuts, with WARN filings spiking and rumors swirling. Over 100 companies filed WARN notices in January nationwide (not all tech, but many affected corporate/tech roles). Tech-specific trackers show early 2026 quiet so far, but insiders scream incoming pain.

• Microsoft's Rumored Mega-Cut: Reports claim 11k-22k jobs (5-10% of 220k workforce) in January, targeting Azure, Gaming/Xbox, Sales, and middle management. Driven by $80B+ AI capex. RTO mandate labeled "soft layoff" to trigger voluntary exits. Confidence high per Blind/Reddit leaks; third week of Jan eyed.

• Amazon's Ongoing Axe:  Building on late-2025 cuts (14k corporate confirmed), and up to 30K rumored. January WARNs include Amazon. 2,400 Washington state roles tied to $100B AI pivot. Efficiency excuses mask AI automation push.

• Broader WARN Wave: 100+ firms signal January pain. Tech feels a ripple in the supply chain/corporate. X whispers of smaller unreported trims in cybersecurity and startups.

Holding Leadership Accountable: Funding AI at a Human Cost

Innovation is the alibi. Layoffs are the receipt. If tech leaders want the credit for “changing the world,” they also get the responsibility for the people they churn through to fund the next AI land-grab. We’re about to name names, match rhetoric to outcomes, and ask the question Silicon Valley hates most: when the hype cycle cashes out and humans get cut, who’s accountable in the age of AI?

• Tim Cook: Apple has leaned on buybacks and incremental upgrades while visibly lagging in AI. Vision Pro didn’t break through, Siri still trails, and leadership departures have fueled real questions about Apple’s direction.

• Mark Zuckerberg: Meta talks “superintelligence” while cutting teams, churning talent, and trying to buy momentum back with expensive hires. The result looks like hype plus pressure, with VR and AI bets still bleeding cash and morale.

• Jeff Bezos: Amazon is slashing jobs while pouring billions into automation and AI that replaces people faster than it helps them. The message is brutal and consistent: efficiency first, workers absorb the cost.

• Sam Altman: OpenAI sells a world-saving narrative while demanding ever more capital and compute to compete. He warns about AI risk while accelerating it, and that gap is the accountability story.

• Garry Tan: YC preaches integrity and “build real things,” but its culture has drifted into performative online chaos and a flood of AI wrapper bets. The brand feels less like a craft guild and more like a hype refinery.

• Peter Thiel: Thiel champions “freedom” while building and profiting from surveillance-heavy power structures. Contrarian theory aside, the real output is influence without transparency and consequences without ownership.

• a16z: Andreessen Horowitz markets techno-optimism while running an exclusivity machine that amplifies hype cycles and treats most founders and employees as churn. When the narrative breaks, they pivot, and everyone else holds the bag.

None of this is anti-innovation. It’s pro-accountability. If leaders want to bet billions on AI and call it progress, they should also own the layoffs, the culture damage, and the downstream mess they leave behind. The era of “move fast” is over. Show the receipts, take responsibility, and stop outsourcing the human cost to everyone else.

Anthropic’s $10B is a ridiculous war chest; hiring on the horizon

• xAI says it raised $20B in Series E funding: A giant cash injection that likely translates into a fast hiring ramp across AI infrastructure, model engineering, and product for Grok and X.

• Anthropic reportedly raising $10B at a $350B valuation: Another big funding signal that top AI labs are still in “scale mode,” which usually means headcount growth in research, infra, and enterprise product.

• Shopify competitor Swap raises $100M: Fresh capital for an e-commerce platform trying to out-execute incumbents, a classic setup for near-term hiring in product, engineering, and growth. 

• Intel spinout Articul8 raises more than half of a $70M round: Enterprise AI for regulated industries is getting funded, which typically pulls demand toward platform engineers, solutions roles, and applied ML.

• LMArena lands a $1.7B valuation four months after launching: AI evaluation and benchmarking is becoming a real business, a strong hiring signal for data, ML tooling, and platform engineering teams.

• Mobileye acquires humanoid robot startup Mentee Robotics for $900M: Robotics plus autonomy is consolidating, which can open new roles at the acquirer and trigger talent churn across the space.

• OpenAI unveils ChatGPT Health: A big product bet on health workflows that will likely pull hiring toward safety, product, and applied AI roles touching sensitive user contexts.

• European banks plan to cut 200,000 jobs as AI takes hold: A blunt warning that “automation plus cost cutting” is accelerating in finance, especially in ops-heavy functions.

• Flutterwave buys Nigeria’s Mono: Fintech consolidation in Africa is real, and acquisitions often mean integration work and new hiring priorities around platform, data, and compliance.

• Discord’s IPO could happen in March: If public markets open up, IPO prep usually drives hiring in finance, security, infrastructure reliability, and compliance.

