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Why DeSci Could Be the Next Big Tech Frontier
DeSci is creating fresh opportunities where science, AI, and tech careers collide.
"Move like you're late and wait like you're early." -FS👋 Welcome, Jobseekers
From blockchains funding brain science to Oracle cutting thousands just as it doubles down on AI, this week’s newsletter is packed. We’ll look at why healthcare (and women workers) are holding up the labor market, plus drop a couple of sharp tools. Cake to polish your portfolio and Voicenotes to catch every idea before it slips.
🧑✈️ Career CoPilot: Why DeSci Could Be the Next Big Tech Frontier
📉 Layoff Report: Oracle Axes 10 % of India Staff Amid Trump Summit and OpenAI Deal
📈 Trends & Data: Healthcare Is Hiring, and Women Are Driving the Recovery
🔧 Jobseeker Tools: Cake, Voicenotes
Oracle Axes 10 % of India Staff Amid Trump Summit and OpenAI Deal
Source: TrueUp
Oracle has laid off about 10% of its India workforce, roughly 3,000 employees, just days after CEO Larry Wilson’s meeting with US President Trump and the company’s major infrastructure deal with OpenAI. The cuts, affecting software, cloud, and support roles, are part of a broader restructuring that also hit teams in the US, Canada, and Mexico. Oracle is doubling down on AI projects like the $500 billion “Stargate” initiative, shifting resources toward massive data center infrastructure while scaling back its long-standing reliance on India, leaving morale shaken and futures uncertain.
Layoffs this week:
Why DeSci Could Be the Next Big Tech Frontier
Overview: DeSci uses Web3 to fund, publish, and verify science in the open, and last week’s “DeSci & Neuro Night” in SF showed the momentum is real for builders in AI, data, and product.
The Details
What DeSci is: A movement that applies blockchains, DAOs, tokens, NFTs, and smart contracts to make research open, traceable, and community driven. (See primers from Coinbase and CoinGecko).
Funding, faster: Community treasuries and quadratic funding point capital at overlooked fields. Good overview from Fabric Ventures and a how-it-works explainer from ULAM Labs.
Open publishing and credit: Projects push open access with verifiable records, peer review rewards, and IPFS style storage. See the DeSci Foundation and platform tools from DeSci Labs.
On the ground in SF: DeSci & Neuro Night at Founders Inc drew 551 attendees on August 20. Talks included “The case for DeSci” (Erin Magennis), “Why Neuro, Why Now” (Dev Kennedy), “Cracking the Code: State-Space Models and the Future of Intelligence,” and a neuroplasticity protocol demo by Mariia Markitanova.
Real orgs shipping: VitaDAO funds longevity R&D, HairDAO coordinates patient-led hair-loss research and products, and GenomesDAO builds privacy-first genomic data vaults.
Where it is going: Chains like Sei pitch “DeSci V2,” with a $65M Sapien Capital fund and focus on onboarding non-crypto users to real apps in health data, compute, and publishing. Read the Sei blog.
Keep it honest: Some BioDAO tokens cratered and delivered little funding. Healthy skepticism is warranted. Source: Fabric Ventures analysis.
Why it Matters
DeSci is a live channel for tech talent to work on hard science without waiting on grants or journals. If you do ML, data engineering, crypto infra, product, or design, there is fresh demand across open publishing tools, reviewer marketplaces, scientific identity, decentralized compute, and data governance. Start by browsing DeSci Labs to see open publishing and AI reviewer tools, scan VitaDAO or HairDAO forums for paid bounties and grants, and watch the Sei DeSci updates for infra-level roles. Your edge: ship practical tools that hide the crypto, make data verifiable, and shorten research cycles from idea to result.
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Healthcare Is Hiring, and Women Are Driving the Recovery
Overview
The labor market’s recent strength is narrow: healthcare and social assistance are carrying a disproportionate share of new jobs, and most of those gains are going to women.
The Details
The U.S. added 3.5 million jobs from July 2023 to July 2025, a two-year growth rate of 2.3%. More than 1.9 million of those gains came from private education and health services, with 1.8 million in healthcare and social assistance alone. Of those, 1.35 million were female-held roles. Growth has become concentrated in a handful of sectors, while others stalled or shrank. (Source)
Employer demand mirrors this. Healthcare postings are about 32.5% above the February 2020 baseline, with physician/surgeon and therapy postings up 80%+, and nursing still 15%+ above pre-pandemic despite cooling. Also see the Indeed Job Postings Index reference noting U.S. postings 6.8% above baseline as of Aug 8. (Source)
The pipeline is increasingly female. Women are 54.6% of medical students in 2023-24, rising to 54.9% in 2024-25. (AAMC, AAMC press release). In the workforce, women are 44.5% of physicians, 86.8% of registered nurses, and 95.4% of speech-language pathologists. (BLS CPS Table 11). For grad programs, SLP master’s cohorts are ~96% female (ASHA education survey).
Despite healthcare strength, only about 54% of sectors have postings above pre-pandemic levels, which means aggregate demand is being held up by a few segments. (Source)
Why it Matters
Healthcare may be powering job growth right now, but that does not mean everyone should rush to nursing school. What it does mean is that the economy is becoming more lopsided. If you are in tech, your next role may depend on finding ways to plug into sectors that are still expanding while others cool off.
For developers, designers, data scientists, and operations pros, the play is to look for healthcare-adjacent roles where your skills translate without years of clinical retraining. Think AI tools for diagnosis, workflow automation, telehealth platforms, patient data security, or healthcare analytics. At the same time, do not ignore the lesson. Job growth is cyclical, and sectors outside healthcare will rebound. Positioning yourself now as someone who can pivot into in-demand industries when needed makes you more resilient, no matter where the next boom lands.
In short, the labor market is leaning on healthcare, but the takeaway for tech workers is bigger. Future-proof your career by aligning with sectors that cannot stop hiring and by keeping your skills flexible enough to cross industry lines.
Cake
Build Resume, Create Portfolio, and Find Jobs
All-in-One Platform for Professional Networking and Career Growth
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Voicenotes
Voicenotes is an award-winning AI note-taker to record your thoughts and meetings, remember everything, and get insights right when you need them.
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