Hey there,

I kept telling people to watch out for the USA team, but no one believed me. Well, here it is: the US beat Paraguay 4-1 on June 12 at SoFi Stadium. That's the biggest World Cup win for the US since 1930, impressive whether or not you're following the tournament.

PwC also released a labor market study this week, analyzing over one billion job postings from 27 countries. The main takeaway: AI is dividing workers into two groups, with a 42 percent gap in salary growth between them. Learn more below.

Tech layoffs are averaging 1,115 people a day. A Gartner study of 350 companies found that those making the biggest cuts aren't performing any better than those making smaller cuts. Colombia's presidential runoff is this Sunday.

Let's get into it.

🌐 News Shortlist

1. The Labor Market Is Splitting in Two.

Recap: PwC's 2026 Global AI Jobs Barometer looked at over one billion job ads in 27 countries and found that AI is splitting the labor market into two tracks. "Professionalised" roles, where AI takes care of routine tasks and lets people focus on judgment, are growing twice as fast as "democratised" roles and have 42 percent faster salary growth. Jobs needing AI skills grew 69 percent year over year, compared to 9 percent for the overall market. The wage premium for AI skills is now 62 percent, up from 57 percent last year. Companies using AI the most have grown their workforces by 52 percent since 2018, while less AI-focused firms grew by 36 percent.

Most reports on AI and jobs say, "some jobs are created, some are lost." That's true, but it doesn't really tell you what it means for you.

PwC's breakdown is more specific. In "professionalised" jobs like radiologists or recruiters, AI takes over the routine work, so what's left needs more judgment than before. For example, if AI flags the easy scans, radiologists spend more time on complex cases that need real clinical interpretation. That makes their jobs harder to replace, not easier. The same goes for recruiters: if AI screens candidates, the tough decisions are now the main part of the job.

"Democratised" jobs are the opposite. AI makes it easier for more people to do these jobs well, so the extra pay for expertise goes down. If anyone with the right software can do a decent job in IT service management or medical transcription, salaries for those roles usually fall. That's what the data shows.

The 62 percent wage premium for AI skills is mostly found in professionalised jobs. People in democratised roles aren't seeing the same pay increases, and PwC's data doesn't show that changing soon. Salary growth between the two groups is already splitting by 42 percent.

When hiring, the key question before writing a job description is whether the role will become more or less valuable as AI improves. This question affects pay, career growth, and how hard it will be to keep people in the role.

Advice: Figure out which track the job is on before you write the description. Roles that are becoming more common need different pay and retention strategies than those that are becoming more specialized. Pay matters, but so do career paths and what you tell candidates about long-term growth.

2. Cutting Jobs Doesn't Guarantee Performing Better.

Recap: Tech layoffs in 2026 reached 183,966 workers as of June 16, averaging 1,115 per day, nearly double last year's pace. Fifty-five percent of announcements explicitly cite AI as a driver. The same AI-driven split shows up in how companies are cutting. A May 2026 Gartner study of 350 firms found that companies cutting the most aggressively showed no improvement in financial returns. Two additional independent research groups, MIT and METR, arrived at similar findings. Many companies are making permanent workforce decisions based on AI performance they have not yet measured or, in some cases, have not yet deployed.

The numbers are striking: 183,966 workers have been laid off this year as of June 16, averaging 1,115 per day. That's almost twice last year's rate. In 55 percent of cases, companies say AI is the reason.

But here's the catch: a Gartner study from May looked at 350 companies and found that those making the biggest cuts didn't see better financial results. MIT and METR found the same thing. The idea that cutting lots of jobs boosts productivity sounds good, but the evidence isn't there yet.

There's another problem. Some companies are making big, permanent changes based on AI tools they haven't even rolled out or measured yet. If the expected results don't show up, these companies will have less flexibility to adjust. Sam Altman called this "AI washing" earlier this year, meaning companies blame AI for cuts when the real reasons are things like overhiring or profit pressure. The Gartner data backs this up.

For founders hiring now: most people affected by these layoffs aren't low performers. Earlier layoffs already handled that. Now, experienced product and engineering talent is on the market because of restructuring driven as much by shareholder signals as by business needs. That is the candidate pool to keep in mind when you're reviewing candidates.

Advice: It's worth talking directly to people coming out of this round of tech layoffs. Gartner's research shows many weren't let go because they were replaceable, but because their companies gambled on AI results that haven't materialized. That's very different from someone who was let go for performance reasons.

