After a year+ of every convo turning into "just use AI! why aren't you using AI yet?" and the workers finding no new ways to raise productivity, my wife's company has now undergone two waves of layoffs in 2026. They wasted a ton of people's time hyping the forced usage of what are basically chatbots and in the end just gave a bunch of folks the axe. Now operational effectiveness and service quality are degrading while headcount falls. I suspect this is happening across industries as many companies that over hired post-pandemic are still in need of slimming down especially as margins thin. They see this nascent tech as an escape hatch for their ills. However the hype has far exceeded the productivity gain and C Teams have not gotten wise to this fact. Thus we are in a very awkward transitional period originally teed up by post-covid hiring mania. White collar bloodbath, but with severance packages so virtually none of them apply for unemployment. This will keep happening in waves for the foreseeable future, I reckon.(𝐓𝐗𝐌𝐂)