January 29, 2026
From rocket ship to headcount dip
The Tech Market Is Fundamentally Fucked Up – AI Is Just a Scapegoat
Wall Street yelled “grow!”, now it’s “profits!”—and workers pay while AI takes the blame
TLDR: A viral post says the real driver behind tech layoffs—like Amazon’s 16,000—is years of cheap money and growth-at-all-costs, not AI. Commenters pile on, blaming Wall Street’s pivot to profits and corporate scapegoating, with jokes about “disaster at light speed” and frustration at credulous coverage.
The internet’s commentariat is roasting Big Tech after a fiery post argued the job market isn’t broken by AI—it was broken long before, and now AI is the convenient escape goat. The spark: 16k Amazon layoffs. The crowd’s verdict? This is a Wall Street mood swing, not a robot uprising.
austin-cheney lays it out: for a decade, the stock market rewarded growth over profits, so companies hired like there was no tomorrow—then COVID hit and the market flipped to “show me the money,” so “excess developers had to go.” Ronsenshi channels Cory Doctorow’s “reverse centaur” bit, saying companies did anything to stay in the “growth stock” club—“spend on useless features, hire for those useless features”—until the bill showed up. rvz throws elbows at Amazon: it’s a logistics-and-robots machine with razor-thin margins, so anyone chasing “stability” there is in for a shock. pydry adds spice, comparing today’s AI-blaming to the post‑Brexit era: failing companies pin everything on the headline of the week, and journalists rarely push back.
The meme energy is strong: layoffs as a “stock price feature,” “reverse centaurs,” and lifetimerubyist’s killer line—AI turns a mess into a disaster at light speed. Consensus: AI’s the scapegoat; the real plot twist is cheap money, overhiring, and a market that now cheers “discipline” when heads roll.
Key Points
- •The article was prompted by reported 16,000 layoffs at Amazon and related LinkedIn posts.
- •It argues AI is being blamed for tech job market issues that stem from post-2008 low interest rates and growth-first investor priorities.
- •The author claims tech firms over-hired engineers during the low-rate era to pursue exponential expansion rather than sustainability.
- •Using a manufacturing analogy, the piece frames unshipped software work and surplus hiring as excessive inventory that firms later shed.
- •Layoffs are described as a signal of financial discipline to investors, with perceptions shifting from failure pre-2010 to margin-protection in recent years.