3. Colombia Votes Sunday.

Recap: Colombia's presidential runoff takes place June 21 between far-right candidate Abelardo de la Espriella, who led the first round with 43.7 percent, and leftist Iván Cepeda, aligned with outgoing President Gustavo Petro, who received 40.9 percent. De la Espriella has drawn comparisons to Argentina's Javier Milei and has campaigned to reverse Petro's economic policies, lower corporate taxes, and reopen Colombia to foreign direct investment. The three-point first-round lead is significant but not decisive in a two-candidate election. That is why it's worth looking back at what we wrote on May 27. For three years, investor caution under Petro kept foreign direct investment 9 percent below 2022 levels, which held down both salaries and competition for top Colombian talent. We said the election would either keep things the same or change them. Shift it.

The first-round results suggest change is coming. De la Espriella got 43.7 percent and Cepeda got 40.9 percent. That's a real gap, but 43.7 percent in a crowded first round doesn't guarantee a win in the runoff. Recent polls show the race is tightening, so Sunday's result is still up in the air.

If you're building teams in Bogotá or Medellín, timing matters. Multinational companies waiting for clear rules will start making moves before the new government takes office. Salary benchmarks and job offers change based on what people expect, not just what's happening now.

The window we talked about on May 27 is still open. But depending on Sunday's result, it could close sooner than the data will show.

Advice: If you've been waiting to start hiring in Colombia, Sunday is your last clear signal before things change. The job candidates you can hire at today's pay rates may not be available at those rates six months from now if the investment climate shifts.

That is it for this week.

The US won 4-1 and Colombia votes in four days. PwC's analysis of one billion job postings shows salary growth diverging at 42 percent between the two tracks AI is creating. The tech layoff data show that the efficiency case for mass cuts is not holding up under scrutiny. The Colombian hiring window we described on May 27 is about to get narrower.

That's what this newsletter is here for. It's also what we help clients with every week at lupahire.com.

Until next time,

Joseph Burns
CEO & Founder, Lupa

Hey there,

The World Cup kicks off tomorrow in Mexico City. There will be 104 matches, 48 teams, and 39 days of games. New research this week says US employers could lose between $17 billion and $30 billion in productivity by the time the final match ends at MetLife Stadium on July 19.

That number is eye-catching, but what matters more is what's driving it, especially for anyone building a team right now.

During the same week as the tournament kickoff, the April JOLTS report showed job openings rising to 7.62 million, the highest in two years. Professional and business services made up 90 percent of that increase. Meanwhile, tech layoffs in 2026 surpassed 142,000, with most companies citing AI as the main reason.

Three data points. Most companies are paying attention to the wrong one.

Let's get into it.

1. The World Cup Opens Tomorrow. For Companies Hiring in Latin America, the Next 39 Days Have a Specific Logic.

Recap: The 2026 FIFA World Cup begins June 11 with Mexico vs. South Africa in Mexico City and runs through July 19, with 104 matches across 16 cities in the United States, Mexico, and Canada. A UKG survey of 8,000 employees across eight countries found that 37 percent of workers plan to adjust their schedules during the 39-day tournament, with 27 percent planning to arrive late, leave early, or take full days off. Separate analysis puts the productivity cost to US employers at up to $30 billion. 19% of employees said they would consider looking for a new job if their employer's scheduling policies interfered with their ability to watch matches.

The productivity number is real, but it's a rough estimate. It just adds up the hours lost from the 37 percent of workers who plan to change their schedules and turns that into dollars. What it misses is where those changes actually happen, which is the more useful question for anyone managing teams in Colombia, Brazil, or Argentina.

Colombia opens on June 17 against Uzbekistan. Argentina starts on June 16, and Brazil on June 13. All these matches take place during the workday in the Eastern and Central time zones. Senior engineers and operations leaders on those teams will be less available on those days. Decisions will take longer, and scheduling interviews around elimination rounds will be tougher. This isn't a criticism of the people, it's just a scheduling reality that most US hiring managers haven't planned for in Q3.

The bigger issue is timing. In Colombia, hiring cycles in professional services already take six to eight weeks. With a major tournament running through July 19, any role that hasn't started its search this week probably won't close until August at the earliest. That means onboarding and ramp-up will likely fall into Q4.

Advice:

If you plan to hire in Latin America this quarter and haven't started yet, you're already behind the tournament schedule. Companies that start now will finish before the final. Those that wait will feel it in their Q3 timelines.

