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The sixth lesson, split into five rooms — code, hiring, survival, money, and strategy. The things nobody teaches you about getting hired in tech, newest first.

In Code In Hiring In Survival In Money In Strategy
97 lessons · page 2 of 9
A photorealistic close-up of a woman in her early thirties sitting alone at a… Tech Careers 5 min read
Tech Careers

Tech Layoffs 2026: How to Read the Cuts When You Think You Might Be Next

Last year I counted somewhere north of 80,000 tech jobs cut before Labor Day, and I only counted because I was trying to work out whether mine was going to be one of them.

W William Novak
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A wide-angle photojournalistic photograph shot inside a cavernous data center at night, endless rows… Ai 4 min read
Ai

What Amazon Layoffs in Its AGI Unit Tell You About Where the Money Is Actually Going

In late 2025, Amazon cut jobs inside the unit building its most-hyped bet — artificial general intelligence — months after the roughly 16,000 corporate roles it had already eliminated.

R Rachel Dunmore
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A photorealistic close-up portrait of a young man in his early thirties sitting alone… Investing 6 min read
Investing

What Tech Layoffs Actually Tell You About Timing the Market (Less Than You Think)

The morning Meta closed at $88 in November 2022, a friend I'll call D texted me a screenshot of his brokerage account with three words: "I can time this." He had ridden the same shares down from $340.…

L Lucy Fairbanks
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A wide, quiet shot inside a modern African fintech office at dusk in Lagos… Fintech 4 min read
Fintech

African Tech Layoffs in 2026: Why It Wasn't Mostly AI

When the first-half 2026 figures landed, I read the headline twice before I believed it: roughly 2,574 jobs cut across African tech in six months, about a 236% jump on the year before, per the reports…

M Michael Townsend
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A photorealistic editorial photograph of a lone young African tech worker sitting on the… Careers 4 min read
Careers

African Tech Layoffs Hit a Record: What the 2,574 Number Actually Measures

The number I keep coming back to is 2,574. That is roughly how many jobs disappeared from African tech companies in the first half of 2026, according to a count from TechCabal Insights that circulated…

C Charlotte Kinsley
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A photorealistic close-up of a mid-career woman seated alone at a home office desk… Careers 10 min read
Careers

What Nobody Tells You About Surviving Layoffs

The email landed at 9:14 on a Tuesday. Fourteen minutes into the workday, before I'd finished my coffee, with a calendar invite titled "Quick Sync" and no agenda. By 9:40 I was locked out of Slack.

B Benjamin Drake
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A photorealistic corporate photograph inside a vast, dimly lit semiconductor fabrication facility, rows of… Semiconductors 4 min read
Semiconductors

Intel Corporate Restructuring: Read the Business Units, Not the Headcount

Headcount is the least informative number in Intel's restructuring, and it is the number everyone watches.

C Christopher Weston
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A split-screen composition inside a modern semiconductor fabrication plant: on one side, a lone… Semiconductors 9 min read
Semiconductors

Tech Layoffs vs. a 67,000-Worker Shortage: The Semiconductor Industry's Split Screen

In July 2023, the Semiconductor Industry Association and Oxford Economics published a projection that stopped me mid-scroll: 67,000.

A Amelia Rutherford
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A contemplative young Black professional in their mid-thirties standing alone at the edge of… Job Search 6 min read
Job Search

The AI Degree Won't Save You. Here's What the Program Actually Buys.

The advice you have heard, probably from a career counselor or a headline, goes like this: the field is exploding, so get the degree. Get the credential that says "AI" on it and the door opens.

S Samuel Kenworth
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A contemplative young woman in her mid-thirties sitting alone at a wooden desk near… Ai Education 5 min read
Ai Education

The AI Degree Won't Save You — But This Materials Science Angle Might: Lesson Six on Artificial Intelligence Education

A friend messaged me last spring with a screenshot of a program page. Morgan State had announced a new four-year AI degree, and she wanted to know if she should enroll.

E Emma Stanfield
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A close-up editorial desk scene shot from a slightly elevated angle: two printed paragraphs… Llm 6 min read
Llm

LLM Prompt Engineering for Editorial Judgment: What Actually Moved the Needle

I gave a model forty paragraphs from a newsletter draft and asked it to rate each one from 1 to 10 on "editorial quality." It returned thirty-one sevens, six eights, two sixes, and one nine.

R Rachel Dunmore
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A close-up photorealistic photograph of an aging office photocopier in a dimly lit government… National Security 9 min read
National Security

Government AI Adoption Fails at the Photocopier, Not the Model

Here is the claim, stated flat so I can spend the rest of this piece earning it: in almost every large public-sector deployment I have watched, government AI adoption did not fail because the model…

G Grace Ellerton
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