• Lux Capital lands $1.5B for its largest fund ever: More dry powder for frontier tech means more startup formation and follow-on rounds, a medium-term hiring tailwind in AI, defense, and hard tech.

Everyone’s Staying Put. That’s the Problem.

Overview

The latest JOLTS read says the labor market is not “falling apart.” It’s freezing in place, and that’s bad news for fast promotions and big pay jumps, according to Indeed Hiring Lab.

The Details

• Job openings held at 7.1M in November, but are down 885,000 year over year.

• The job openings rate was 4.3% (little changed).

• Quits were ~3.2M and the quits rate was 2.0% (still muted).

• Layoffs and discharges were ~1.7M and the layoff rate stayed 1.1%.

• Openings fell in accommodation/food (-148k), transportation/warehousing/utilities (-108k), and wholesale (-63k). Construction rose (+90k).

• The Fed’s median projection has unemployment at 4.4% in 2026; actual unemployment hit 4.6% in Nov 2025.

Nerd Note: The quits rate is a simple confidence signal. When it’s low, fewer people risk switching jobs for more pay.

Why It Matters

When workers stop moving, companies feel less pressure to raise wages, and “new openings” become more about replacement hiring than growth. Also, hiring energy is getting more concentrated in healthcare, which matters if you’re aiming for speed-to-offer.

• Software + Data: Your fastest path may be “boring but hiring” healthcare IT, analytics, security, and ops roles.

• Product + Design: Expect longer cycles in sectors with falling openings (logistics, warehousing). Build a healthcare-flavored portfolio story.

• GTM (Sales/CS): Lower churn means fewer backfills. Prioritize teams still adding headcount (health systems, payers, vendors).

Resyfy

Your AI Career Assistant Turning achievements into opportunities

Resyfy AI doesn’t just store your achievements. It organises your experience, understands your career journey, and highlights what matters most so you can present the best version of yourself for every role, review, or opportunity.

Linkedin Profile Optimizer

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Discuss this newsletter in the Offboard Slack!

Anything and everything we talk about here can be further discussed in our Slack Community (among many other job-seeking-related topics). Just look for the #newsletter channel to find specific topics to talk about!

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"The goal is not to “cope better” inside a broken system. The goal is to become harder to exploit, financially, socially, professionally, and civically."

👋 Welcome, {{first name | Jobseekers}}

2026 just kicked the door in, and the job market is already trying to gaslight you into thinking you’re the problem. You’re not. The rules changed, the lanes got blurry, and the people at the top are happily running “efficiency” experiments on everyone else’s rent money. So here’s Offboard’s New Year’s stance: we’re done begging for permission to be stable. This year you become a harder target, a faster learner, and a louder signal. Specialists aren’t “dead,” but if you can’t ship across tools, teams, and chaos, you’re playing last year’s game. We’re going builder-mode: generalist edge, ruthless systems, AI workflows that save hours a day, and a community that trades leads like it’s survival. Welcome to 2026. No coping. No quiet panic. Just leverage.

• 📣 PSA: We’re Not Leaving Quietly

• 🧑‍✈️ Career CoPilot: Specialists are cooked? Why “Generalists” are getting the interviews

• 📡 Company Radar: 🔥 Hot Companies This Week - Sauron, Manus, MayimFlow, OpenAI

• 📉 Layoff Report: After a $2.5 billion exit, Sapiens cuts 700 jobs

• 📈 Trends & Data: The AI gap is not where you think, and it’s costing people hours every day

• 🛠️ Jobseeker Tools: Lovable, Hat Stack

We’re Not Leaving Quietly

Living in the U.S. as a normal person can feel like getting invoiced by reality every 5 minutes: rent, healthcare, groceries, layoffs, “reorgs,” and the polite suggestion that you should be grateful for the opportunity to compete in the Hunger Games.

So let’s name the moment. The system is asking working people to absorb more risk and less upside, then smile on Zoom.

No.

You are not powerless, you are outnumbered, and you are not alone. The move is not “accept it.” The move is “organize your life like a strategist.”

Here’s the reality check: inflation is still chewing up budgets, the job market is weird and sluggish, tech has been a blender, healthcare is a paycheck tax, and “rent easing” is not the same thing as “rent affordable.” None of this is in your head.

So what do we do with this energy? We turn it into leverage. Nonviolent. Legal. Effective.

1) Personal power (next 30 days): Treat your job search like a campaign, not a vibe. One resume master file, one tracking system, one follow-up ritual. Show up daily. Protect sleep and health like it’s your job, because it is.

2) Community power (next 8 weeks): Isolation is the scam. Build a job-search pod (3 to 5 people). Weekly goals. Accountability. Referrals. Share recruiters, interview loops, and leads. Mutual aid with Wi-Fi.

