Hello {{first_name|Motivated and Miffed Community}},

The AI economy is doing something that looks contradictory on the surface: it's cutting jobs and creating them at the same time, in the same quarter, sometimes at the same company. Nearly 80,000 tech workers were laid off in the first three months of 2026. Software engineering job listings just hit their highest point in three years. TSMC — the company that makes almost every advanced AI chip on the planet — just posted its fourth consecutive record quarter. These aren't separate stories. They're the same story, told from three different angles.

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⚡💼 AI is killing jobs and creating them. Which side you're on depends on what you've built.

🏭📈 TSMC posted a 58% profit jump. The semiconductor market is officially sold out. 🪓🤖 ~48% of Q1 tech layoffs were attributed to AI automation. Oracle, Block, Atlassian led the cuts.

🛠️📊 Software engineer job listings are up 30% — but the roles look nothing like they did five years ago.

The Move: Build one small thing with an AI API this month — even if it's just a script that automates a task you do manually.

The Evidence: According to Metaintro's analysis of 67,000+ open engineering roles, over 75% of AI-adjacent listings specifically seek domain experts who have built something real with AI tools. Personal projects using LLM APIs or agent frameworks are now effectively table stakes for competitive candidates.

Start Here: Pick one task you repeat weekly. Spend 20 minutes asking Claude or ChatGPT to help you build a script that does it. You don't need to ship it. You just need the rep.

2026 will redefine IT as a strategic driver of global growth. Automation, AI-driven support, unified platforms, and zero-trust security are becoming standard, especially for distributed teams. This toolkit helps IT and HR leaders assess readiness, define goals, and build a scalable, audit-ready IT strategy for the year ahead. Learn what’s changing and how to prepare.

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Between 78,000 and 90,000 tech workers were laid off in Q1 2026, the highest quarterly total since early 2024, with approximately 47.9% attributed to a downturn. Oracle, Block, and Atlassian were among the largest contributors. Block's CEO was direct about the rationale: the company cited "the growing capability of AI tools." Atlassian replaced its CTO position with two AI-focused co-CTOs.

The jobs getting cut follow a clear pattern. Roles in customer support, quality assurance, content moderation, and middle management are being eliminated with explicit references to AI-driven efficiency — and entry-level workers are being hit disproportionately, with unemployment among younger workers rising faster than for older employees.

There's a legitimate debate about how much of this is actually AI and how much is financial engineering with good branding. OpenAI CEO Sam Altman acknowledged the ambiguity directly, saying "there's some AI washing where people are blaming AI for layoffs that they would otherwise do, and then there's some real displacement." Some analysts looking at hiring patterns found that companies like Amazon and Block actually accelerated hiring in late 2025 before the layoff announcements — not the behavior you'd expect from organizations genuinely running leaner on AI productivity.

Still, real or rationalized, the structural shift in which types of roles get funded is happening regardless of the motivation behind individual cuts.

Why it matters: The layoff label doesn't matter as much as the job description attached to what's being hired to replace it.

Software engineer job listings are up 30% in 2026, with more than 67,000 openings tracked across 9,000 tech companies — demand not seen in over three years. This is happening in the same quarter as 52,000 tech layoffs, nearly half attributed to AI, revealing a sharp split between roles AI is eliminating and roles AI is creating.

The catch: the roles being created are not the roles being eliminated. The companies adding the most headcount include Google, Amazon, Microsoft, Meta, and Nvidia — and the skills driving demand are LLM fine-tuning, MLOps pipeline management, and experience building AI agents and RAG architectures. Over 75% of AI-adjacent engineering listings specifically seek domain experts with deep, focused technical knowledge.

IBM is doing something worth noting. The company tripled its entry-level hiring in 2026, saying that while AI can do many entry-level jobs, it still needs a human touch — and that cutting the entry-level pipeline comes with a long-term cost: you erase the talent pool needed to develop your future mid-level managers. That's a genuine infrastructure argument, not sentiment.

The CFO survey picture adds nuance: a Duke/Federal Reserve study found a wide gap between perceived and actual AI productivity gains, with researchers suggesting companies are acting on the potential of AI rather than realized results — invoking Solow's productivity paradox, the same dynamic that played out with personal computers in the late 1980s. The technology appears everywhere except in the productivity statistics. Until it does.

Why it matters: The demand is real. The gap is in what skills are being demanded, not whether demand exists.

While the workforce story plays out, the infrastructure underneath it just posted another record. TSMC reported Q1 2026 net income of approximately $18.16 billion — a 58% increase year over year, with gross margins hitting a two-decade high of 66.2%. It was the company's fourth consecutive record quarter.

TSMC CEO C.C. Wei described AI chip demand as "extremely robust" and expressed conviction in a multi-year AI growth trend. Analysts characterized the semiconductor market as "sold out" for 2026 — meaning capacity is fully booked, orders are locked in well in advance, and customers are competing just to secure supply.

3-nanometer chips — the architecture powering most advanced AI computing — grew from 6% of TSMC's total revenue in Q3 2023 to a quarter of total revenue in Q1 2026. That trajectory is a physical ledger for how fast this transition is actually moving.

The concentration risk is real, too. One company in Taiwan fabricates roughly nine out of every ten advanced AI accelerators on the planet. The Stanford AI Index noted this week that the US chip supply chain's dependence on TSMC is one of the most significant structural vulnerabilities in the entire AI economy. The demand is undeniable. The foundation it rests on is fragile in ways that don't show up in a quarterly earnings beat.

Why it matters: When the infrastructure supplier is sold out, the build-out is real — whatever the productivity statistics say right now.

→ The workers coming out ahead right now aren't waiting to see where the market lands. They're building. The Playbook gives you the system to start. Get it here →

OpenAI is building a jobs platform. The company announced it's building an AI-driven jobs platform aimed at connecting candidates with employers — including local businesses and governments — with a launch expected by mid-2026. It also expanded its OpenAI Academy certification program, offering credentials ranging from basic AI workplace skills to advanced prompt engineering. The company whose tools are being credited with displacing 37,000+ workers in Q1 wants to help you find your next job. (That's either incredibly on-brand or the most efficient vertical integration in history. Possibly both.)

Why it matters: When the pick-and-shovel company also sells the map, you want to understand the map.

1. You're Not Lazy. You Just Don't Know What You're Supposed to Be Doing. Read it → Introduces the Expectation Clarity Framework — a reframe on why unclear goals, not personal failing, are what's actually killing your productivity.

2. Your Brain Has a Monkey Problem Read it → A breakdown of Tim Urban's Instant Gratification Monkey concept and what it actually means for how you procrastinate.

3. Your Brain Has a Timer. You Keep Ignoring It. Read it → Two biology-based productivity methods — built around how your brain actually operates on time, not how you wish it did.

This week rhymed: infrastructure profits → workforce displacement → demand for builders. The floor is falling in the middle and the ceiling is rising at the edges. Where you sit depends on what you've put your hands on.

Stay MOTIVATED,

Gio