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Klarna’s CEO spent 2024 on every podcast he could get on, telling anyone who’d listen: 700 workers replaced by AI. Costs down. The era of human employees was over.
It didn't go great.
Satisfaction tanked. Customers kept calling back with the same unresolved problems. The savings never materialized. By 2025, Klarna was quietly hiring the humans back.
This week: what actually happened when companies bet everything on AI — and why your job search window is wider right now than anything on your feed will admit.
Roles of the Week
Amazon — Software Development Engineer Intern (2027) — 11,000-person class, 63% conversion to full-time. Applications open next month. Don't sleep on it.
IBM — Entry-Level Software Engineer 2026 — Tripling entry-level hiring this year specifically because AI hit its limits. Actually looking for new grads right now.
Ford — Software Engineer, Digital Transformation — #1 in JD Power 2026 quality rankings after rebuilding their engineering team. Actively hiring SWEs.
They fired you for AI. It didn't work. Here's the data.
them rn
Ford fired their engineering QA team. AI made things worse.
Ford’s AI quality-control systems couldn’t catch design flaws without decades of engineering judgment behind them. The AI amplified bad inputs instead of filtering them. Ford dropped to last in JD Power’s quality rankings.
So they quietly rehired and promoted 350 experienced engineers to fix what the AI broke.
The result: Ford is #1 in JD Power's 2026 Initial Quality Study. First time since 2010.
IBM replaced HR with AI. AI couldn't handle 6% of the job.
The AI handled 94% of routine requests fine. The other 6% — ethical dilemmas, complex edge cases, judgment calls that require real context — it couldn't touch. IBM's Chief HR Officer called it "work that still requires a human touch."
IBM is now tripling its US entry-level hiring across all business units in 2026, specifically because of where AI fell short.
The numbers that matter
55% of business leaders who cut employees for AI now admit those decisions were wrong. (Orgvue)
32% of hiring managers who eliminated a role for AI later rehired for the same or similar position. (Robert Half)
About half of all companies that swapped humans for AI boomeranged back — at greater expense than keeping the original team would have cost.
What your feed told you in 2025: AI is replacing junior engineers. The entry-level job is dead.
What the market is doing in 2026: The companies that went all-in on AI replacement are walking it back. The ones that didn’t are hiring harder than ever.
The part of the process that kills most applications
All of this matters in the job market but landing the interview is only the start. The scheduling, follow-ups, and back-and-forth that eat your time? That’s where most candidates fall behind.
The AI Agent You Can Trust
The best assistants don't multitask their attention across a hundred tools. Neither does Catch. It's an AI agent that focuses on one thing — the admin work you'd rather not touch — and does it exceptionally well.
Scheduling, flights, restaurants, follow-ups, vendors, clients. You hand it over; Catch handles the back-and-forth and comes back with it done.
No context-switching. No dropped balls. Just your admin, quietly cleared — so your focus stays on the work only you can do.
Meet the agent built for admin, and it'll be ready to work before your next meeting.
Get started at catchagent.ai — and give your attention back to what matters.
Amazon is about to hire your classmates. Here's your move.
AWS CEO Matt Garman, May 2026: "We are hiring just as many software developers as we ever have inside of Amazon."
Amazon is hiring 11,000 software engineering interns in 2026. Intern-to-full-time conversion: 63.1% — five-year high. Applications for 2027 open next month.
Apply the first week Amazon’s 2027 intern application opens — first-wave gets the best interviewers and fastest decisions.
Build one real AI project before you apply — they want engineers who work with AI, not around it.
Stop reading the doom posts — 55% of companies that cut engineers for AI just admitted it was a mistake.
Quick take while the AI boomerang is fresh
Hot take: AI replacing engineers was...
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Until next time,
– Team Jobless