2. Job Openings Hit a 2-Year High. Nobody Is Moving.

Recap: The Bureau of Labor Statistics April 2026 JOLTS report, released June 2, showed job openings rising to 7.62 million, up 731,000 from March and the highest level since May 2024. Professional and business services accounted for more than 90 percent of the increase, adding 668,000 openings. At the same time, the number of new hires fell sharply, layoffs fell, and voluntary quits dropped to their lowest point in almost six years.

7.62 million openings might look like a hot market, but the rest of the report tells a different story.

Job openings show what employers want, not what's actually happening. The April data shows companies posting more jobs, but not hiring more people. Quits are at a six-year low, so workers are staying put even when they have options. Hires and layoffs both dropped. The market is stuck: employers want to hire, employees aren't moving, and actual placements are going down.

This is the same pattern that has made professional hiring tough for the past year and a half. Last week's issue talked about the 31-month white-collar slowdown. This week's data shows the other side. There are plenty of openings, but the best candidates have stayed put through 31 months of cuts because they're good enough to keep their jobs. They won't move just because a new job is posted. Companies waiting for applications are only reaching the small group of people actively looking, not the ones with the skills you really need.

Advice:

7.62 million openings doesn't mean there's a big talent pool. It just shows what employers want. The candidates you really want aren't looking at those postings. They kept their jobs during the downturn and need a clear, direct reason to leave. You have to find them and make your case directly.

3. Tech Layoffs Hit 142,000 in 2026. The Companies Doing the Cutting Are Spending $700 Billion on Infrastructure Instead.

Recap: Tech layoffs surpassed 142,000 in 2026 as of late May and are on pace to exceed 370,000 by year-end, according to industry trackers, making 2026 the largest layoff year in the sector's recorded history. Fifty-five percent of layoff announcements explicitly cited AI or automation as a primary driver. Four hyperscalers, Amazon, Microsoft, Alphabet, and Meta, committed a combined $700 billion in capital expenditure for 2026, nearly double their 2025 spending. GitLab confirmed in June that it cut 14 percent of its workforce, roughly 350 employees, while exiting 22 countries and flattening management by up to three layers as part of what it called a restructuring for the agentic era.

The headline is 142,000 layoffs, but the more important number is $700 billion.

That $700 billion is what four companies are investing in AI infrastructure while running their largest layoff cycles ever. The money isn't going to headcount. It is going to compute. Each company is shifting what it was paying in salaries to what it now pays for servers, chips, and energy contracts.

The people being let go aren't low performers. Companies restructuring for AI have already cut the easier roles. Now, experienced product, engineering, and operations talent who held on through earlier rounds are caught in a restructuring unrelated to individual performance. GitLab's decision to leave 22 countries wasn't about poor performance; it was because centralized AI infrastructure made having teams everywhere less necessary.

That talent is available right now. Most aren't flooding job boards, because those who survived earlier cuts still believe they can find something without making it public. They're right, but only if someone reaches out to them first. The window is short. Six to twelve weeks after a layoff, the best candidates have already accepted new roles.

Advice:

The best candidates from this round of tech layoffs aren't on job boards. They're in the networks of people you already trust. Now is the time to ask your contacts who they know and reach out directly before those candidates take new roles just because they're available.

That is it for this week.

The World Cup starts tomorrow, and the next 39 days have a unique schedule for anyone building teams in Latin America. Most companies haven't planned for it. The April JOLTS data shows 7.62 million openings, but the quit rate is at a six-year low: employers want to hire, people aren't moving, and the best candidates aren't applying. Meanwhile, 142,000 tech workers have been cut in 2026, and the most experienced are available for only a short time before they quietly take new jobs.

These patterns do not wait for companies to notice them.

That's what this newsletter is for. It's also what we help clients with every week at Lupa.

Until next time,

Joseph Burns
CEO & Founder, Lupa

Hey there,

On the surface, the labor market looks healthy. Unemployment is steady at about 4 percent, and job openings are at their highest in nearly two years. But entry-level opportunities are disappearing.

Recent graduates are facing the toughest entry-level job market in years, and more companies are pausing junior hiring altogether. It seems clear that companies are choosing not to invest in early-career talent.

These same pressures are leading US companies to build teams in Latin America, and, as this week's data show, this trend is accelerating. Colombia's recent election also gave investors a reason to be optimistic.

Let's get into it.

