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Last week in tech, around 20,000 layoffs landed in seven days. Meta announced 8,000 cuts and froze another 6,000 open roles, reorganizing survivors into a new Applied AI Engineering division. Microsoft ran its first voluntary buyout in 51 years, using a Rule of 70 to target longer tenured staff. And Sam Altman, of all people, publicly called the whole trend "AI washing." In this episode of Last Week in Tech, Uma and Ope break down what is actually going on under the hood. Are these AI layoffs or just rebranded cost reductions? Why are stocks climbing while engineers are getting cut? And what does the gap between capex and headcount mean for your career as a software engineer in 2026? We cover Meta's autonomous coding agents push, Microsoft's buyout criteria and pay restructuring, Oracle's 95 percent net income jump alongside 30,000 cuts, why employment for engineers aged 22 to 25 is down nearly 20 percent since 2024, and what 80,000 Q1 tech layoffs actually tell us about the future of the industry. Beyond the Build is the podcast for software engineers who want to talk about everything outside the code editor. New Last Week in Tech episodes drop weekly. Tech layoffs 2026, Meta layoffs, Microsoft buyout, AI replacing software engineers, AI washing, Sam Altman, junior engineer job market, Big Tech earnings, software engineering career, capex AI infrastructure.
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