Hey,
This week’s job market sent a memo nobody requested. monday.com — the platform 225,000+ businesses use to coordinate their teams — just cut 20% of its workforce to build an AI platform that does what those teams used to do. Same week: IBM reported its consulting arm barely grew in Q2, Samsung filed notices to cut 840 U.S. jobs despite record AI chip profits, and Amazon confirmed it’s closing two Florida warehouses affecting over 1,100 workers.
The trend isn’t complicated: the tools built to help teams work are being rebuilt to work without teams.
Today: How monday.com’s move signals where coordination and project roles go next, what IBM’s Q2 numbers say about consulting jobs, and five remote-first companies still actively building real teams.
In This Issue:
- 🔥 The Big Story: Why monday.com eliminated 630 workers to become an AI platform
- ⚡ Quick Hits: 4 major moves that show the job market’s new structure
- 🏢 Companies Hiring: 5 remote-first teams actively building right now
- 🎯 Career Signal: The entry-level hiring collapse — and what it signals for everyone
- ✅ Quick Win: A 15-minute exercise to find your position on the AI substitution scale
🔥 The Big Story: The Work Management Platform Just Replaced Its Own Workers
The announcement nobody saw coming. On July 22, monday.com — the Israeli SaaS company whose tools coordinate the daily work of 225,000+ businesses worldwide — announced a workforce reduction of 630 employees, roughly 20% of its global team. Co-CEOs Roy Mann and Eran Zinman called it “the most painful decision we have made since founding monday.com.” The company did not cite financial distress. It raised its margin guidance the same morning.
The bigger picture. This restructuring is architectural, not financial. Earlier this year, monday.com rebranded around what it calls the “AI Work Platform” — a vision where AI agents handle the reporting, dashboard updates, workflow creation, and task coordination that previously required human project managers and operations staff. The 630 jobs eliminated were organized around the old model. The company rebuilt around the new one. With 78% of 2026 corporate workforce reductions now explicitly citing AI as the driver — affecting more than 170,000 workers across 173+ companies — monday.com’s move is documented, not exceptional. The AI-driven restructuring wave has now reached the software category that was supposed to be making human teams more effective.
Why this matters: Every company that sells “productivity software” is now racing to sell “AI agents that handle the productive work.” The roles most exposed to this shift are the ones who use the software, not the ones who build it — coordinators, project managers, operations analysts, and business process specialists. If your role is primarily about managing or facilitating work rather than producing a specialized output that requires irreplaceable human judgment, this week’s announcement is worth sitting with.
View the official monday.com investor relations page →
Stat of the Week
78% → share of 2026 corporate workforce reductions explicitly citing AI, automation, or AI-driven restructuring as the primary driver. That’s 173+ documented events and 170,000+ workers — and the year isn’t over. (Layoffs.fyi 2026 Tech Layoffs Tracker, updated July 27, 2026)
⚡ Quick Hits
Samsung Posts Record AI Chip Profits. It Also Cut 840 U.S. Jobs.
The 2026 paradox in a single week. Samsung Electronics reported record demand for its AI semiconductor products while simultaneously filing WARN Act notices to cut 739 employees at its Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey headquarters and roughly 100 more in Plano, Texas. The company is relocating its U.S. headquarters to Texas; most affected employees were offered relocation. But the structural signal is clearer than the relocation math: the division building AI chips is growing, and the divisions running sales, marketing, and consumer electronics are contracting. See Samsung’s official U.S. newsroom →
The takeaway: AI profit and AI-era job cuts are not in conflict. They’re the same story told from two different vantage points.
Amazon Closes Two Florida Warehouses — 1,100+ Workers Affected
Two separate WARN Act notices filed with the Florida Department of Economic Opportunity confirmed that Amazon will close its Homestead and Port St. Lucie fulfillment facilities for $200 million renovations and operational upgrades, with construction timelines stretching through 2028. At least 616 workers at the Homestead site face termination beginning this month, with another 494 at the Port St. Lucie facility slated for layoff beginning September 17. Amazon is offering transfers to other facilities — some more than 50 miles away — with a relocation bonus. See Amazon’s official newsroom →
The takeaway: Warehouse and fulfillment roles aren’t disappearing at Amazon — they’re being consolidated into modernized, automated facilities. The workers who don’t relocate lose out.