3) Civic power (next 6 to 12 months): You don’t have to love politics to use it. Local and state decisions shape housing, childcare, transit, healthcare access, and worker protections. Pick one issue you feel in your body and back an organization already doing real work.

Bottom line: the goal is not to “cope better” inside a broken system. The goal is to become harder to exploit, financially, socially, professionally, and civically.

🔥 Hot Companies This Week

Meta (Manus)

• Sector: AI agents, consumer productivity (big tech)

• Stage: Public (acquiring high-growth AI)

• Hiring signal: Meta is weaving Manus-style agents into Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp, which usually means new product + infra work ramps quickly.

MayimFlow

• Sector: data center ops, IoT + ML

• Stage: early (startup battlefield winner type)

• Hiring signal: data center reliability is a “picks and shovels” tailwind as AI workloads push infrastructure spend.

Sauron

• Sector: premium home security, hardware + software

• Stage: venture-backed (pre-launch)

• Hiring signal: bringing in a Sonos exec as CEO is a “we’re getting serious about shipping” move.

OpenAI Preparedness team

• Sector: frontier AI safety, risk, governance

• Stage: late-stage AI lab

• Hiring signal: a dedicated exec role implies scaling the safety org and its tooling.

Specialists are cooked? Why “Generalists” are getting the interviews

Overview

AI is speeding up product cycles so much that rigid job lanes are breaking. In this piece, EliseAI CTO Tony Stoyanov argues the winners are fast-learning generalists who can ship across disciplines, according to VentureBeat.

The Details

• AI tools made execution easier, but raised the bar for judgment and decision-making across messy, cross-team problems.

• Stoyanov claims “AI agents” are too new for “5 years of experience” to be a real hiring filter.

• McKinsey projects up to 30% of US work hours could be automated by 2030.

• McKinsey also estimates 12 million occupational transitions may be needed in the US by 2030.

• “Only 1%” of leaders say their companies are AI-mature (fully integrated into workflows, driving outcomes).

• Stoyanov’s “strong generalist” traits list: ownership, first-principles thinking, adaptability, agency, and clear communication.

Nerd Note: “AI agents” are software that can take steps on your behalf (plan, call tools, write code, update tickets), not just answer questions.

Why It Matters

Hiring teams are quietly optimizing for “can you figure it out and ship” over “have you done this exact thing for 6 years.” If companies are still early on AI maturity, they will reward people who can bridge product, ops, and engineering while the org catches up.

• Engineers (mid-senior): Expect more full-stack, “own the outcome” loops, fewer handoffs.

• PMs: Stronger edge if you can prototype with AI tools and speak fluently with engineering.

• Data/Analytics: More value in “insight to action” work, not just perfect dashboards.

After a $2.5 billion exit, Sapiens cuts 700 jobs

Source: TrueUp

• After a $2.5 billion exit, Sapiens cuts 700 jobs and replaces its entire management 

• How reality crushed Ÿnsect, the French startup that had raised over $600M for insect farming 

• Yellow.ai Lays Off Over 100 Employees Amid Automation Push 

The AI gap is not where you think, and it’s costing people hours every day

Overview

Workplace AI adoption is splitting workers into “AI power users” and “AI disengaged,” and the difference is often your employer’s push, not your talent, according to Indeed Hiring Lab.

The Details

• Ireland leads workplace AI use at 70% monthly+, while Japan sits at 18%.

• Employer encouragement tracks adoption hard: Ireland has 37% “high encouragement” vs Japan’s 12%, and encouragement gaps map to big usage gaps.

• AI users feel more undertrained than non-users everywhere; in Japan, 61% of AI users say training is not enough (US: 41%).

• “Disengaged from AI” (no use + no perceived need to train) ranges from 16% (Ireland) to 40% (United States).

• Time savings are chunky: 81–96% of AI users save at least 1 hour/day; in Ireland, half save 3+ hours/day.

• Indeed notes its “AI tools” measure will read higher than “GenAI” surveys (example: US GenAI-at-work 37% as of Aug 2025 in RTPS).

Why It Matters

Hiring is turning into a “show me your workflow” sport. If employers that encourage + train AI get more productivity (and employees who save hours daily), then your AI habits become a signal of output, not hype.

Role/level implications:

• ICs: If 40% of US workers are disengaged, a simple AI workflow can instantly differentiate you.

• Managers: Candidates will start screening you for encouragement and training, because even users feel undertrained.

• Ops/Enablement: The lever is culture: “encouragement” is one of the strongest correlates with adoption across countries.

Lovable

Create apps and websites by chatting with AI

If you’re going to jump into 2026 learning to be more of an AI generalist, and own more of the end to end product

Hat Stack

One career, many hats

Create resumes and messages that adapt to every role you pursue.

