Samwise High Tech Recruiting Newsletter
Sunday, May 11, 2026
Meta to Cut 8,000 Jobs on May 20 — Recruiting and HR Hit Hardest
Meta will eliminate 8,000 positions on May 20 and cancel 6,000 open requisitions, bringing its total headcount reduction to 14,000 roles across the company. An internal memo from HR head Janelle Gale described the restructuring as structural rather than performance-based, reorganising teams into AI-focused pods. Recruiting and HR face the steepest cuts at 35 to 40 percent, reflecting collapsed hiring demand across the organisation. Meta’s 2026 capital expenditure guidance of $115 to $135 billion is nearly double last year’s spend, with savings redirected toward data centres, GPUs, and Llama model infrastructure.
Sources: TechCrunch · CNBC
Cloudflare Cuts 1,100 Jobs Despite Record Revenue in AI Pivot
Cloudflare co-founders Matthew Prince and Michelle Zatlyn announced the elimination of more than 1,100 positions, roughly 20 percent of the workforce and the company’s first mass layoff in 16 years. The cuts landed alongside a record quarter of $639.8 million in revenue, up 34 percent year-over-year. Prince wrote that internal AI usage has surged more than 600 percent in three months, with staff running thousands of AI agent sessions daily. The company framed the move not as cost-cutting but as redefining operations for the agentic AI era. Shares fell 24 percent after hours.
Sources: TechCrunch · CNBC
Oracle Workers Petition for Better Severance After 30,000 Cuts
More than 600 Oracle employees signed a letter requesting improved severance after the company eliminated roughly 30,000 positions, 18 percent of its global workforce. An additional 90 workers filed a public petition urging Oracle to match packages offered by Meta and Microsoft. The standard offer of four weeks’ base pay plus one week per year of service does not accelerate unvested stock. One long-tenured employee reported losing nearly $1 million in RSUs four months from vesting. Oracle declined to negotiate. The cuts hit Cerner, Oracle Cloud Infrastructure, and ERP consulting hardest.
Sources: TechCrunch · The AI Insider
Nearly 38,000 Jobs Cut in First 10 Days of May 2026
Tech layoffs have intensified heading into mid-May, with more than 37,000 workers affected in the first ten days of the month. The 2026 running total stands at 179 layoff events impacting 113,863 workers, averaging 869 job losses per day. First-quarter announcements reached 52,050, a 40 percent increase over the same period in 2025. Roughly one quarter of reductions are officially attributed to AI, with the remainder tied to cost discipline and corrections from 2021-era overhiring. A survey of 1,000 U.S. hiring managers found 55 percent expect layoffs to continue through year-end.
Sources: American Bazaar · TrueUp Layoffs Tracker
AI Engineers Command $170K as Demand Outstrips Supply Two to One
Mid-level AI engineers now earn a median of $170,750 according to Robert Half’s 2026 Salary Guide, with senior specialists commanding $200,000 to $312,000 in U.S. markets. The country projects 1.3 million AI job openings over two years against a qualified supply pool of fewer than 645,000 candidates. ManpowerGroup’s survey of 39,063 employers ranked AI skills as the hardest to hire for globally, surpassing all of engineering and IT for the first time. Mid-level AI engineers posted the highest year-over-year salary gains at 9.2 percent, followed by senior platform engineers at 8.9 percent.
Sources: Robert Half · Second Talent
Eightfold AI Embeds Agentic Interviewing in Oracle Recruiting Cloud
Eightfold AI announced the integration of its autonomous interviewing agent with Oracle Fusion Cloud Recruiting, the first enterprise-grade hiring agent embedded inside a major cloud HCM suite. The system evaluates candidates across screening, functional, and coding dimensions using a skills-based framework, claiming to cut time-to-hire from 42 days to under a week. Human decision-makers remain in the loop on every final hiring call. AI adoption across HR tasks has climbed to 43 percent in 2026, up from 26 percent in 2024, reflecting a shift from pilot programs to production workflows.
Sources: GlobeNewsWire · Eightfold AI Blog
Hiring Market Stuck in Neutral as Applications Double
The U.S. tech hiring market entered May in a familiar stall, with applications per role doubling since spring 2022 while actual hires crawl at the slowest pace in years. A quarter of employers now rank managing application volume among their top challenges. Software engineering postings have reached 67,000, a three-year high and roughly double mid-2023 levels, but volume is concentrated in startups and mid-market firms rather than Big Tech. Early-stage companies saw hiring rates fall 35 percent while late-stage firms increased hiring by 26 percent, suggesting post-FAANG operators are absorbing talent that established giants shed.
Sources: HiringThing · Ravio
Small Businesses to Hire One Million Grads in AI-Proof Roles
Small businesses are projected to hire nearly one million new graduates in 2026, emerging as a counterweight to Big Tech’s contraction. The strongest demand spans service technicians, trades specialists, and operational managers — roles requiring physical presence and judgment that AI cannot replicate. General tech salary growth has slowed to 1.6 percent on average, with 66 percent of employers citing economic concerns as the reason for tighter budgets. Companies that do hire are splitting their workforce strategy, cutting legacy roles and middle management while expanding engineering teams by 15 to 25 percent in AI-adjacent areas.
Sources: Fortune · Robert Half
Curated by JD · samwise.agency
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