🌐 News Shortlist

1. AI Broke the Entry-Level Job. The Damage Is Concentrated at the Bottom.

Recap: New data shows this is the hardest entry-level job market for graduates since the pandemic. Unemployment for recent college grads aged 22 to 27 is now 5.7 percent, higher than the 4.2 percent rate for all workers, and about 43 percent of new grads are underemployed. The National Association of Colleges and Employers predicts 2026 will be the worst graduate job market since 2020. About 21 percent of companies have already stopped hiring for entry-level roles because of AI, and 47 percent expect to cut these jobs entirely by 2027. Still, some white-collar fields expected to shrink due to AI have actually grown since 2022: there are 7 percent more software developers, 10 percent more radiologists, and 21 percent more paralegals.

Looking closer, AI is not wiping out all white-collar jobs. Instead, it is taking away the junior tasks that used to help young people get their start.

This difference is important because it explains a trend that is often misunderstood. Since 2022, white-collar jobs overall have increased, especially at the senior and mid-levels. The jobs disappearing are those that rely on tasks AI can now do quickly, such as first-draft research, basic coding, document review, and entry-level analysis. Employers are now asking for more experience in roles that used to help people gain it. So, the market wants candidates who already have the skills that entry-level jobs once provided.

For founders, this creates a trap that looks like a savings. Cutting junior hires lowers payroll today and removes the pipeline that produces your senior people tomorrow. The companies freezing entry-level roles are just deferring a cost-saving problem.

Advice: Do not cut your junior hiring just to save money in the short term. Figure out which early-career roles help your team build the skills you will need in a few years, and make sure to keep those positions. Companies that continue to develop talent now will have an advantage as others compete for experienced staff.

2. US Companies Are Accelerating Into Latin America. The Cheap Window Is Closing.

Recap: Over half of US companies now plan to expand their nearshoring in Latin America through 2026, building teams in Mexico, Colombia, Costa Rica, and Brazil. Investment in Mexico alone jumped over 70 percent year-over-year to about 28 billion dollars, and the Inter-American Development Bank reports that foreign investment is rising again in Mexico, Brazil, and Colombia. As the market grows, competition for talent is heating up. Developer salaries in the region are increasing by 8 to 12 percent a year in most places, and by 2026, rates are expected to be 10 to 15 percent higher than in 2025. Still, hiring in Latin America is much cheaper than in the US.

This story is the direct answer to the first one. When the US entry-level ladder breaks, experienced talent gets scarcer and more expensive at home. Latin America is where companies are rebuilding that capacity, and the numbers show they are moving fast.

There are good reasons for this shift. Latin America has strong engineering, product, and operations talent, similar time zones, and costs that are still much lower than in the US. The main thing changing now is the price. Salaries are rising by 10 to 15 percent a year because demand is outpacing supply. Companies that started building teams here two years ago secured talent before salaries jumped. Those starting now will pay more than before but less than in the future.

A common mistake is seeing Latin America only as a way to save money, not as a place to build strong teams. Companies that focus just on the lowest costs often hire poorly, lose employees within a year, and then think the region is not a good fit. The region works well, but bargain hunting does not.

Advice: If you are considering Latin America, act this year and use current salary data, not last year's. Build your team with a long-term mindset, offering real opportunities and reasons to stay, because the talent you want has choices and is aware of it.

3. Colombia's Vote Thrilled Investors. The People You Hire Will Outlast the Result.

Recap: In Colombia's first-round presidential vote on May 31, right-wing outsider Abelardo de la Espriella led with 43.7 percent, ahead of leftist senator Iván Cepeda with 40.9 percent. Since no candidate got over 50 percent, both will go to a runoff on June 21. This result surprised many, as polls had favored Cepeda. Markets reacted right away: Colombian stocks had their biggest jump in over six years, bonds rallied, and the peso strengthened as investors expect a more business-friendly approach from De la Espriella, who supports tax cuts, deregulation, and private investment. Still, analysts warn that volatility will likely continue until the runoff.

I am not Colombian and do not vote there, so these are not my personal views. Many people have asked how the election result will affect team building in the region, so here is what analysts are saying.

De la Espriella's plan is what markets prefer: tax cuts, deregulation, a focus on energy, and a smaller government, plus a respected former finance minister as his running mate. Cepeda's platform would continue the current government's policies, with greater redistribution, greater state involvement, and a continued halt to new oil projects. In the short term, investors are more positive about De la Espriella and more cautious about Cepeda, which aligns with the market's initial reaction. However, there are some concerns. De la Espriella's proposals are seen as bold but lacking detail, and his confrontational style brings its own uncertainty. Colombia's fiscal deficit is expected to widen regardless of who wins. Both candidates want lower interest rates, and investors are watching that closely.