🔧 Browse the Offboard Tool Directory →

Discuss this newsletter in the Offboard Slack!

Anything and everything we talk about here can be further discussed in our Slack Community (among many other job-seeking-related topics). Just look for the #newsletter channel to find specific topics to talk about!

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🥳 Wrapped is here, {{first name | Jobseekers}}!

Snuggle up! This is the Wrapped for the ambitious and the unhired: an unfiltered look at your year in the job-search trenches. We've sifted through 51 weeks of newsletter deep-dives, crunched the soul-stirring stats, and served up the highs, lows, and "what just happened" moments like a united picket line taking back their talent, skill by skill.

Ready to see which executives made the naughty list? Let's turn the volume up to eleven and reclaim your time, your worth, and your next move.

• 2025 By The Numbers

• Top Job Market Themes This Year

• Biggest Mic Drops (the “wait… WHAT?” moments)

• The 5 Best Tips on Repeat

• Top Hits of the Year

• 2026, What’s Next

2025 By The Numbers

A data-driven breakdown of your year on the frontlines. 

• You consumed all 51 issues with the focus of a seasoned analyst. Dedication, acknowledged.

• Together, we decoded over 500 layoff announcements, transforming headlines into actionable intelligence.

• We deployed 150+ essential tools, from AI résumé engines to connection strategies designed for genuine impact.

• You integrated 32 of our templates, from compelling outreach to résumés built for visibility, elevating your assets with precision.

And let's not forget the 17+ hours you invested in reading survival guides, turning your pity party into a power move.

The verdict? You navigated this market with the savvy of an insider. We know, because we're right here with you slinging you the "secrets" and this is the proof.

Top Job Market Themes This Year

Time to do the year-end cut like a ruthless editor. 2025 wasn’t a “career journey,” it was a survival season with a couple of boss-level upgrades.

1) Resilience and mental health became part of the job search

Layoffs didn’t just hit finances, they hit your nervous system. So we treated recovery like a real phase, shared practical coping tools (including somatic-style resets), and focused on getting you back to steady. The vibe: you’re allowed to pause, and you decide when pause becomes momentum.

2) AI and upskilling stopped being “nice to have”

AI was the loud roommate of 2025, and job posts increasingly rewarded people who could use it to ship faster. So we pushed courses, toolkits, and proof-building (tiny projects, quick demos, real outputs) to make you a “human + AI” operator in your lane.

3) Networking stayed undefeated, and community became the cheat code

Cold applying felt extra brutal, while real roles kept moving through relationships. So we kept hammering the reps: reconnect with former teammates, ask for warm intros, show up in community, trade leads, and keep it consistent.

4) Real talk on layoffs, ghost jobs, and the economy

The stats didn’t match the vibe, and ghost jobs wasted a lot of time. We tried to be the flashlight: what’s real, where hiring signals exist, what’s shifting, and how to stay flexible without getting wrecked.

Biggest Mic Drops (the “wait… WHAT?” moments)

1. Ghost jobs are real. Some postings exist to collect resumes, test salary bands, or create the illusion of growth. The practical takeaway: treat repeated reposts and stale listings as a yellow flag, and bias toward roles where you can find a real hiring manager, an active team, or any fresh signal that the seat is actually being filled.

2. The “functional unemployment” gut-check: ~24.3% underemployed or underpaid. This one explains the whiplash between “official stats” and how everyone feels. A lot of people are technically employed but underpaid, underutilized, or stuck in roles that don’t match their level. Translation: competition stays intense even when headlines say things are “fine,” so you need positioning and proof, not just volume.

3. Boomerang hires surged. A big slice of hiring went to people returning to former employers, especially in info-tech. That’s not nostalgia, it’s risk management. It’s cheaper and safer to rehire someone who already knows the systems and culture. Translation: your past isn’t behind you, it’s a pipeline. Old teams, old managers, old cross-functional partners, all fair game.

4. “Your resume is dead” energy. Not literally, but the resume alone stopped being the main event. Proof beat claims. The people who stood out had receipts: a small portfolio, a quick Loom walkthrough, quantified outcomes, or clear examples of using AI to ship faster and smarter. The move became: show impact, don’t just describe it.

✅ The 5 Best Tips on Repeat

1. Protect your nervous system: Sleep, movement, and real human support keep you stable enough to do good work. Treat recovery like job-search infrastructure, not a bonus.

2. Network daily: Small reps beat big bursts. A few thoughtful reach-outs and follow-ups each day builds momentum and surfaces hidden roles.

3. Embrace AI fluency: Human + AI is the new baseline. Use it to tailor faster, prep smarter, and create proof of output, not just claims.

4. Stay flexible: Contract, fractional, and adjacent roles can be smart bridges. Optimize for learning, proximity, and wins you can point to.