IBM Consulting Revenue Barely Budged in Q2 — While Software Surged
IBM released second-quarter 2026 results on July 22 showing a clear split inside one of the world’s largest employers: software revenue up 5% to $7.8 billion (driven by AI products, Red Hat, and data tools), while consulting revenue was essentially flat at $5.3 billion, up just 0.2%. IBM employs more than 160,000 people in its consulting arm globally — the flat line is a workforce signal. IBM’s CEO Arvind Krishna said the company is “driving productivity across the company with AI and automation,” including “scaling software development leveraging AI.” Translation: the headcount doing that work is a target for automation. See IBM’s official Q2 2026 earnings press release →
The takeaway: If you work at a large consulting firm, the AI productivity story your leadership is telling investors is a staffing story in disguise.
European Employers Are Tightening Office Requirements Through 2026
A cluster of major European employers is raising mandatory in-office days — with multiple changes landing July through September. EY moved to 12 mandatory office or client-site days per month (roughly 3/week) effective July 1. Airbus is shifting engineers and white-collar staff from a minimum of 3 to 4 days on site, effective September. Stellantis is pushing toward full-time office attendance for many French, Italian, and German employees by 2027. The pattern: informal “work from anywhere” norms are being replaced by written requirements, and enforcement is happening on dated deadlines. If you’re in a remote arrangement at a large European employer, informal flexibility is increasingly at risk. See the Remote Work Europe coverage of the European RTO wave →
The takeaway: The safest remote arrangement is one that’s documented in your employment contract — not inherited from a COVID-era custom.
🏢 Companies Hiring Remote-First Roles Right Now
Headlines are heavy this week. The hiring picture is quieter — but real. Five remote-friendly employers actively building teams:
Shopify — Remote-first by design, hiring across engineering, product, design, and operations
Shopify went remote in 2020 and hasn’t looked back. The company’s “Digital by Design” philosophy runs deep — distributed teams, annual global meetups, and AI-powered internal systems are built into how the company operates. Active openings span engineering, product, customer success, and operations, with roles for both senior professionals and early-career talent. For anyone who wants genuine remote culture inside a company with $10B+ in annual revenue and a dominant position in global ecommerce infrastructure, Shopify is worth a serious look.
Automattic — 2,000+ employees across 96 countries, fully distributed, hiring now
Automattic powers WordPress.com, WooCommerce, Tumblr, and Jetpack — products used by hundreds of millions of people — with a team that’s been fully distributed since its founding. The company pays the same salary regardless of location, offers an open vacation policy, home office stipends, and annual global meetups, and is actively hiring across engineering, support, and AI-focused roles including Applied AI Engineer. Its hiring process includes a paid trial project, so you experience the culture before committing. If you want to work remotely without the “we’re open to remote” asterisk, Automattic is one of the most authentic examples in the industry.
👉 View open roles at Automattic
GitLab — Fully all-remote, 2,000+ employees in 60+ countries, 45 active openings
GitLab operates as a fully all-remote company and has published a 2,000+ page public handbook on how to do it. No headquarters, no offices, no hybrid exception. With 45 open roles in July 2026 spanning engineering, sales, customer success, and product — and compensation that doesn’t penalize you for location — GitLab remains one of the few large, profitable tech companies where remote isn’t an option: it’s the only mode.
Molina Healthcare — Fully remote clinical and operations roles, actively hiring
Healthcare added 46,600 jobs in June 2026 — the largest single-sector gain in the BLS Employment Situation report — and Molina Healthcare is a significant part of that story. The company offers fully remote positions across case management, healthcare services, provider relations, and clinical operations, with roles available nationally. If the tech sector’s AI restructuring wave has you looking for a sector with durable demand and genuine remote options, healthcare administration and services is the clearest counter-cyclical answer in the current market.
👉 View open remote roles at Molina Healthcare
Salesforce — Remote-eligible roles across AI, sales, engineering, and customer success
Salesforce builds the CRM and AI platform used by hundreds of thousands of businesses and continues to hire across remote-eligible roles in sales, engineering, and customer success. The company’s Agentforce and Slack AI product lines are driving a wave of hiring for people who can sell, implement, and build on AI-first business software. For technical professionals, marketers, and enterprise salespeople who want stability in a restructuring market, Salesforce is actively building — not cutting — its customer-facing and AI-development teams.
👉 View open roles at Salesforce
Know someone between jobs? Forward this section — it might be exactly what they need.
