Minimum Viable Humans.

A link for The Algorithm of Sacrifice landed in a group chat recently. The post details Microsoft's recent 6,000-person layoff amid record profits and $125 billion in cash reserves. The piece paints AI as the villain, arguing these employees were being sacrificed to automation after ironically building the very systems replacing them.

Good story but it's missing the plot.

The finger-pointing at AI reveals a curious entitlement in tech: the belief that white-collar knowledge workers should be immune to the digital disruption they helped unleash on everyone else. That those who build the tools of disruption ought to be exempt from experiencing their consequences. There's something Oppenheimer-like about it. Build the system. Serve the mission. Push the boundaries of what's possible. And then one day, you wake up and realize the thing you helped create just made you redundant. The company doesn't thank you for your service. It just reassigns your duties to the machine you helped build.

This isn't new and it's not unique to AI. Business process outsourcing has been around for decades using humans who can do the work at a fraction of those whom they replaced. AI is making it easier to outsource more complicated types of work.

As evil as you may think this is, AI isn't driving these layoffs—it's simply providing a new mechanism and narrative justification for long-standing corporate behaviors. The tech industry has always operated on boom-bust hiring cycles. We saw it after the dot-com bubble, after 2008, and we're seeing it again following the pandemic hiring spree.

What's really happening goes much deeper.

Companies aren't just cutting costs—they're conducting a fundamental reset to find their Minimum Viable Humans model. They're stripping organizations down to the ground—the irreducible human functions that (currently) can't be replaced or augmented by AI.

This isn’t about cruelty—it’s about control. Executives aren’t twirling their mustaches dreaming up layoffs. They’re resetting to zero, trying to figure out what work truly requires a human being when the ground beneath us is shifting fast. It’s brutal, but not irrational. By stripping teams to the studs, companies are watching to see what actually breaks without us—and what doesn’t. That’s the part we need to pay attention to.

Once they find this floor, they'll begin rebuilding—not with the same roles and structures, but with a fundamentally different operating model designed for the AI era. This is why I keep advising people to stop trying to get their old job back. It’s gone. For those on the inside, accept the challenge for what it is and, if possible, consider yourself lucky that you're learning in real time what the future looks like for the rest of us. Now is the perfect time to start blogging about what you're seeing, feeling, thinking, and doing. The world needs your perspectives.

Perhaps the most significant yet under-discussed aspect of these layoffs is the dramatic expansion of management spans of control. Organizations are systematically eliminating middle management layers, moving from traditional ratios of 5–7 direct reports per manager to 15–20+. I have a few friends—leaders—who are going through this right now, and it's happening quick.

If this is to stick, it's only possible with algorithmic management taking over functions previously handled by human managers: performance monitoring, task allocation, basic feedback and guidance, coordination and information flow. On the positive side, this should translate into a sunset for the endless run of pointless meetings. Good riddance.

The manager's role isn't just being eliminated—it's being fundamentally redefined from day-to-day oversight to exception handling, strategic communication, and resource allocation across much larger teams. It will keep going into augmenting the decision-making process for leaders and individual contributors alike. The boundaries of acceptable risk at all levels are now in a constant prototype state as AI becomes more powerful and faster, giving mere mortals more access to information and insight than ever before. The trick will be what training we need in order to make the pairing work.

When organizations begin selectively adding humans again, it won't recreate the structures we knew. The new addition of humans will focus on different capabilities than those being eliminated. They'll operate within flatter, algorithm-mediated structures. They'll be evaluated by different metrics. They'll collaborate with AI systems as a fundamental assumption.

This isn't a temporary contraction but a permanent rewiring of what humans do within organizations and how work gets done.

If you're among those recently laid off or worried about your position, this analysis probably offers little comfort. The strategic logic behind these changes doesn't minimize their human impact or excuse the implementation that prioritizes shareholder interests over worker wellbeing. That said, I can't think of a time when employees were ever prioritized over shareholders en masse. But understanding what's really happening might help you navigate what comes next.

Trying to get your old job back is futile—that role, as you remember it, isn’t coming back. The opportunity now lies in positioning yourself for the roles and capabilities that will emerge as organizations rebuild from the bottom up—core human strengths like creativity and ethical judgment, the ability to collaborate with AI, your unique experience and expertise, and the kind of discernment that values judgment over process.

The brutal reality is that we're experiencing a fundamental reset in how organizations structure themselves around human capability. No amount of denial—or outrage aimed at global corporations—will reverse it. The question isn't whether you can hang on through temporary cuts until things "go back to normal." As I keep trying to shout, normal isn't coming back.

The question is whether we can adapt to a new reality where the division of cognitive labor between humans and machines is being radically rewritten. Where the premium isn't on executing known processes but on navigating unmapped territory. Where spans of control, decision rights, and value creation are all being reorganized around a new human-machine partnership.

This isn't just another tech cycle. It's a fundamental recalibration of the human role in organizational life. And while there's no easy path through this transition, understanding what's actually happening might help you find your footing on shifting ground.

The floor is being established. From here, the only real question is, are you ready to adjust or is it time to tap out?