5. Own your narrative: Layoffs and gaps aren’t shameful, they’re explainable. Keep your story crisp, confident, and forward-looking.

Top Posts of the Year

The posts that slapped hardest, buzzing the community like viral drama. These issues were 🔥 

1. Your Resume is Dead. Your AI Portfolio Just Got You the Job. October's savage wake-up: Ditch bullet points for AI impact flexes. Steps to build and broadcast. Readers revamped LinkedIn and scored interviews. Sass: Old résumé? Snooze. AI portfolio? Instant legend status.

2. Somatic Reset For Your Laid Off Nervous System. November's wellness warrior: Layoffs = primal threat; breathwork to the rescue. Free workshop vibes. Sass: Newsletter hug for your holiday freakout because even badasses need a reset.

3. We're Closer to the Great Depression Than You Think. June's truth bomb: 24% hidden joblessness dissected, with survival hacks (network, save, skill). Community debates ensued. Sass: Doomscrolling with a plan.tough love for your denial phase.

4. Boomerang Boom: Your Former Employer Wants You Back. June's redemption arc: Boomerangs rising, five-step comeback guide. Readers reconnected and landed gigs. Sass: Ex-employer glow-up? Full-circle flex. Bridges unburned pay dividends.

5. The Job Market is Giving Haunted House. December's spooky finale: Ghost jobs exposed, smart moves amid the madness. Sass: Eerie market? Navigate like a ghostbuster. 2025's chaotic curtain call.

2026, Here We Come 🥳 

2025 was a brutal stress test, and you made it through with sharper instincts and better tools. Offboard was in your corner the whole way: translating chaos into signal, and keeping you moving when the market tried to stall you out.

Now it’s 2026. New cycle, new leverage. AI is still booming, boomerang hires are real, and your network is stronger than it was a year ago. Keep what works, drop what doesn’t, and walk into the new year focused, steady, and ready to ship.

Happy New Year. Let’s build something good.

Community | Website | Tools

"If you don’t commit to living life on your terms, other people will commit you to theirs."

-FS

👋 Welcome, {{first name | Jobseekers}}

This week’s job market is giving “haunted house,” not “career ladder” so we’re calling out the hiring mirage (ghost jobs + fake listings) and how to route around it without donating your sanity to process theater. Then we pivot hard to offense: a tight list of hot companies actually worth your clicks, a layoff reality check, a BLS jobs report so weird it came with its own footnote, and a somatic reset to get your nervous system back on your side before 2026 hits the gas.

• 🧑‍✈️ Career CoPilot: The Hiring Mirage: Ghost Jobs Are Wasting Your Time (and Spiking Your Stress)

• 📡 Company Radar: 🔥 Hot Companies This Week - Databricks, Radiant Nuclear, Port, Runware, Mirelo, On Me

• 📉 Layoff Report: PowerSchool, Amazon, TikTok, and too many more

• 📈 Trends & Data: The Jobs Report Was So Weird, the BLS Basically Put a Footnote on Reality

• 🪷 Mental Health: Shed & Surge: A Somatic Reset for 2026

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🔥 Hot Companies This Week

Either through, funding rounds, mergers, IPOs, or more, we have the top signals for you to make the best jobseeking decisions.

Coursera (edtech, public, merging with Udemy)

• Fresh signal: Coursera and Udemy announced a merger agreement valued around $2.5B.

• Likely roles: AI product, platform engineering, data science (learning analytics), growth, enterprise integrations.

Databricks (data + AI platform, late stage)

• Fresh signal: raised $4B at a $134B valuation to keep pushing deeper into AI products.

• Likely roles: data engineering, platform/backend, ML infra, product analytics, PM for AI/data tools.

Radiant Nuclear (climate + energy infra, growth stage)

• Fresh signal: raised $300M to build a 1MW reactor, explicitly targeting data centers and signing a deal with Equinix.

• Likely roles: hardware, systems, embedded, safety, operations, plus software for monitoring/controls.

Port (developer tools, Series C)

• Fresh signal: raised $100M at an $800M valuation to compete with Spotify’s Backstage in the internal developer portal space.

• Likely roles: full-stack, platform, DevOps/SRE, product design for developer UX, PM for dev tools.

Runware (genAI infra for devs, Series A)

• Fresh signal: raised $50M to make image and video generation easier for developers via API.

• Likely roles: infra, API/backend, ML systems, developer relations, product.

Mirelo (genAI audio, early growth)

• Fresh signal: raised $41M to solve AI video’s “silent problem” by generating soundtracks.

• Likely roles: ML/audio, backend, product, creative tooling design.

On Me (consumer fintech-ish gifting, seed)

• Fresh signal: raised $6M for a mobile-first gift card platform.

• Likely roles: mobile, payments, growth product, UX.

