🚨: The Big Story

Everyone Told You Tech Was Dead. They Were Wrong.

Let's talk about the lie you've been sold for three months.

Every week in 2026, the same story: mass layoffs, AI eating jobs, "the worst market in a generation." LinkedIn is a funeral parlor. The comments are a support group. CEOs go on CNBC to explain why firing 4,000 people is actually brave. And you, scrolling through it at midnight, start to believe the floor fell out.

It didn't.

Lenny Rachitsky published his biannual State of the Product Job Market this week, built on data from TrueUp, which tracks openings at 9,000+ tech companies globally. The findings blow a hole in the doom narrative:

• 67,000+ engineering roles are open globally right now. 26,000 in the U.S. alone. That number is accelerating, not shrinking.

• PM openings hit a 3-year high: 7,300+ globally, up 20% since January and 75% above the 2023 low. More open PM roles than at any point since 2022.

• AI roles are hockey-sticking. Demand for AI engineers and AI PMs is growing faster than any other category. A third of all AI openings are in the Bay Area. New York is second at 10.2%.

• Tech recruiter openings are surging back to 2022 levels. Recruiter headcount is a leading indicator of hiring demand. Companies are staffing up their recruiting teams because they're about to hire a lot of people.

Read those numbers again. Then remember that every major outlet this month ran stories about how tech workers are doomed.

So what's actually going on?

Two things are true at the same time, and the media covers one of them. Yes, 59,000 tech workers have been cut in 2026. That's real and that's painful. But the companies doing the cutting are also posting tens of thousands of new roles. They're not shrinking. They're swapping. Firing the people they think AI replaces. Hiring the people who build, ship, and sell AI products.

The result: if you're in the wrong seat, it feels like a recession. If you're in the right one, there are more openings than any point since 2022.

The canary is design.

Design roles have flatlined at ~5,700 globally since early 2023. PM and eng both recovered. Design didn't. The PM-to-designer demand ratio flipped in mid-2023; PM openings now outpace design 1.27 to 1. Lenny's theory (and ours): AI lets engineers ship so fast that the traditional design process gets squeezed. When speed wins, the discipline that slows things down gets cut first. Designers reading this: that's your signal to evolve, not panic. Learn prompt engineering. Pick up Lovable or v0. Position yourself as someone who accelerates the AI workflow, not someone who gates it.

Our take:

The "AI is killing tech" narrative is convenient for CEOs who want cover for cost cuts, and it's convenient for media outlets that want clicks. The actual data tells a more complicated story: AI is reshuffling the deck. Some seats vanish. Others appear. The companies laying off 10% of their workforce are posting hundreds of new roles the same month. Jack Dorsey fires 4,000, stock pops 24%, and three weeks later Block is calling people back. The doom narrative serves everyone except the jobseeker who needs to know where the openings actually are.

That's what this data gives you. Not vibes. Not LinkedIn grief posts. Numbers. And the numbers say: the market is better than you think, if you know where to look.

What to watch:

• Bay Area gravity keeps pulling: 23% of all PM roles and 33% of AI roles are there. Remote's share keeps dropping. Geography matters again.

• Watch the recruiter numbers. When companies hire recruiters, they're about to hire everyone else. When recruiter openings cool, the window is closing.

Your move:

• If you're a PM or engineer, stop doom-scrolling and start applying. The market is the best it's been in three years. That window won't stay open.

• If you're a designer, the clock is ticking on the old workflow. Spend this week learning one AI-native design tool. That's the new table stakes.

Browse the real openings on TrueUp. 9,000+ companies. Filter by PM, eng, design, AI. See for yourself. Browse roles

📉 Layoff Report

Meta is cutting several hundred, Block is rehiring, & CBS killed a 99-year-old institution

• Meta is cutting several hundred jobs: Meta is laying off several hundred employees across multiple teams, including sales, recruiting, and the Reality Labs division. The cuts will impact employees in the U.S. and other international markets. Read More

• Block (update): After cutting 4,000 employees (40% of workforce) in February, Block quietly started rehiring some of those same people by mid-March. CEO Dorsey admitted they "got some of them wrong." A design engineer said his termination was a clerical mistake. The largest AI-justified layoff in S&P 500 history is already reversing course. Stock still up 20%+. Source

• CBS News: Cut ~66 employees (6% of staff) and shuttered CBS News Radio after 99 years of operation. All radio division jobs eliminated. The WGA called it "recklessness and greed." Second round of cuts under Paramount Skydance in six months. Source