Here is what matters for hiring: politics creates the environment, but talent determines your success. I have seen companies do great work in Colombia under both left- and right-leaning governments. The engineers, product leaders, and operators we work with in Bogotá and Medellín will keep building and adapting, no matter who wins on June 21.

Advice: Do not base your hiring in Colombia on the election timeline. Strong teams have succeeded there under every recent government. Start building relationships now, and let your team, not the news, shape your results.

That is it for this week.

Entry-level jobs are disappearing in the US, and companies that cut them are saving money now but risking a shortage of senior talent later. This shortage is one reason US companies are moving into Latin America, where there is plenty of talent and real cost advantages, although the best deals are fading quickly. Colombia's recent election gave investors something to celebrate, but the real key to success there remains the same: your team.

The trends that shift first are the ones to watch right now. That is the purpose of this newsletter, and it is what we help clients understand every week at lupahire.com.

Until next time,

Joseph Burns
CEO & Founder, Lupa

Hey there,

The most useful piece of writing I read on AI and work this week was 42,000 words long. It came from the Vatican.

Pope Leo XIV published his first encyclical on May 25 and presented it alongside Anthropic's co-founder. The document is about AI, labor, and human dignity, and it draws a direct line from the Industrial Revolution to now.

The data this week makes that line concrete.

Let's get into it.

🌐 News Shortlist

1. The Pope Published a 42,000-Word Document on AI and Labor

Recap: Pope Leo XIV published "Magnifica Humanitas" on May 25, his first major teaching document, a 42,300-word encyclical on AI, labor, and human dignity. He signed it on May 15, the 135th anniversary of Rerum Novarum, Pope Leo XIII's 1891 encyclical on labor rights during the Industrial Revolution. The document addresses job insecurity from AI, the concentration of technological power, and the risk of treating workers as something to be replaced or optimized out of existence. The Pope warned that treating human beings as "something to be perfected or surpassed" makes it easier to accept that some lives are less useful or less worthy. The encyclical was presented at a Vatican press conference alongside Anthropic co-founder Chris Olah.

The parallel to 1891 is the detail worth taking seriously.

Rerum Novarum was written during the Industrial Revolution, when factories were absorbing rural workers and the question of what ownership and labor owed each other had no formal answer. Rather than stopping industrialization, Leo XIII's encyclical set out principles for valuing human work within it: the dignity of labor, fair wages, decent working conditions, and the right to organize. Companies that ignored that framework faced a different kind of risk than those that engaged with it.

Leo XIV is making the same move 135 years later. His document asks companies to account honestly for what they are doing to the people whose jobs are changing or disappearing in the process. The line he draws is pointed: if you treat workers as variables to optimize away, you have already accepted a logic that assigns different values to different human lives. That is a harder position to defend than most AI restructuring announcements have acknowledged.

The week before, Standard Chartered's CEO described cutting 7,800 support jobs as "replacing lower-value human capital with investment capital." That is exactly the kind of thinking the encyclical challenges. Even if you do not share the Pope's religious views, his point stands. There is a real gap between how companies talk about AI changes and how workers experience them. A 42,000-word document that tackles this directly deserves more attention than most technology policy writing produced this year.

Advice:

If you cannot explain your AI and staffing decisions in terms of how they affect people, not just efficiency, you do not have a real strategy. You have a narrative. The encyclical calls for honesty about what is really happening. The goal is not to slow down. It is to be honest about the impact.

2. The Unemployment Rate Is Fine. White-Collar Payrolls Have Contracted for 31 Straight Months.

Recap: White-collar jobs have shrunk every month since October 2023, the longest sustained contraction in professional employment outside of a formal recession on record. The headline unemployment rate has stayed near 4.3 percent, masking what has happened in professional services, information, and financial activities. Job openings in these areas dropped below 1 million for the first time since April 2020, according to January 2026 JOLTS data. The average professional job search now takes six months. About 20 percent of job seekers have been looking for ten months or more, and some have sent over 1,700 applications without hearing back.

The headline unemployment rate shows how many people want a job but cannot find one. It does not reveal which sectors are hiring or how long it takes to land one. The 4.3 percent rate has been steady for months. So has the 31-month contraction in white-collar jobs. Both are true at once.

White-collar job losses show that recovery has been uneven. Health care and transportation are adding jobs, but core professional fields like software and finance have seen nearly three years of decline while overall numbers look favorable.

The most valuable white-collar professionals held onto their roles throughout the long downturn because they proved indispensable to their employers. You will not find them on job boards or among the flood of applicants.