The Hiring Mirage: Ghost Jobs Are Wasting Your Time (and Spiking Your Stress)

What’s happening

A non-trivial slice of job postings are not tied to an active hire. That mismatch turns job searching into a time sink and a mental health tax.

The data that matters

1) The mental health hit is real

• 72% of job seekers say the search has negatively affected their mental health.

• Biggest drivers: long timelines, poor communication, and repeated dead ends.

2) “Ghost jobs” show up at meaningful rates

• Greenhouse (a major hiring platform) has reported roughly 18% to 22% of jobs posted on its platform in a given quarter could be classified as “ghost jobs” (posted without intent to hire).

• Even if some are “pipeline building” vs pure deception, the practical effect is the same: your application effort often doesn’t map to a real decision.

3) Openings can overstate real hiring demand

• Using BLS JOLTS openings vs hires, analysis has estimated about 28% to 32% of openings in recent months did not convert into hires (example: June 2025 ~7.4M openings vs ~5.2M hires).

• Not every gap is a fake listing, but it’s a loud warning: posted demand is not the same thing as hiring demand.

What this means for you (the “so what”)

• If you’re feeling burned out, it’s not just “rejection.” It’s often market noise plus process theater.

• The goal is to stop donating your best hours to roles that are not real.

The playbook: how to route around ghost jobs

Step 1: Treat “Easy Apply” like a lottery ticket

• Use it, but do not build your week around it.

• Your core strategy should be roles you can verify are real.

Step 2: Use a “proof before effort” rule

Before you invest deep time (custom cover letter, project, take-home):

• Confirm it’s on the company careers page (not only a repost)

• Check recency (posted/updated recently)

• Look for a named recruiter or hiring manager

• Try to validate via:

  • a warm intro

  • a quick recruiter message

  • an employee confirmation

Step 3: Shift to inputs you control

Track and optimize:

• Outreach sent

• Conversations booked

• Referrals requested

• Follow-ups completed

Step 4: Protect your nervous system like it’s part of the job

• Time-box applications (example: 60 to 90 minutes)

• Do a hard stop after your daily quota

• Add a decompression ritual after applying (walk, workout, breathwork)

Quick scam-defense note (especially on LinkedIn)

LinkedIn has been expanding verification features aimed at reducing recruiting scams. Still, stay sharp.

Bottom line

Ghost jobs distort your emotional dashboard. Once you assume some postings are mirages, you stop internalizing silence as a personal verdict and start spending your effort where real hires happen.

Source: TrueUp

• The Trade Desk Lays Off Staff One Year After Its Last Major Reorg 

• Rad Power Bikes files for bankruptcy and is looking to sell the business 

• Amazon European Hub in Luxembourg Braces for Record Job Cuts 

• Amazon cuts 84 jobs in Washington state, unrelated to broader layoffs 

• PowerSchool cuts workforce as part of business restructuring 

• EyeEm is Shutting Down 

• NXP is putting its longtime US HQ on market in Austin 

• After over $390 million in funding, Believer Meats abruptly shuts down 

• Outbound Aerospace winds down after exotic aircraft concept reaches the end of its financial runway 

• Lusha cuts 8% of workforce, citing need to reallocate resources 

• Teads slashes 10% of workforce amid 90% market value drop 

The Jobs Report Was So Weird, the BLS Basically Put a Footnote on Reality

Overview

The October–November jobs data is a “read with caution” release, but the signal is still clear: hiring is thin, unemployment is higher, and most of the job growth is coming from health care, not the broader economy, according to Indeed Hiring Lab and the BLS Employment Situation release.

The Details

• Payrolls: +64,000 jobs in November; -105,000 in October (combined release due to shutdown).

• Unemployment: 4.6% in November; October unemployment data won’t be published (household survey not collected).

• Pay: Average hourly earnings rose 3.5% YoY in November.

• Federal payroll shock: federal employment fell 162,000 in October as deferred resignations hit payrolls.

• Job growth concentration: 499,000 net jobs YTD, with 630,000 from private education + health services (implying -131,000 without it).

• Data may be revised down: Powell flagged potential ~60,000/month overstatement risk; BLS also announced upcoming changes to the birth-death model starting with January 2026 data.

Nerd Note: The BLS “birth-death model” estimates jobs from new business openings minus closures before full tax-record data arrives. It can miss turning points.

Why It Matters

If you’re a tech jobseeker, this is a “narrow bridge” market: a few sectors are hiring, while many others are flat or shrinking. That usually means slower interview loops, more competition per role, and more pressure to target resilient pockets (health care, certain construction and trades-adjacent work) instead of “spray and pray.”

🪷 Shed & Surge: A Somatic Reset for Your 2026 Rebirth

Don’t forget!

