Q. We are joined today by someone in a position to see most clearly the secrets that working professionals of this era should be most curious about: Moon Sung-wook, CEO of Blind. It has been said that "office workers in their 20s and 30s these days might skip their internal company intranet for a day, but never miss a day on Blind," to the point where it is no exaggeration to say nearly every salaried worker in South Korea is a member. Moreover, it is said that if you work in Silicon Valley, you are almost certainly a Blind user as well.

Employees at most tech companies that viewers would recognize use Blind. Workers at companies like Google, Meta, Amazon, Microsoft, Apple, and Uber actively use Blind, and the platform is as widely recognized there as it is in South Korea.

Q. There is widespread anxiety that the AI revolution could fundamentally alter the very concept of a job. We hear that many such signals are particularly visible on Blind in the United States?

Yes. Layoffs are occurring very frequently, particularly at Silicon Valley tech companies. It happens so often that people say layoffs occur once every quarter. Starting from the tech industry, this wave has spread aggressively into finance and general office positions, with tech industry layoffs jumping 67% compared to the previous year.


"U.S. Big Tech Is a 'Revolving Door'... They Leave as Soon as They Enter"
Q. Which job categories in the U.S. are experiencing frequent layoffs?

Software engineers, designers, marketing, finance, and legal roles are among the categories where layoffs occur frequently. Entry-level white-collar positions have shrunk considerably. Because entry-level jobs involve lower-complexity tasks, they are relatively easy to replace with AI, which seems to explain why so many are disappearing.

Q. People who joined five years ago are not entry-level. That trend wasn't visible back then, but you mean people who joined in '25 and '26 are facing layoffs? Then, even within the same company, feelings of insecurity and treatment could vary depending on whether someone joined a few years ago or not.

That is not the case. In 2024, junior employees were indeed the first to be laid off, but starting last year, companies began laying off senior personnel in their 40s and older with the aim of eliminating bureaucracy and streamlining decision-making. Now, layoffs are happening across all job families regardless of seniority.

Major tech firms well known to the public, such as Amazon, Google, Meta, Apple, Microsoft, and Salesforce, are commonly referred to as 'revolving doors.' At these companies, 67% of new hires are laid off within one year. In the case of Meta, the probability of a new hire being laid off within 10 months of joining reportedly exceeds 80%. These companies that hire aggressively while simultaneously laying off aggressively—where the risk of termination post-hiring is remarkably high—are dubbed 'revolving doors.' Consequently, a pattern has emerged where companies keep only the departments yielding the highest ROI (return on investment) and discard the rest.


Will the Only 'Humans' Left at Companies to the Very End Be Board Members?
Q. Assessing ROI is typically the job of finance departments. But if finance is also seeing heavy layoffs, who on earth makes those ROI decisions?

As you go higher up the ladder, higher-level decision-makers are the ones making those calls.

Q. Taken to an extreme, is it reaching a point where everyone except the CEO is replaceable?

A CEO might not even be necessary; only the board of directors might remain. About two years ago, there was a shocking incident where hundreds of employees facing layoffs were gathered in an online chat room and coldly notified of their termination. That method of delivering layoff notices drew fierce public criticism, but I heard that the CEO who carried that out was also laid off in the exact same manner early this year.

People talk extensively about AGI (artificial general intelligence that equals or surpasses human capabilities) these days, and from a purely logical perspective, people actually believe that human beings—while perhaps not immediately—will eventually become largely unnecessary at some point. Logically connecting the dots to that conclusion is rather straightforward.

However, what creates profound uncertainty is when we assume things won't go quite that far and that humans must still fit into the picture somewhere: 'In what form should humans remain involved? Until when should they stay involved?' Contemplating these questions leaves us without answers. Which positions will continuously require humans? Which ones are essential to retain, and which roles will survive until the very end? It is difficult to envision these things. That seems to be the core dilemma driving many into uncertainty.

Among my acquaintances, there were people who worked in key roles at a prominent U.S. gaming company, but in the U.S., those positions have been completely replaced by AI. It was a role understood to encompass technology, but the position itself was replaced by AI starting two years ago and became a job where humans are no longer hired. Among those who worked in that position, I know of about two people who are now driving for Uber. Yet, even Uber drivers face a situation where they are being replaced by autonomous vehicles like Waymo and robotaxis. The future truly seems unpredictable.