• Atlassian: Axed 1,600 people (10% of workforce) to "self-fund further investment in AI and enterprise sales." CEO Cannon-Brookes: "It would be disingenuous to pretend AI doesn't change the number of roles required." Cloud revenue grew 26% YoY while the cuts landed. Source

• IKEA (Ingka Group): Cut 800 office roles across 32 markets as the world's largest IKEA retailer restructures for e-commerce. Source

Bottom line: Block's rehires are the week's most revealing detail. Dorsey fired 4,000 people on a Thursday, stock popped, and within weeks the company was sending "come back" emails. Meanwhile Atlassian's CEO is saying the quiet part out loud: AI changes how many people you need. The honesty is appreciated. The 1,600 layoffs less so.

🧑‍✈️ Career CoPilot

How to Cross the Market Split (Before It Crosses You)

The Big Story data makes the career math brutally clear: 67,000 eng openings on one side, 59,000 layoffs on the other. The dividing line is AI fluency. Not "I put ChatGPT on my resume" fluency. The kind where you can explain what you built with it, what broke, and what you'd do differently.

Here's how to get to the hiring side of that line this month.

• Move toward the Bay Area gravity well (or fake it). 23% of PM roles. 33% of AI roles. All Bay Area. If you can't relocate, at least make sure your LinkedIn says you're open to Bay Area roles and willing to do hybrid. Plenty of companies want 2-3 days in-office. That's worth exploring before you write off the biggest concentration of open roles in the country.

• Target the companies hiring recruiters. Lenny's data shows recruiter openings surging toward 2022 levels. That's a cheat code. If a company is hiring 5+ recruiters right now, they're about to post dozens of roles in the next 60 days. Find those companies on TrueUp or LinkedIn, and get in front of them before the postings go live. The best time to apply is before the job exists.

• Stop applying to design roles the old way. If you're a designer, the flatline in the data isn't a temporary dip. It's a structural shift. The designers getting hired right now are the ones building in Figma AND prototyping in code AND prompting AI tools. Your portfolio should show speed, not just polish. Rebuild one case study this week showing a project where AI was part of your workflow, even if you have to recreate it.

📊 Trends & Data

Money is flowing toward AI builders and away from everyone else

• OpenAI plans to nearly double its workforce from 4,500 to 8,000 by end of 2026 (Financial Times). That's roughly 100 new hires per week across product, engineering, research, and sales. Source

• 20.4% of 2026 tech layoffs are now explicitly linked to AI by the companies themselves, up from 8% in 2025 (RationalFX). Block and Atlassian are driving the shift from euphemism to candor. Source

• IBM is tripling its Gen Z entry-level hiring. CHRO Nickle LaMoreaux: companies that "doubled down on entry-level hiring in this environment" will win in 3-5 years. Counter-programming the AI layoff narrative. Source

• 53% of U.S. tech job postings now require AI/ML skills, per Dice's 2025 Tech Jobs Report. AI specialists earn 15-25% more than generalists in comparable roles. The premium is growing. Source

What this means for you: OpenAI hiring 3,500 people while Block fires 4,000 tells the whole story. The money is flowing toward AI builders and away from everyone else. IBM's bet on entry-level hiring is the contrarian play: they're banking that gutting the junior pipeline today creates a talent crisis in three years. If you're early-career, IBM just became one of the most interesting companies in tech.

👀 Companies to Watch

OpenAI, Cape, Giga, IBM, Vanta

• OpenAI: Plans to grow from 4,500 to 8,000 employees by end of 2026. Hiring across product, engineering, research, and sales. Also creating "technical ambassador" roles to help enterprises adopt its tools. Valued at $840B after its $110B round. Careers

• Cape: Privacy-first mobile carrier just raised a $100M Series C (Bain Capital Ventures, IVP). Building a carrier from the ground up to protect government agencies and businesses against cellular security threats. Hiring across engineering and security in Arlington, VA. Learn more

• Giga: AI customer experience platform raised $61M Series A. Building real-time AI agents for enterprise automation. Paying customers include DoorDash. Hiring engineers with autonomy; small team, big scale. Careers

• IBM: Tripling its Gen Z entry-level hiring. Counter-programming every other tech giant right now. If you're early-career and want a company that's investing in you instead of replacing you, this is the move. Careers

• Vanta: Automated security compliance. $243M Series C led by a16z. 200-500 employees, hiring engineering and customer success. Remote-friendly. Strong product in a category that only grows as AI adoption expands. Careers

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