Marian Bacol, founder of somarae, is hosting a Somatic Reset on Thursday, December 18 at 2:00 PM - 3:00 PM PST.

​You will leave feeling:

• ​calmer

• ​clearer

• ​lighter

• ​more spacious

• ​more courageous

• ​more connected to your body

• ​more ready to step into your next chapter

If that sounds like something you need, you can register for Marian’s free somatic reset below!

📅 Register here: https://luma.com/a80iyzma

Discuss this newsletter in the Offboard Slack!

Anything and everything we talk about here can be further discussed in our Slack Community (among many other job-seeking-related topics). Just look for the #newsletter channel to find specific topics to talk about!

Community | Website | Tools

"Your reputation isn’t what you shout, it’s what people whisper."

-FS

👋 Welcome, {{first name | Jobseekers}}

AI money is going feral: a former Databricks leader just grabbed $475 million dollars for biology-level chips while Unconventional AI, Fal, Oboe, Rivian, and Amazon India line up the next hiring wave. Meanwhile Meta and friends cut headcount and women demand flexibility as a non negotiable, so we will show you where to apply, what to avoid, and which tools quietly stack the odds in your favor.

• 🧑‍✈️ Career CoPilot: Ex Databricks leader raises $475M SEED round to build biology-level AI chips

• 📡 Company Radar: Where To Aim Your Applications This Week - Oboe, Fal, [Un]conventional, Rivian, Amazon India

• 📉 Layoff Report: Meta’s Zuckerberg plans deep cuts for Metaverse efforts

• 📈 Trends & Data: Women want flexibility, but job postings aren’t keeping up

• 🔧 Jobseeker Tools: Resmate, Oboe

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Where To Aim Your Applications This Week

"We want to reach billions of people who want to learn about new topics, and it is a very big opportunity... We need to execute faster and reach a larger audience at scale to achieve this vision."

-CoFounder Oboe, Nir Zicherman 

Here are the companies lighting up the news that are actually worth targeting for applications in the next 3 to 6 months.

• Unconventional AI – Neuromorphic AI hardware startup with a record breaking $475 million dollar seed at a $4.5 billion dollar valuation. Expect heavy hiring in systems, chips and ML infra as they spin up teams from scratch.

• Fal – Multimodal AI infra platform that just raised 140 million dollars Series D, tripling valuation to 4.5 billion dollars. Great target for backend, infra, ML platform, and dev tools roles.

• Oboe – AI course generation app from the Anchor founders, now with a fresh 16 million dollar Series A from a16z. Strong fit for product, UX, and AI engineers who care about learning tools.

• Amazon India and AWS – Another 35 billion dollar commitment to India, taking planned spend to 75 billion dollars by 2030, signals long runway for hiring across retail, logistics tech and cloud. Look for roles tied to India expansion and AWS infra.

• Meesho – 606 million dollar IPO that popped about 46 percent on day one. Marketplace scale plus fresh public market validation usually means more headcount in product, growth, data and platform engineering.

• Rivian – Spent nearly two years on an in house AI assistant ahead of its Autonomy and AI Day. This is a clear signal they are investing in software, AI, and UX talent around the vehicle experience.

Filter your applications this week toward companies like these that just raised, went public, or announced multi year expansion, since that is where hiring plans usually firm up first.

Source: TrueUp

Meta’s Zuckerberg plans deep cuts for Metaverse efforts

Meta Platforms Inc. CEO Mark Zuckerberg is expected to cut back on spending for the metaverse, the virtual world project he once called the future of the company and the reason for renaming Facebook Inc, as reported by Bloomberg.

• SE Ranking has laid off 15% of its employees 

• Layoffs At Tenstorrent As Startup Pivots Towards Developer Sales 

• Intel layoffs: More Santa Clara jobs on the chopping block 

• Amazon’s King of Meat Developer Glowmade Faces Layoffs Following Disastrous Game Launch 

• Mobileye lays off 200 employees; Company's shares down more than 40% this year 

• Payoneer cuts 6% of workforce as profitability pressures mount 

• Meta’s Zuckerberg Plans Deep Cuts for Metaverse Efforts 

• Adtech company Teads is laying off staff 10 months after closing its merger with Outbrain 

• Cellebrite completes $170M Corellium purchase, announces layoffs amid restructuring 

• Bill Gates-backed Modern Hydrogen lays off most of its employees after decade-long pursuit of clean energy 

• Eidos-Montreal Lets Go More Staff With More Layoffs Planned 

• Japanese consumer electronics company to cut over 70 jobs 

• Outright Games lays off 27 staff 

Ex Databricks leader raises $475M SEED round to build biology level AI chips

A two month old startup just raised a $475 million dollar seed round at a 4.5 billion dollar valuation to build AI chips that are “as efficient as biology.” The company is called Unconventional AI, led by Naveen Rao, former head of AI at Databricks and founder of MosaicML and Nervana Systems. The round is co led by a16z and Lightspeed, with Jeff Bezos and Databricks also in the mix. (TechCrunch)

For a jobseeker, this is not just a spicy funding headline. It is a lighthouse for where the next decade of tech work is heading.

