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Hey everyone,
Uber just cut 3,300 jobs. About 10% of the whole company. Its biggest layoffs since COVID hit.
It's not just Uber. Oracle is reportedly reviewing up to 10,000 more roles. Microsoft just made 605 Xbox job cuts in Redmond official this week. PayPal cut jobs in India too.
Different companies, same week, same excuse. Let's talk about what's actually behind it, and the one move that protects you.
This week, by the numbers
Uber: 3,300 jobs cut, 10% of the whole workforce
Oracle: 7,000 to 10,000 roles reportedly under review, on top of ~21,000 already cut this past year
Microsoft: 605 Redmond-area jobs formally terminated this week via WARN notice
PayPal: roughly 220 roles cut across India offices
Tech this week, in one image.
What we're reading
The exact numbers behind Microsoft's Xbox WARN notice, filed this week with specific job counts and a termination date attached.
6,300+ jobs lost in 10 days across Uber and PayPal alone, with AI reallocation named directly as the reason.
The full running list of September cuts, including Twilio (850), Gap (500), and Warner Bros. Discovery (100).
Blu Dot surpasses 2,000% ROAS with self-serve CTV ads
Home furniture brand Blu Dot blew up on CTV with help from Roku Ads Manager. Here’s how:
After a test campaign reached 211,000 households and achieved 1,010% ROAS, the brand went all in to promote its annual sales event. It removed age and income constraints to expand reach and shifted budget to custom audiences and retargeting, where intent was strongest.
The results speak for themselves. As Blu Dot increased their investment by 10x, ROAS jumped to 2,308% and more page-view conversions surpassed 50,000.
“For CTV campaigns, Roku has been a top performer,” said Claire Folkestad, Paid Media Strategist, Blu Dot. “Comping to our other platforms, we have seen really strong ROAS… and highly efficient CPMs, lower than any other CTV partner we've worked with.”
Using Roku Ads Manager, the campaign moved from a pilot to a permanent performance engine for the brand.
Every Layoff This Week Has the Same Excuse
Uber's CEO Dara Khosrowshahi put it in writing: the company is removing layers, simplifying team structures, refining its global location strategy, and focusing investment on its biggest opportunities. Read: autonomous vehicles and AI. 3,300 people, 10% of the workforce, gone in one memo.
Oracle already cut roughly 21,000 full-time roles over the past year. Now it's reportedly reviewing another 7,000 to 10,000 positions globally. Microsoft's Xbox cuts from back in July just became legally official this week: a WARN notice formalized 605 job losses in the Redmond area, part of a 3,200 total. PayPal cut about 220 roles in India across engineering, operations, and finance.
For context: trackers following 2026 layoffs put the industry total north of 175,000 job cuts so far this year, and this particular stretch, over 6,300 jobs across just Uber and PayPal in 10 days, is one of the fastest bursts since the pandemic-era cuts. This isn't a one-off bad week. It's the same pattern that's been running all year, just moving faster right now.
What most CS students think a layoff memo means: the company is struggling and can't afford the headcount anymore.
What's actually in almost every one of these memos: reallocating budget and focusing investment toward AI and automation. These aren't companies going broke. They're companies redirecting the money, and your team can be on the wrong side of that redirect even if the company overall is doing fine.
Your move: the safest position right now isn't avoiding AI, it's becoming genuinely fluent with the tools the budget is flowing into. Pick one you don't already know well, actually build something with it this month, whether that's an AI coding tool, an agent framework, or a prompt-heavy workflow tool, and be ready to explain in an interview exactly how you used it and what it got you. "I've used ChatGPT" is not a differentiator anymore. Being able to walk through a real workflow is.
A few concrete ones worth an actual afternoon instead of a bookmark: Cursor or GitHub Copilot for AI-assisted coding, Claude Code for working through a whole feature or bug fix conversationally instead of line by line, and a research tool like Perplexity for the job hunt itself. None of these are impressive to name-drop on their own. What's impressive is being able to describe a real problem you solved with one, in your own words, without reading off a resume bullet.
Do This This Week, Not Eventually
Pull up your resume and cut anything that doesn't name a specific tool, number, or result.
Ship one small thing using an AI tool you don't already know well, then write two sentences on what you'd tell an interviewer about it.
Message one person in your network you haven't talked to in a few months. Not to ask for a job, just to check in.
Set a recurring reminder to check the job board weekly, not just when you're already panicking.
If Any of This Hits Close to Home
If you're one of the people actually affected by this wave, or you just realized your own team's memo has been using the same language, the fastest next step isn't doom-scrolling LinkedIn. It's checking the Jobless job board, built specifically around roles that fit a CS student or new grad, not buried three filters deep in a general job site built for every industry at once. Bookmark it now, before you need it at 11pm on a Tuesday.
That's the wave this week. If your team's memo starts with "we're focusing our investment on," treat that as a two-week warning, not a formality. Go check what's open on the job board before you need it, not after.
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Until next time,
Team Jobless
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