Advice:

The 4.3 percent unemployment rate tells you very little about the people you actually want to hire. The best candidates in professional services and tech have made it through a long contraction and are not waiting for your job posting. You need to reach out to them directly.

3. Colombia Votes Sunday. Here Is What That Means for Building a Team There.

Recap: Colombia holds its first-round presidential election on May 31, four days from now. Three candidates are running: Ivan Cepeda of President Gustavo Petro's Historic Pact, Abelardo de la Espriella, a far-right independent drawing comparisons to Argentina's Javier Milei, and Paloma Valencia, a center-right senator from the Democratic Center. A candidate needs more than 50 percent to avoid a June 21 runoff. Foreign direct investment in Colombia is 9 percent below its 2022 level. Investors have been in a sustained wait-and-see posture ahead of the vote, reflecting three years of regulatory uncertainty, high corporate taxes, and a strained relationship with US investors under President Petro.

Beneath the political headlines, this is a story about investment. And that investment story is also a hiring story.

When investor confidence in a country drops, competition for senior talent drops with it. The companies most likely to hire experienced engineers, product managers, and operations leaders in Bogota and Medellin are multinational employers with confidence in the regulatory environment. Three years of investor caution under Petro has kept that competition lower than it would otherwise be. US companies hiring in Colombia right now face fewer competing offers than they would in a fully open investment climate.

That window is directly tied to Sunday's result. A Cepeda win keeps current policies in place, foreign investment likely stays cautious, and talent competition remains low. A Valencia or De la Espriella win signals a more business-friendly posture, accelerating investment and bringing more competition for the senior professionals you are trying to hire.

Most US companies building teams in Colombia have not thought about this election at all. That is a competitive advantage, but it has an expiration date.

Advice:

If you have been planning to build a team in Colombia and have been moving slowly, now is the time to pay attention. If investment picks up after the election, salaries and competition for talent will rise before it shows up in any hiring report. Moving before that happens is the advantage that closes first.

That is it for this week.

The Pope released the most direct moral accounting of AI's impact on workers that any major institution has produced this year. The unemployment rate has been accurate, and so has the 31-month contraction in white-collar jobs underneath it. And Colombia votes in four days, which will shift hiring conditions in Bogota and Medellin before most companies notice.

The trends that change first are the ones worth watching now.

That is what this newsletter is for. And it is what we help clients figure out every week at lupahire.com.

Until next time,
Joseph Burns
CEO & Founder, Lupa

Hey there,

This week, The Globe and Mail noted AI-generated resumes are now so common that jobs can receive over a thousand applications, making it hard for hiring managers to tell authentic candidates from AI-edited ones. At the same time, Meta transferred 15,000 employees in a week to build its AI infrastructure. The tools meant to help are now straining the process, but it's important to look at the bigger picture.

MercadoLibre also reported 49 percent revenue growth, its fastest in four years. This success came from engineers and product managers who any company can hire in Latin America.

The pattern looks familiar. The companies that are hiring well right now are not necessarily the ones using more AI in their processes; instead, they are the ones using better judgment about where to look and what to ask. That is getting harder as the noise grows, and more valuable as it does.

Let's get into it.

🌐 News Shortlist

1. Meta Cut 8,000 and Moved 7,000 More. Now You Can See the Org Chart.

Recap: Meta executed 8,000 layoffs on May 20, with notices delivered at 4 a.m. local time. Two days earlier, the company had told 7,000 employees that they would be moved into four newly created AI-focused organizations covering AI products, applications, and infrastructure. More than 15,000 Meta employees were repositioned in a single week. The company's 2026 capital expenditure plan has been raised to as much as $145 billion, with almost all of it directed to AI infrastructure. Cuts were concentrated in business operations and middle management. The roles being created are specifically focused on building and deploying AI tools.

This week, unlike past layoff headlines, gives you a clear view of what the reorganization actually leads to.

Most focused on the 8,000 layoffs, but the 7,000 internal moves signal how Meta is changing. Those leaving had jobs replaced by AI, while those staying are building AI systems. Meta shifted over 15,000 employees in a week — a complete redesign.

If you're a founder, the real question isn't how many people Meta let go, but what the company looks like now. Meta has 7,000 people in four new AI divisions, set up to work differently. The $145 billion for infrastructure makes this possible, and the 8,000 cuts help pay for it.

Of course, this doesn't guarantee success. Big reorganizations are risky, and AI tools might not take over tasks as smoothly as planned. Meta can afford to take these risks and test the model, but most companies can't.

