AI Reshuffle: The Tech Jobs Being Cut vs The Ones Being Created

At 6 am, the email arrived. Oracle had begun its second round of layoffs this year. As many as 3,000 of those affected may be from India alone. Product engineering teams are reportedly among the worst hit. Oracle's workforce had already shrunk by about 21,000 people, or 13 percent, in the fiscal year ended May 31. "Worked till 3 am", wrote a man who lost his12-year Oracle job.

The layoff scoreboard

Layoffs.fyi, an independent tracker, counted 1,23,305 tech employees laid off across 289 companies in 2026 as of September 2. This year passed last year's total by 699 with nearly four months to go. By September 17, the tracker listed as many as 303 companies.

The biggest cuts this year have all been tech companies - Oracle (about 21,000), Amazon (17,267), Dell (11,000), Meta (10,400) and Microsoft (about 4,800).

A growing company, a shrinking payroll

These are not distressed firms. Oracle reported 121 percent growth in cloud infrastructure revenue this month. Its first-quarter capital expenditure was $28.5 billion, up from $8.5 billion a year earlier, and it kept its fiscal 2027 forecast at $90 billion to $95 billion.

At an all-hands after the cuts, new CFO Hilary Maxson said she dislikes the phrase "doing more with less". The hour-long meeting reportedly did not address the layoffs directly. Microsoft says AI is changing how work gets done but has pushed back on the idea that its cuts mean AI is replacing staff.

The hub that lost half

Adidas launched its Gurgaon tech hub in 2021. It employs about 700 people, and 300 to 350 are expected to be affected. The cuts hit software engineers, data scientists and data engineers.

Some staff received exit letters on September 15, the day of the town hall. Others stay until December 15 to hand over their responsibilities to colleagues. Imagine training the people who get to keep the work. Adidas called it a 'difficult decision' and said the hub still plays a 'critical role' in its plans.

The other inbox

Meanwhile, Anthropic launched Claude Frontier Academy, a $100 million programme to train 10,000 'Frontier Deployed Engineers' by the end of 2027. Each engineer spends 12 weeks leading a real Claude project at their own employer. The first cohorts include engineers from Accenture, Bain, Capgemini, Deloitte, McKinsey, Morgan Stanley, Novo Nordisk and Commonwealth Bank of Australia.

The demand signal is real. Draup data shows forward-deployed engineer openings at five major consulting firms rose to 1,404 in the year to May, while overall postings across seven firms fell about 24 percent.

Seats are by nomination, which helps if you still have an employer to nominate you. Cohorts currently run in San Francisco, New York and London.

The gap

India is a heavy user of this technology. It is Anthropic's second-largest market for Claude.ai, and software development makes up 45.2 percent of work-related tasks there, the highest of any market. TCS is also equipping 50,000 associates with Claude, ET reported.

Set 1,404 openings beside 1,23,305 layoffs and the scale gap is obvious, though the figures measure different things over different periods. None of the data we reviewed tracks whether people laid off from engineering roles end up in the new ones.