Where Did the Laid-Off Workers Go?
Q. Where are the laid-off workers heading?

According to findings analyzed through Blind AI, roughly 54% of all laid-off tech workers find new employment or return to the companies they originally worked for.

Q. Returning to the company they worked for—does that mean a company conducts layoffs and then rehires them?

Most companies always have open job postings. The specific role from which one was laid off will not be open, but simpler tasks or lower-level positions likely are. There are cases of workers returning to their companies this way, though the proportion is small.

Roughly 31% of laid-off workers return to their home countries or move to third countries due to visa complications. H-1B visa holders who graduated from U.S. universities must leave the United States within a set timeframe if they are laid off, so unless they secure a new job, they must return to their home country or relocate to a nation where they can legally work. In 2023, the Canadian government operated a program granting three-year work visas to U.S. H-1B holders, and there were cases of people utilizing that initiative to move to Canada and successfully find reemployment.


"Replaced by AI" Is a Lie... Is There Another Real Reason for Layoffs?
Q. While it is true that AI handles work efficiently so individuals are no longer needed, Blind's big data also revealed signs that AI might serve as an excuse.

There are certainly instances where jobs are eliminated because duties are automated by AI, but the far larger factor lies elsewhere. The bigger driver appears to be cutting headcount to secure funds for preemptive investments in AI. New expenditures have emerged, such as building AI data centers, covering electricity bills for data centers, or paying for AI tokens to optimize workflow processes.

When trying to absorb these costs, labor is the easiest area to target. In some cases, payroll savings achieved through layoffs are directly converted into reinvestment capital. In many other instances, roles eliminated in the U.S. are rehired in offshore countries—especially third countries like India—at lower labor costs, generating savings that allow the remaining financial difference to be funneled into new investments.


High-Skilled Talent Who Left the U.S. Only Saw Their Market Value Drop
Q. Laying off developers and remotely hiring Indian developers at lower pay to do the work?

These hubs are referred to these days as GCCs (Global Capability Centers; core operational centers established in India by multinational corporations for IT, call centers, R&D, and other functions), and the Indian offices of top U.S. tech companies are massive. India possesses foundational English proficiency, competitive labor costs, and high-caliber human resources, leading companies to establish local branches and hire directly.

Q. What about Korea or Vietnam?

Because the wage gap between the U.S. and India is far wider than that between the U.S. and South Korea, and because South Korea has a smaller pool of talent capable of conducting business in English, companies appear to strongly prefer India. Vietnam is generally utilized for operational tasks such as content moderation, whereas India is favored far more for software engineering and general white-collar positions.

Q. So, to the extent that American jobs are shrinking in Silicon Valley, are Indian jobs expanding globally by that same measure?

While securing capital through large-scale layoffs is identical, India exhibits the peculiar phenomenon of hiring substantial numbers of new personnel at the same time layoffs take place. It is a bizarre trend where U.S. tech giants cut staff domestically and rehire in India, thereby driving up hiring figures in India.

Among laid-off employees, many who return to their home country due to visa issues are from India. Looking at the broader picture, a dynamic is unfolding where these individuals are terminated by a U.S. firm, return to India, and are reemployed in the exact same position at lower compensation.

Q. In the end, even if workers perform the identical job, they end up doing it for persistently lower wages than before?

When evaluated at the level of individual workers, that is true, but whether such a phenomenon will occur frequently within a single domestic market remains to be seen.

Q. I hear Blind's user base in India is also exceptionally large.

That is correct. We did not conduct marketing campaigns to launch the service in India; rather, it grew because users at U.S. tech firms used it so extensively. Most top U.S. tech companies maintain offices in India. As these Indian branches grew in size, employees in India began logging on because they were curious about what was happening at headquarters, which led to the scale we see today.

Q. While local hiring in India is expanding, there must also be workers who once commanded high U.S. salaries but now must work in India with slashed compensation. The sentiment among Indian Blind users seems to reflect the complex climate of tech professionals navigating the AI era today.

While companies are currently rehiring in India for positions eliminated in the U.S., there is a clear recognition that if AI becomes capable of handling more tasks, the roles of those reemployed in India could also be jeopardized. There is a great deal of that apprehension.