There's a number that keeps showing up on earnings calls right before layoff announcements. It's not revenue. It's not margin. It's how much of the company's code is now written by AI. And every time a CEO shares it publicly, cuts follow within days.

Three companies did it this week, all on their best quarters ever. I'll break down the pattern, which companies are next, and what to look for inside your own org.

Let's get into it.

The April jobs report beat expectations, but barely. The economy added 115,000 nonfarm payrolls in April, well above the 55K forecast but below March's revised 185K. Healthcare led with 37K, followed by transportation (+30K) and retail (+22K). Unemployment held at 4.3%. Wage growth came in at 3.6% year over year.

Inflation just came in hotter than expected. The April CPI report showed 3.8% year-over-year this morning, the highest reading since May 2023 and above the 3.7% consensus. Core CPI hit 2.8%. Energy prices drove more than 40% of the monthly increase, with gasoline still elevated from the Iran conflict. The bigger number: real wages fell for the first time in three years, with average hourly earnings declining 0.3% annually after adjusting for inflation. Traders are now pricing in a 30% chance the Fed actually raises rates by year-end.

The layoff wave kept going this week. Nearly 38,000 jobs were cut in the first 10 days of May across tech, finance, aviation, and media. The biggest names: PayPal is cutting 4,760 jobs (20% of its workforce) over the next 2-3 years as its new CEO pushes an AI overhaul, and Ticketmaster cut 350 engineering and product roles despite posting 10% revenue growth. AI-driven restructuring was the leading reason cited across almost every announcement.

Cerebras just bumped its IPO range, and the numbers are wild. The AI chipmaker raised its target to $150-$160 per share, up from $115-$125, after getting 20x oversubscribed. That puts the fully diluted valuation near $49 billion. The company could raise up to $4.8 billion when it starts trading Wednesday. Cerebras makes wafer-scale AI chips and counts OpenAI as a major customer. This is the biggest AI IPO of the year so far.

The Musk v. OpenAI trial just finished its second week. Musk testified for seven hours and called himself "a fool" for donating $38 million to OpenAI. OpenAI fired back with co-founder Greg Brockman's journal entries from 2017 about "stealing the nonprofit from Musk." Closing arguments are expected May 14, with the jury potentially deliberating by May 18. Musk is seeking $150 billion in damages.

Hiring

Amazon is hiring 11,000 software engineering interns in 2026 after cutting 30,000 corporate roles over the past two years. AWS CEO Matt Garman said the roles will look "a little different," with emphasis on AI coding tools, debugging, and end-to-end ownership. When a company this size shifts what engineering means internally, the program management and operations roles that support those teams shift with it.

Anduril is expanding across two major builds: a $1 billion Southern California campus creating 5,500 direct jobs, and an Ohio mega-factory for Roadrunner drone production that will eventually employ 4,000. The defense tech company has 7,000 employees across 35 locations and revenue doubling toward $2 billion. Defense tech is one of the fastest-growing employers of operations, supply chain, and program management talent right now.

Funding

Sierra AI raised $950 million at a $15 billion valuation, led by Tiger Global and GV. Founded by former Salesforce co-CEO Bret Taylor, Sierra builds AI agents for enterprise customer service and claims 40% of the Fortune 50 as customers. When an AI agent company raises nearly a billion at this pace, the product, ops, and go-to-market teams scale alongside it.

Corgi raised $160 million (Series B) at a $1.3 billion valuation, just four months after its Series A. The AI-native insurance platform is expanding from startup coverage into trucking and new verticals. Total funding now over $268 million. Insurance may not be the first place you look for product and strategy roles, but that's exactly why there's less competition for them.

Panthalassa raised $140 million (Series B) led by Peter Thiel to build floating data-center platforms powered by wave energy. The Pacific Northwest climate-tech startup is finishing a pilot manufacturing facility near Portland. Climate-tech and AI infrastructure are converging, and the companies at that intersection need operations and program management talent to scale physical builds.

