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.
I like what your mentor had to say. Beautiful reminder today. Thank you
Strong piece Joseph! Thanks.
Most systems optimise for speed and output, then call it “help.” right?
That removes the friction that actually builds judgment.
I think a useful shift is this:
Help should increase a person’s ability to see constraints clearly and decide under them, not bypass that process.
That’s the gap SHシFT is working on (as you know!).
Instead of inferring intent from behaviour, it requires people to declare it with context and constraints BEFORE anything happens.
Instead of open access and automated routing, it introduces consent at the point of contact.
Instead of optimising outcomes, it improves the quality of the decision preceding them.
If systems continue to collapse problems on behalf of users, capability erodes.
If they make intent and constraints explicit, capability compounds.
I just need to prove it a couple of times...