What this actually signals

• AI infra is the real gold rush. When investors put nearly half a billion into a seed round, they are betting that the bottleneck in AI is no longer clever prompting. It is energy, chips, and systems.

• Deep tech is back in fashion. Rao has already sold two AI infra companies for more than 400 million dollars and 1.3 billion dollars. (TechCrunch) VCs are clearly willing to fund long, hard hardware and systems work again.

• There will be a hiring halo. Even if you never work at Unconventional AI, this kind of round pulls capital, talent, and copycats into the same space. Think Groq, Cerebras, CoreWeave, Tenstorrent, d Matrix and others working on AI compute and infra. (Data Center Dynamics)

So what for your job search

You do not need to be a chip designer to ride this wave. But you should align yourself with the problems this money is trying to solve.

Good targets for the next 6 to 24 months

• AI infrastructure and GPU cloud companies

• Model hosting and serving platforms

• Tooling that makes AI cheaper, faster, or more efficient

• Data center, energy, and MLOps teams inside big tech

Ways to position yourself

• If you are an engineer, highlight work with performance, distributed systems, CUDA, GPU usage, or large scale data pipelines. Even “I made this thing 3x faster and cut cloud spend” maps directly to the cost pressure behind this round.

• If you are product, design, or data, lean into stories about building tools for engineers, optimizing workflows, or making complex systems usable by humans. These companies need world class internal tooling and developer experience, not just silicon wizards.

The meta takeaway: AI is not just about chatbots and features on top of GPT. The serious money is piling into the plumbing. If your next move gets you closer to that plumbing, you are probably moving in the right direction.

Women want flexibility, but job postings aren’t keeping up

https://www.hiringlab.org/2025/12/04/women-value-flexibility-are-employers-risking-their-female-talent-by-standing-still/

Overview

Women are saying “flexibility or I’m out,” while many employers pull back on remote and flexible options according to Indeed Hiring Labs. For tech jobseekers, treat benefits like a second paycheck and negotiate accordingly.

The Details

• 67% of US workers rank employer health insurance as a top benefit; vacation days are top 3 in 7 of 8 countries, even where 20–25 days are mandated.

• US women choose remote work 11 percentage points more often than men, plus flexible hours (+7 ppt), parental leave (+5 ppt), and childcare (+3 ppt).

• Flexible schedule mentions in US postings rose from 7.1% (early 2020) to 14.4% (Nov 2023), then slipped to 13.7% by Oct 2025.

• Remote postings topped 15% in Canada, Germany, the UK, and Ireland but have flattened or fallen since 2024. The US has stayed below 10% since 2022.

• 40% of US workers would give up at least 5% of salary to keep working from home.

Why It Matters

Flexible work is not a “nice to have” for women. It is what lets many stay and grow in the workforce, especially in caregiving years. When postings dial back flexibility while women increase demand, employers create a quiet filter that screens out female talent before interviews even start.

Implications by role / level

• ICs (especially women in tech): You may trade title or cash for flexibility, but you’re not alone. 40% of workers would do the same.

• Senior ICs / Managers: Use this data to justify remote or flexible arrangements at team level.

• Execs / Hiring managers: Inflexible roles plus a male-skewed pipeline is not a coincidence. Flexibility is a diversity tool, not a perk.

🪷 Shed & Surge: A Somatic Reset for Your 2026 Rebirth

Last week we hosted Marian Bacol, founder of somarae, in a webinar geared toward resetting your nervous system after a layoff. It was such a needed reset and everyone who attended brought a positive vibe, ready for some grounding.

Next week she is hosting another Somatic Reset on Thursday, December 18 at 2:00 PM - 3:00 PM PST geared toward kicking off 2026 with the right energy.

​You will leave feeling:

• ​calmer

• ​clearer

• ​lighter

• ​more spacious

• ​more courageous

• ​more connected to your body

• ​more ready to step into your next chapter

If that sounds like something you need, you can register for Marian’s free somatic reset below!

📅 Register here: https://luma.com/a80iyzma

Oboe

Learning for the curiously minded

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Resmate

Accelerate your job search

Job seekers use Resmate to organize and optimize their applications with their AI toolkit.

🔧 Browse the Offboard Tool Directory →

Discuss this newsletter in the Offboard Slack!

Anything and everything we talk about here can be further discussed in our Slack Community (among many other job-seeking-related topics). Just look for the #newsletter channel to find specific topics to talk about!