Contracts

Lockheed Martin won a $407 million Aegis missile defense upgrade for Guam, continuing development of integrated air and missile defense capabilities. Defense tech remains one of the steadiest employers of program managers and systems integration leads.

The Missile Defense Agency expanded the SHIELD program with 1,086 additional contract awards for the Golden Dome missile shield. The second tranche opens doors for mid-tier defense contractors and the operations teams they'll need to staff up..

Mark Spitznagel, who made $1B in a single day during the 2015 flash crash, warned markets are mimicking 1929. Seems extreme but we did just see the worst quarter for the S&P since 2022.

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Freshworks cut 500 jobs on May 6. Same day, the company reported record Q1 revenue of $228.6 million (up 16% year over year) and closed the two largest deals in its history. Not a bad quarter. The best one they've ever had.

The CEO's explanation was one sentence: "Over half of our code is now written by AI."

That sentence is becoming a pattern. CEOs are now publicly sharing what percentage of their company's code is written by AI, and every time they do, layoffs follow within days. Snap said 65% in April and cut 500 engineers. Microsoft and Google both say roughly 25%. Anthropic says 70 to 90%.

The number has quietly become the justification. Not revenue. Not margin pressure. Not a bad forecast. Just: we figured out how to do more with fewer people, and here's the percentage to prove it.

What makes this different from normal layoff cycles is that these companies aren't struggling. PayPal is cutting 4,760 jobs while targeting $1.5 billion in savings. Ticketmaster cut engineering the same week revenue grew 10%. Cloudflare cut 20% of its workforce while the CEO said employees are "so much more productive". All profitable. All cutting anyway.

So what do you actually do with this? Pay attention to what your leadership is measuring. If your company has started tracking AI adoption rates, code generation percentages, or "productivity per headcount" metrics internally, that's the early signal. The companies cutting right now didn't decide overnight. They tracked the number for quarters before they acted on it.

The people who survive these restructurings aren't the ones who avoid AI. They're the ones already using it, visibly, in ways their managers can point to. If your boss can say "this person uses AI to do the work of three people," you're on the right side of the math. If your output looks the same as what an AI tool can produce on its own, you're on the wrong side.

Start using AI tools in your work now if you haven't already. Make sure your team knows you're doing it. Document the results. When the conversation comes to your company (and based on this pattern, it probably will), you want to be the person they build around, not the person they're comparing to a percentage.

You probably noticed that every layoff story this week came from the same kinds of companies: tech platforms, fintech, SaaS. There's a reason for that.

The April jobs report added 115,000 jobs. But the sectors doing the hiring are completely different from the ones doing the cutting. Healthcare added 37,000 positions for the fifth straight month. Transportation and warehousing added 30,000. Retail added 22,000.

These industries have something in common: the work involves physical presence, licensing, regulation, or human judgment that AI can't easily replicate. Nobody is automating a hospital floor or a warehouse loading dock with a chatbot.

The sectors cutting jobs are the ones whose core outputs (code, ad copy, ticket routing, data analysis) can be benchmarked against AI. That's why they're the ones sharing AI productivity numbers on earnings calls.

If you're thinking about your next move, look at where the hiring is actually happening, not where the headlines are. Health systems need operations leaders. Logistics companies need program managers. Retail chains scaling e-commerce need people who understand supply chains. These roles don't trend on LinkedIn, but they're growing while everything else contracts.

Why it matters: The layoff headlines come from a narrow slice of the economy. The hiring is happening somewhere else entirely, and most people aren't looking there yet.

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The Big Story above breaks down how companies are using their AI output percentages to justify restructuring. Here's a prompt you can paste into Claude or ChatGPT to figure out where you stand before your company does the math for you:

The goal isn't to panic. It's to know where you stand before someone else runs the numbers on your role.

The AI chipmaker just priced its IPO after getting 20x oversubscribed. It could raise up to $4.8 billion, making it the biggest AI IPO of the year. OpenAI is a major customer.

Last issue's prediction: April jobs report over/under 100K. Result: 115,000. Consensus expected 55K, so anyone who bet the over was right.

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