Advice:

Before you reorganize your team for AI, be clear about which tasks these tools can handle well right now, not what they might do in the future. Companies that get this wrong often reorganize based on hope rather than reality.

2. AI-Generated Resumes Are Breaking the Hiring Process

Recap: A survey of 1,500 hiring managers found that 61 percent say AI-generated resumes are slowing the hiring process, and 89 percent say the volume has increased their workload. Separately, 70 percent of job seekers now report using AI in some form during their search, and 31 percent use it to generate or rewrite their resumes directly. Applications per open role have more than doubled since 2022. Competitive tech and remote roles now routinely attract more than 1,000 applications. Despite that volume, only 4 to 6 candidates typically reach the interview stage.

We can certainly say now that, besides changing who gets laid off, AI has also changed who applies for jobs and what their applications look like.

Candidates use AI to apply faster and to more jobs, swelling application numbers. Recruiters respond by tightening filters or slowing down, causing candidates to apply even more, fueling a cycle where hiring managers still struggle to find quality candidates.

If you're hiring now, this is a real problem. An average candidate with a polished AI-generated resume can look just like a top candidate at first glance. Most screening systems weren't built for a world where almost a third of applicants use the same AI tools.

The underlying problem is the model. Inbound hiring was always a blunt instrument: post a role, wait for applications, filter on what comes in. It worked when the signal-to-noise ratio was manageable. It does not work when 70 percent of applicants use AI to apply, and 31 percent let AI write their applications. No filter corrects for that.

Since the noise is structural, the obvious answer is what successful companies have always searched for: proactive recruitment. Searching and identifying candidates who are not looking, reaching out directly, and building interview processes specific enough to reveal actual capability rather than resume quality. A tailored technical assessment, a conversation designed around the actual problems a role involves, a referral from someone who has worked alongside the candidate — these are hard to game at scale. An inbound application is increasingly not.

Advice:

If you start your hiring process by looking at resumes, you're starting with the least reliable signal right now. Referrals, work samples, and direct outreach will help you find better candidates faster.

3. MercadoLibre's Best Quarter in Four Years Was Built With Latin American Talent.

Recap: MercadoLibre reported Q1 2026 results on May 7. Revenue reached $8.8 billion, up 49 percent year over year, the company's fastest growth rate since Q2 2022. Total payment volume crossed $87 billion, up 50 percent. Mercado Pago's monthly active users increased 29 percent. The credit portfolio nearly doubled to $14.6 billion. In Brazil, sales of items jumped 56 percent. The company now serves customers across 18 countries in Latin America.

MercadoLibre was founded by people who studied at, among others, the Universidad de Buenos Aires, the Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile, and the Universidad de los Andes. They built a $14.6 billion credit portfolio and a payment system processing $87 billion in quarterly volume. They did it in the same time zones as New York and Chicago, in markets where building is hard, and infrastructure is less forgiving than in Silicon Valley.

The engineers and product managers behind these results haven't aged out of the market. The universities that trained them are still producing new graduates. Professional communities in Bogotá, Buenos Aires, São Paulo, and Santiago are still turning out people with the same skills, and most are available to hire remotely for roles outside MercadoLibre.

Most US companies approach Latin American hiring the same way they approach every other market: post a role, wait for applications, filter on familiar signals. That approach misses most of the best people, who are employed, not actively looking, and not reaching out to companies they have never heard of.

Advice:

The engineers who drove a 50 percent surge in payment volume are available to hire. Most US companies do not know where to look or how to reach them. That gap is the competitive advantage, and it does not stay open forever.

That is it for this week.

Meta demonstrated how to redesign an organization around AI with clear action. The Globe and Mail showed that relying on resumes is an increasingly unreliable way to find strong candidates. MercadoLibre revealed that high-performing technical talent is available in Latin America, waiting for companies that know how to access it. The main takeaway: rethinking where and how you hire is now a competitive advantage.

The clear pattern: companies succeed when they spot these trends and adapt their hiring and organizational strategies accordingly.

That is what this newsletter is for. And it is what we help clients work through every week at lupahire.com.

Until next time,
Joseph Burns
CEO & Founder, Lupa

Hey there,

I have been getting versions of the same question from clients lately: "Okay, but are the AI layoffs actually real, or is AI the excuse?" They have read the skeptical takes, including in this newsletter. And they are starting to wonder if they are being too dismissive.

The honest answer this week is: one of them probably is.

