How to help a human
Taking a moment to pause and reflect on this moment.
Welcome to Q2 2026. Oracle notified 30,000 employees yesterday via a 6am email that their services were no longer needed. I won’t be writing about that today. There are plenty of places you can find opinions about that. I do projections.
The monthly Hari report on AI Job Displacement drops two weeks from today. Since its first projections last summer, that lens had little to do with AI. The premise was that investments create expectations, and those expectations demand to be met within a knowable time frame. The opening window of that time frame was Q1 2026.
Forecasting a profound change six months out when the general consensus was 3-4 years felt like a big leap at the time. When most of the chatter is about what AI can or can’t do, what human things could never be automated, new jobs that might be created, predictions of a bubble bursting, and how companies will rehire these people once they realize what they lost, there’s a lot of noise. I look for signal.
Looking for signal gives a different view that’s less influenced by consensus. In the last several months I’ve turned Hari toward macro trends, local markets, VC portfolios, professional verticals, and company strategies, including fundraising. It’s been a powerful lens for leaders, investors, professionals, and think tanks.
But I want to pause here and center this thought: everything here affects individuals. Layoffs, positions never filled, job searches lasting half a year or more… it all ends with someone sitting at a kitchen table wondering what’s going to happen next. Beyond the paycheck, there’s a loss of identity, purpose, belonging. I’m enough of an optimist to believe there’s something better on the other side of a grieving period, but I’m enough of a human to recognize that the pain and sorrow is happening today.
There’s no projection, scenario, or opinion here today. This moment feels like one for reflection. Kindness. Hope beyond the evidence.
Every generation has its “end of history” fetish. Every generation so far has created more history and birthed new generations. They’ve all had their moments of hubris and shock and joy and angst. We persist.
A mentor I worked for early in my career once said, “the best way to make your own day is to make someone else’s.” If life feels scary right now, that’s normal. But if you want to begin feeling better, look for someone to help. Doesn’t take much. A kind word. A phone call. Listening. It’ll help them, and it’ll help you.
Amen!
Joseph,
Thank you for ensuring that the human keeps getting brought back into the picture!
30,000 layoffs? That isn't 30,000 lives disrupted. It is likely 100,000 or more. Partners/spouses, children, dependent adults, and those who they interact with. Merchants, service providers of all types, etc.
A 6:00 AM email. That is treating people as if they are no longer necessary parts in a machine. And yet those people keep that organization running, brought it to its current level. And as they leave, they take with them hundreds of thousands of years of collective wisdom. Collective wisdom that the organization might not have tapped while they were there, but that grew nonetheless. Collective wisdom that could well be of greater value than the cost of their salaries.
Big changes are coming. The challenge to leaders is not to make them mechanically. Not to make them solely on the bottom line. But to make them with an understanding of the human costs as well as all of the implications for the bottom line.