(2026-06-03) Heres How The Mass Layoffs In Tech Will End And How To Thrive In The Aftermath

Joe Procopio: Here’s How the Mass Layoffs In Tech Will End, and How To Thrive In the Aftermath. Why the race to “streamline” will backfire as the unintended consequences (side-effects) pile up.

In all seriousness, last week, two major AI-related shifts came together like gasoline and lit matches

One. As I wrote last week, it has become abundantly clear now that almost every single tech company that has conducted mass layoffs over the last few years has done so to accelerate the clearing of human overstock from the Great Labor Arms Race of the early 2020s to make financial shelf space for the Great AI Arms Race of the mid 2020s.

Two. The loss-leading economics of the Great AI Arms Race started to become much less opaque. And people who know better — like Nvidia guys who are financially incentivized to say the opposite — are starting to warn that AI-as-labor-replacement isn’t nearly as robust or inexpensive as it looks. A ton of tech leaders keep telling me this isn’t getting nearly enough attention.

Let me tap my AI and tech experience and paint the picture of how the tech mass layoffs end and what the aftermath will look like. As usual, it comes down to unintended consequences. So here they are. Three of them to paint the aftermath, then three of them to give you a roadmap to higher ground.

Unintended Consequence #1: There won’t be anyone left to be the second “B” in “B2B”

When every tech company has finally erased all their innovators and experienced tech makers and tech tool users, and replaced them with chatbots and agents and decision engines, who do they think they’re going to be selling to?

Unintended Consequence #2: Innovation dies as AI loops into itself

The knowledge corpus of AI has already started eating its own tail — meaning you can’t turn off:
AI’s baked-in bullet-point regurgitation style

Unintended Consequence #3: The unsustainable cost to scale “replacement AI”

Corporate tech, as it always does, has designed and budgeted for an unrealistic AI infrastructure of data centers that nobody wants, chips that can’t meet demand using materials we don’t control, and a workforce that is way more “AI-user” than “AI-builder.”

The same loss-leading strategy that is causing the shocking cost increases in current AI tools is now going exponential and into the trillions of dollars. Not everyone can win this arms race, and when the winners emerge, they can price however they want, because the market will be fixed and dependent.

There’s your post-apocalyptic aftermath picture in all its dystopia. It’s worse than the SaaSpocalypse. It’s worse than the Collapse of the Tech Industry.

there are three more unintended consequences for building in the wake of mass layoffs. These are the ones they don’t see, the ones that give you the leverage to use their size and mistakes against them. Update: Here are the next three unintended consequences (2026-06-05) Tech’s Mass Layoffs Are Brutal — but They’ve Created a Massive Opening