“Giants is also making rules. Their rules is not suiting the human beans. Everybody is making his own rules to suit himself.”
― Roald Dahl, The BFG
“And now, because the monkeys were able to do everything the people did…It eventually became quite impossible to determine who were the monkeys and who were the people.”
― The Monkey People
On the second Wednesday of this past April, I was asked if I could take an ‘urgent’ Zoom call with my boss and an HR business partner even though I was on week 8 of my maternity leave. My boss had texted me early that morning, since he knew I was not checking email regularly. My stomach dropped, and I knew what was coming even though it had never happened to me before.
I stood in my kitchen facing my phone which I had propped up on some unopened mail and a small Amazon box holding my prenatal vitamins. My 8-week-old baby was snugly strapped to my chest, wrapped in one of those long strips of fabric that look more comfortable than they actually are. She would peacefully sleep for another 45 minutes before needing to nurse and receive a clean diaper.
I bounced her and swayed while I found my airpods and brushed my hair, preparing for the foreboding call. Tears came to my eyes so easily at that time; even the thought of what was coming brought a lump to my throat. My husband and I both work remotely, but my income has historically been the ‘breadwinning’ income of our household, so my guilt began to weigh heavy on my chest. “Maybe it’s actually some weird way to give me a promotion” I tried to tell myself, since I had just been given an annual raise 3 days earlier and told I was ‘exceeding expectations.’
The urgent Zoom call with HR and my manager was not a promotion. It was not even a ‘check in’ to see how I was doing during maternity leave. It was, as one could probably guess, a layoff call. I do not recommend being laid off, especially while on maternity leave, but one does not get to decide these things. My hormones did not receive the corporate ‘best practices during a layoff call’ tip sheet, leaving me woefully unprepared for this moment. So while I tried to remain as professional as possible, tears filled my eyes and my throat closed up for good. I could barely speak. It was an awful experience. I continued to pat my baby’s bottom to keep her asleep so I would not have to rudely step away from the call. Looking back, I SO wish she had been absolutely wailing during the call.
Over the course of the subsequent months to present-day, I have been networking, searching for the right opportunity, taking calls with mentors, and counting down the dwindling severance pay as I reform our household budgets for our growing family of 5. I look back on that day with sadness for myself and frustration for employees who endure layoff conversations in the midst of dramatic life events, which are often tied to significant financial shifts and anxieties.
Since I went on maternity leave in February 2026, the world of research and corporate politics shifted dramatically. Between the flooded job market and expectations of being an AI ‘thought leader,’ it felt like 8 years had passed since I clocked out of Slack, when in fact it had only been 8 weeks. As I began preparing my resume – something I had not updated in 3 years – I used AI to help me turn 3 years’ worth of research strategy work into sharp, impactful bullet points. From my living room floor, where I snuck in job searches between feedings and naps, I built AI agents to learn my voice and preferences, and I worked with these agents to prepare resumes and coach me for interviews. The more I worked with it, the more encouraged I became for my future: I am going to bounce back stronger from this baby AND this layoff and WIN WIN WIN! I have my artifacts, my agents, and my projects; I’ve automated my search and my master resume is laden with sincere impact-driven bullet points for the roles I am seeking. LFG!
AI did what it does best: making me feel artificially better about the job market and my chances at each role to which I applied, while simultaneously doing another thing it does well: putting words in my mouth and thoughts in my head. Reviewing resume after resume and comparing each job description and company size, culture, team set-up, my own mind became as confused as my AI agents’ – “Can I really say I did that? I guess it’s similar enough.” My AI agents were ready to frame me in the best possible light, while reminding me ‘what maps” and where I fall short. I believe if I were applying to be a carpenter for Jesus’s small business, my agents would have been ready to sell me on it – they have been on my side since day one! “Savannah, great instinct and that’s exactly the direction you should go next. Shall I help prepare you for your first day at the work site?”
Mentors would bring me back down to Earth on phone calls, “Savannah, what is it that only you can do? What is your unique offering and value you bring? Focus on that. You don’t have to be able to say you can do everything.” In the haze of hormonal shifts, financial anxieties, and a new household routine to organize, it has been difficult to sit with myself and find moments to critically think about my unique value and experiences, let alone what I have learned in my 12 years of doing research and partnering with colleagues to drive impact.
The job market has no patience for layoff culture or the impact it has on individuals. Instead the job market culture responds with a need for more:
- More proof of your value: show and know your numbers
- More creative and impactful uses of AI: it’s not enough to have a thought partner, you must be building
- More sincerity: “While we appreciate and value AI, we ask that you refrain from using generative AI during the interview experience” or (and I’ve seen this), “Please answer the following question WITHOUT using AI at all.”
- More rounds of interviews: prepare for a 6-8 week minimum process
- More artifacts to show your work: you need a website, a portfolio, a password for your portfolio because it includes precious examples, and writing samples
- More referrals: it’s not what you know, it’s WHO you know
Like many of us, I am exhausted and weary from the search and from proving I am both a real, sincere, smart, and lovely person to work with and someone who can leverage AI to make my work even more efficient, thorough, scalable. It’s all a bit much. Even still, I remain optimistic about where this is all going. Every week, I see more and more signals that the collective ‘we’ is coming around to how and when AI makes us stronger and where it makes us weaker. Small signals like, “click here if you are a real human” and small tangents on LinkedIn about AI slop remind me of how quickly humans adapt and learn. We are searching for any signal of trust and sincerity, because at the end of each workday we want to work with people, not AI. We want to have an impact and do meaningful work in our 8-10 hours of our lives each day. We want to be acknowledged and appreciated by other humans, not our AI agents. AI may well adapt with us – and I hope it does – but we are a keen species. We can spot insincerity quickly, because it draws upon our evolutionary need to survive and trust others.
What will be next for me? I am leaving the proverbial door open. My hope is to continue to conduct research because it is my passion, I think. I love so many aspects of the career I’ve built. Part of me mourns what may be coming, the loss of the craft to robots in the name of increasing stock prices and enjoying ‘a good quarter.’ What does one do? Well, we adapt. We wake up each day and cook our breakfast, brush our teeth, and seek out connection. If we can continue to do this, I believe the value of our contributions will continue to grow, as unknown and ambiguous as it may feel right now. This moment gives a new meaning to the phrase, ‘thrives in ambiguity.’
Y’all, my best advice during this moment is to buckle up, take a deep breath, and remember what makes you, you, isn’t how well you can create an agent to help you at work. Your value is not in your efficiency but in your creativity, your grit, your unique circumstances, and most importantly – your humanity. Despite how it may feel, people actually want to work with other people – we want to see and be seen, we want to add value. AI, machines, and technology expands us – we can see it, but it cannot truly see us. We are human beings, a beautiful, quick-witted species and we need each other.
