I know it sounds crazy BUT, I am going to give you an unpopular opinion that most are scared to give you.
Most big tech companies like Amazon and Oracle are laying off big time but it’s NOT ONLY AI to blame.
And every time a new announcement drops, the same headline follows: "Company cuts X thousand jobs due to AI." BECAUSE IT SELLS.
The public buys it. Employees panic. Politicians run with it.
But this week, one of the most influential investors in Silicon Valley said something that most people don't want to hear.
Marc Andreessen, co-founder of Andreessen Horowitz — the firm that has backed OpenAI, Airbnb, and Coinbase, and manages over $90 billion — went on the 20VC podcast and called the AI narrative what it actually is.
A convenient lie.
His exact words: AI is the "silver bullet excuse." Storyboard18
Here's what he actually argued, and why it matters for anyone trying to make sense of the job market right now.
The real story starts in 2020.
When COVID hit, interest rates dropped to near zero. Capital became essentially free. Companies could borrow and expand at almost no cost.
So they hired. Aggressively. Irrationally.
Remote work removed all visibility into whether those hires were actually necessary. Teams bloated. Headcount grew faster than revenue. Nobody asked hard questions because the money was cheap and the stock prices kept climbing.
Andreessen put it bluntly: "The hiring binge the companies went on during Covid was just wild. It was the combination of interest rates going to zero during Covid, and then the complete loss of discipline at all these companies when they went virtual." OfficeChai
Then came the correction.
Interest rates went from 0% to 5% in roughly three years.
That's not a gradual adjustment. That's a financial shock. Every big company had to completely replan their financials. Their cost of capital went up five points overnight. OfficeChai
When money is cheap, headcount is an investment. When money is expensive, headcount is a liability.
The people being let go now weren't hired for a specific function that AI replaced. They were hired during a period of financial excess that no longer exists. The economic conditions that justified their roles disappeared long before the AI tools arrived.
Andreessen's estimate is damning: "Essentially every large company is overstaffed. At least by 25%. Most by 50%. A lot of them by 75%." Yahoo Finance
And now every one of those companies has a ready-made excuse that makes them look forward-thinking instead of reckless.
The "AI washing" problem.
Here's the part that should make you genuinely angry.
New York State recently gave employers the option to cite "technological innovation or automation" in the legally required WARN Act layoff notices filed before mass reductions. Of the 160 companies that filed notices since then, including Amazon and Goldman Sachs, not one checked the box attributing layoffs to AI. Governance
Read that again.
Companies that publicly blame AI for their cuts won't put it in a legal document.
Because "we overhired during a bubble" doesn't inspire investor confidence. "We're reallocating toward AI" gets a stock price bump. The incentive to misrepresent is enormous, and most people never look past the press release.
So is AI having zero impact on jobs?
That's not what this says either. The honest answer is: it's complicated, and anyone telling you it's simple is selling you something.
AI is genuinely reshaping certain entry-level roles, particularly in software and customer service. Research from Stanford found roughly a 20% decline in employment for entry-level software developers and about 15% for call center workers since ChatGPT launched in late 2022. Governance
That's real. That matters.
But that's a very different story from "AI is the reason your company laid off 10,000 people this quarter." One is a structural shift playing out over years. The other is a CFO covering for bad decisions made in 2021.
The distinction matters because if you believe the wrong story, you make the wrong moves.
You panic about the wrong things. You upskill in the wrong direction. You blame a technology that, in most cases, had nothing to do with what happened to you or the people you know.
What this actually means for you.
The companies doing the most AI-related hiring right now are not the ones laying people off. Software engineering job openings have doubled since mid-2023. Tech roles are projected to grow 30% through 2026. Startup Fortune
The market isn't shrinking. It's reshuffling.
The people winning in this environment are the ones who refused to accept the headline, looked at what was actually happening, and positioned themselves accordingly.
That's exactly what this newsletter is here to help you do.
Stay sharp. — @aianalyse