Good morning to the chronically employed, the chronically applying, and everyone trying to make work suck less.

👏 One good thing. I saw someone post that Threads has ADHD and our current special interest is Artemis. Accurate. It's delightful to watch the glee and hope come out of this moon mission. And did you know how far away the moon actually is from us?!?

⛽ Fuel flexible. Back in 2022 when Russia invaded Ukraine, European governments encouraged energy-saving measures including remote work. Today, Asia faces a similar energy crisis with the Iran war and some countries are issuing mandates to cut the workweek down to 4 days or work from home wherever possible. I just find it interesting that we as individuals are expected to rearrange our lives (because of overly-emotional men) and then as soon as the air is clear, that flexibility will be clawed back in the name of culture.

🌐 WFH geofencing. There's a post making the rounds about an employee who was told they could be fully remote, but must stay within 50km of the office for "availability and accountability." We all know this is nonsense - it's about control. The backlash around this false flexibility is understandable. What I'm surprised about is that I'm not seeing folks make the connection that this is ALSO about future plans for that company to force a return to office. If your goal is long-term remote work, I'd give any geofenced rules the serious side eye.

📮State of the business. This week, Oracle joined the mass-layoff-by-email club. They're calling this an AI restructuring. Despite 22% increase in revenue YoY and a massive deal with OpenAI, Oracle is struggling to balance AI infrastructure investments with cash flow. If I were to explain this to my 4 year old, I'd say Oracle ditched his little sister (employees) to try to keep up with the big kids in the cloud/AI playground. An estimated 30,000 jobs gone, bringing the 2026 YTD tech layoff total to 71k.

📊 Healthcare is doing the most. The US jobs report has been like my hormones the last year. Up and down and all the fk over the place. Last month, employers added 178k jobs to the market - basically rebounding from a terrible February report. One thing to note, the healthcare industry makes up the lions share of that, including 31k jobs that came back on payroll after a California/Hawaii nurses strike ended. Not getting my hopes up just yet for a serious market shift.

💬 Watercooler gossip. Do you think Kristi Noem and Pam Bondi are commiserating together over being fired from this administration? If I had to guess, Pam thinks Kristi's ego is as overinflated as her husband's tits, and Kristi feels superior cause Pam didn't even get a fake title on her way out the door. But that's just me.

Until next Saturday, you got this.
Cassandra

Did someone share this group chat with you?