You didn’t lose your job because you underperformed.
You lost it because a CFO saw an AI demo.
That’s the new playbook. 52,150 tech workers cut in 2026 — not for failing, not for slacking, but for belonging to a category someone decided to automate away.
And the cruelest part?
Your track record doesn’t enter the equation. The pipeline you built. The campaigns you ran. The deals you closed. All of it generated revenue for someone else’s P&L — and when the math changed, so did their commitment to you.
Here’s what nobody’s saying: the same skills that made you indispensable to an employer make you dangerous as a founder.
The difference isn’t your capability. It’s the direction your output is pointed.
Right now, you’re optimized for a company that can cancel you. Those same skills, applied to your own offer, can’t be laid off. There’s no CFO deciding your value. No AI demo makes you redundant.
You can keep sending resumes into a market that’s actively contracting.
Or you can spend this weekend building something that belongs to you.
That’s exactly what we do at the LaunchThisWeekend course. One weekend. Your skills. Your offer.
About The Author
Lee Kariuki is a behavioral design consultant, author, and coach who helps consultants, coaches, and founders remove the hidden friction that prevents decisions and action. Known as “the consultant to consultants,” his work focuses on how the human brain actually processes choice, risk, and overload. Lee doesn’t teach hype or motivation. He designs clarity—through behavioral frameworks that shorten decision cycles, validate offers quickly, and create momentum that sticks.
