Columns and field notes from the people who have shipped the things they are writing about.
While American tech companies cut over 142,000 jobs in early 2026, they are simultaneously competing for off-market senior talent, revealing a bifurcated L5+ hiring market where the old playbook no longer works.
Opinion · Tech Economics
Hyperscaler capex has now eclipsed revenue beats as the main driver of quarterly earnings reactions, forcing investors to price the widening gap between AI infrastructure outlays and their uncertain returns.
In 2026, three megadeals and two blocked mergers are redrawing dealmaking boundaries, as a fractured HSR rulebook tests what regulators will clear.
Opinion · Tech Labor & Hiring
Demand for L5+ engineers with AI and machine-learning skills is rising sharply. Demand for everyone else at that level is flattening. The pipeline that produces senior engineers is the part nobody is talking about.
Opinion · Technology Economics
Alphabet's $80 billion equity raise, announced this month, sharpens the revenue growth question for hyperscalers, as Q1 earnings show the market no longer rewards AI spending commitments on faith.
As tech job postings hit a three-year high, demand skews sharply toward senior engineers with AI skills, leaving mid-level generalists with fewer options.
Opinion · Tech Economics
Alphabet, Amazon, Meta, and Microsoft, the four hyperscalers, reported Q1 earnings that point to a collective capex of nearly $750 billion, yet the market reaction split sharply, revealing a deep tension between growth investment and free cash flow.
Opinion · Tech Labor
More than 113,000 tech workers have been laid off in 2026, but 67,000 software engineering roles remain unfilled. The difference is leveling, and it is reshaping who holds leverage.
Opinion · Economics
Hyperscalers spending $725 billion on AI infrastructure this year will unleash depreciation charges that reshape income statements across industries for the rest of the decade.
Opinion · Industry Economics
The collapse of the WTO's 28-year e-commerce tariff moratorium in Yaoundé is not a diplomatic failure but the latest line item on an invoice the tech industry deferred, exposing currency exposure, tariff creep, and the slow dismantling of the digital free-trade order.
Opinion · Tech Labor & Hiring
A Resume Genius survey shows 22% of job seekers now use AI tools during live interviews, prompting employers to redesign hiring funnels amid AI-generated resume floods, yet the core question of what interviews truly measure lingers.
Opinion · Industry Economics
From TransDigm’s 47% operating margins to Meta’s spiraling AI budget, depreciation accounting increasingly explains the gap between what companies invest and what they actually earn.
Opinion · Technology Economics
Investors in Q1 2026 rewarded Alphabet and Amazon for translating AI capex into revenue while punishing Microsoft and Meta for promises tied to infrastructure years from paying off.
Opinion · Tech Labor & Hiring
Oakland City University's WARN notice, followed by its denial of any layoff plans, reveals how the law functions in 2026: less a worker protection than an early-warning indicator of institutional distress.
Opinion · Tech Economics
The two-million-visitor drop in Canadian border crossings is an early signal that tariffs, a strong US dollar, and the de minimis repeal are rewiring the economics of every cross-border digital transaction.
Opinion · Industry Economics
New tariffs, digital services taxes, and a strong dollar are driving up cross-border tech costs, with two million fewer Canadian border crossings signaling a wider trade policy reckoning.
Opinion · Tech Labor
Companies like Oracle and Southwest Airlines now use the WARN Act's 60-day notice requirement to structure severance packages and delay mass layoff warnings, shifting costs to workers.
Opinion · AI Capex
The Q1 2026 earnings reports revealed a stark split: investors now separate hyperscalers by AI revenue delivery, fracturing a capex cycle that once rewarded all spenders into clear winners and losers.
Opinion · Regulatory Economics
As M&A deal volumes climb, antitrust regulators from FERC to the DOJ are rewriting clearance rules in real time, leaving deal pipelines vulnerable to political and legal shifts.
Opinion · Labor Economics
Nearly 73,200 U.S. workers appeared in state WARN databases in Q1 2026, and the severance formulas attached to those filings reveal how companies really value their departing workers, more than any earnings call could.
Opinion · Industry Economics
Record Q1 2026 AI infrastructure spending from Amazon, Alphabet, Microsoft, and Meta has pushed the market to separate leaders who show revenue returns from those still asking for patience.
Opinion · Technology Economics
Four hyperscalers reported strong earnings but tempered forward guidance as combined AI capex commitments topped Switzerland's GDP.
Opinion · Tech Labor
Landmark NLRB joint-employer rulings against Google and Amazon, amid the tech sector's longest sustained layoffs, are reshaping the bargaining landscape for engineers and forcing the industry to confront not whether workers organize, but what the org chart looks like when they do.
Opinion · Tech Labor
The NLRB oversaw 30 percent fewer elections in 2025, but tech workers are bypassing the ballot box altogether, turning to contract campaigns, walkouts, and a quiet redefinition of collective bargaining.
Five stories. Four minutes. Zero hot takes. Sent at 7:00 a.m. local time, every weekday.