Since the cuts started I keep meeting the same four people.
The first is retraining. Ten years of shipping software, now working through model architectures at night, trying to become the person who does the automating rather than the person it happens to.
The second left. Not the industry — the bubble. Went to a company that is not a technology company but has a great deal of technology in it, and is now the most senior engineer in the building. Less prestige, less money on paper, considerably more sleep.
The third went fractional. Five hours a week to each of four companies, none of which can end their year by ending them. It looks precarious from outside and is arguably less so than the job was.
The fourth is building something small, alone, with tools that made a team of five unnecessary.
I am the fourth. I would not read anything into that.
I have seen numbers attached to all of this — what share of layoffs, what proportion driven by automation. I do not trust them enough to repeat them here. What I trust is that I have had this conversation four different ways in the last year, and that every one of those four people is doing better than they expected and worse than they were promised.