🎯 Career Signal: Entry-Level Hiring Just Collapsed at AI-Adopting Companies
The data is stark enough to read without context. Entry-level hiring has fallen 80% per quarter at companies that have adopted generative AI, according to Harvard Business School research on payroll records since 2023. U.S. entry-level job postings overall are down 35% since January 2023. The World Economic Forum’s 2026 report on entry-level work found that 28% of early-career workers now doubt whether their current skills will still be relevant in three years — and that entry-level job openings now require “senior-level human skills” like leadership, creativity, and judgment seven times more often than before widespread AI adoption.
The mechanism matters. AI isn’t just automating entry-level tasks — it’s raising the bar for entry-level hiring. Companies that once hired junior analysts, coordinators, or writers to learn on the job now expect those hires to arrive with the judgment that previously came from years of experience. The first rung of the career ladder is moving up — and faster than most training programs can track. If you’re early in your career, the most important thing you can do right now isn’t use AI tools — it’s develop the judgment skills that AI tools are replacing the need to train into junior employees.
🧠 Skill-Building Reads This Week
The entry-level signal is clear: build judgment skills, and build them verifiably. Three free, authoritative resources to get started — no paywalls, no job boards:
IBM SkillsBuild — Free AI learning catalog, 1,000+ courses, no prior experience needed
IBM SkillsBuild offers more than 1,000 free courses covering AI, cybersecurity, cloud computing, and data science — with structured learning pathways, IBM-recognized certificates, and digital badges you can display professionally. The AI tracks include Generative AI, AI Agents, Prompt Engineering, and AI-assisted development. Built for adult learners, career changers, and working professionals who want credentials that actually show up in job postings. No cost, no prerequisite.
WEF: Artificial Intelligence and the Future of Entry-Level Work — Free 2026 Report
The World Economic Forum published a full framework report this year examining how AI is transforming entry-level careers — what’s being displaced, what’s being elevated, and what companies should do to keep opportunity pathways alive. If you’re early in your career or managing someone who is, this report is the clearest evidence-based guide to what entry-level work actually looks like in the AI era and how to position yourself within it. Free, from one of the most credible labor research institutions in the world.
University of Maryland — Free Online Certificate in AI and Career Empowerment
The Robert H. Smith School of Business at the University of Maryland offers a free online certificate program built around AI and professional career development. It covers how AI works, how it applies to real business decisions, and how to position your skills in an AI-transformed workplace — with a verifiable university certificate at completion. If you want an AI credential from an accredited academic institution at zero cost, this is the clearest option available that isn’t a vendor-sponsored course.
✅ Quick Win This Week
Map your role’s AI exposure in 15 minutes — before someone else does it for you.
Take a sheet of paper and write down the five most time-consuming tasks in your current or target role. For each one, mark it: “AI substitutes” (AI can do this task directly) or “AI amplifies” (AI makes the human doing this task more effective, but can’t replace the judgment behind it). If three or more of your tasks are in the “substitutes” column, you’re in the same category monday.com just restructured around. The fix isn’t to panic — it’s to identify which tasks in your role require the human judgment AI can’t replicate, and build evidence of your depth in those areas before the next restructuring cycle. Your resume, your LinkedIn, and your next 90 days of professional development should be organized around that answer.
What We’re Watching
What we’re watching: Whether monday.com’s AI Work Platform pivot triggers similar restructurings at Asana, Notion, and Atlassian; whether IBM’s flat consulting revenue triggers headcount moves in H2 2026; and whether the European RTO tightening at EY, Airbus, and Stellantis leads to more documented contract-level remote arrangements across the EU.
🎯 Bottom Line
This week’s job market told a single story from multiple angles. The companies cutting aren’t struggling — they’re restructuring around AI agents. The companies whose products are supposed to help humans work better are now building the AI that works instead of humans. And the government data, the payroll records, and the quarterly earnings filings all point at the same pressure point: the middle layer of knowledge work — coordination, reporting, analysis, facilitation — is the next wave.
That’s uncomfortable. But the hiring picture isn’t all cuts. Healthcare added nearly 47,000 jobs in June while the information sector lost 9,000. Salesforce, Shopify, GitLab, and Automattic are actively building distributed teams. The opportunity is real — it’s just concentrated in different places than it was two years ago. RemoteHunter.com has verified remote jobs and AI-powered tools for resumes and cover letters, built for the job market as it actually operates in 2026.
Until next week — keep building.
— The RH Team 🤙
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