Cloudflare cut 20 percent of its workforce on May 8, its first layoffs in 16 years, and the CEO said the quiet part out loud. Without quoting "optimizing for efficiency," or "investing in the future." Instead, he said AI usage at the company grew 600 percent in three months, and those specific jobs no longer exist in the same form. The company posted record revenue in the same announcement.

That is a different story from what Big Tech has been telling us. It deserves a different read.

Let’s get into it.

🌐 News Shortlist

1. April Added 115,000 Jobs. February Was Actually Worse Than We Thought.

Recap: The Bureau of Labor Statistics released the April Employment Situation on May 8. Employers added 115,000 jobs in April, more than double the 55,000 to 65,000 economists had forecast. The unemployment rate held at 4.3 percent. Health care led all sectors, followed by transportation and warehousing, and retail trade. Average hourly earnings rose 3.6 percent year over year. Federal government employment continued to decline. February's numbers were revised down to -156,000, from the initially reported -133,000. March was revised up to 185,000.

The headline number is good. Two consecutive months of upside surprises say the labor market has not broken the way many predicted. But the revision to February is the part worth sitting with. The month we thought was bad turned out to be significantly worse. This is how labor market data works: the headline runs everywhere on release day, and the revisions quietly change the underlying picture a few weeks later.

What the April report actually shows is a market that is adding jobs, but not evenly and not across the sectors most relevant to founders. Health care and transportation are structural. Retail reflects consumer spending that may or may not hold. The federal workforce is still contracting, and that talent is still entering the private market. If you are hiring in operations, program management, or policy, that pool is real and still underutilized.

The sectors that are not hiring, professional services, information, and financial activities, are where most people reading this newsletter do their business. For software, marketing, analytics, and operations roles, the April report tells you less than it seems. The market there is still tight in the ways that matter: the candidates you want are employed, cautious about moving, and getting more selective about what it takes to leave.

Advice:

The 115,000 number is real but narrow. If you are hiring in logistics, health care, or operations, conditions have improved. If you are hiring in professional services or tech, the headline does not tell you much about the talent you actually need.

2. Cloudflare Said the Quiet Part Out Loud

Recap: On May 8, Cloudflare announced it was laying off more than 1,100 employees, roughly 20 percent of its workforce, in the first mass layoff in the company's 16-year history. CEO Matthew Prince and President Michelle Zatlyn published a blog post explaining that AI usage inside Cloudflare had grown by over 600 percent in three months, with AI agents now handling tasks across HR, finance, marketing, and engineering. The CEOs stated explicitly that the cuts were not a cost-cutting exercise. Cloudflare reported record quarterly revenue the same week. Other companies announcing cuts the same week included Upwork, which cut 25 percent of its workforce; Coinbase, which cut 14 percent of its workforce; and PayPal, which announced plans to reduce headcount by 20 percent over the next two to three years.

Every other major AI-framed layoff we have covered this year has had a financial story underneath it. Oracle needed to fund $156 billion in infrastructure. Meta and Microsoft were converting payroll into AI capex. Amazon cut while AWS grew 24 percent. The pattern was clear: these were companies repricing labor to fund a capital spending race, and AI was the narrative that made it acceptable.

Cloudflare is different. It is a company with roughly 5,000 employees, not 100,000. It is posting record revenue, so financial pressure is not the explanation. And the CEO's statement is more specific than anything we have seen from a tech executive this year. Not "AI will reshape work over the next decade" but "AI usage inside our company grew 600 percent in three months, and these tasks no longer require the same headcount." That is a different claim. It might still be overstated. Executives describe their decisions in the best available terms. But the specificity is harder to dismiss.

What changes this week is the scale of the company making the claim. Big Tech making AI automation arguments is easy to discount because the financial incentives to make that argument are so large. Cloudflare, with 5,000 people, is closer to the companies that most founders are building or working at. When a company of that size cuts 20 percent during record revenue and attributes it specifically to internal adoption, it is worth treating as a real signal rather than a PR move.

The same week also brought cuts from Upwork, Coinbase, and PayPal, none of them Big Tech, all citing AI. The pattern is moving down market.

Advice:

Cloudflare is the first company at a relatable scale to have tied headcount cuts to documented internal AI adoption rather than to capital reallocation. If you have not audited which workflows AI tools now handle inside your own company, this week is a reason to do it before someone else's board asks you the same question.

3. Nubank Reports Today. The Number Matters More Than the Stock Price.

Recap: Nu Holdings, the parent company of Nubank, reports its first-quarter 2026 earnings today, May 14. Analysts project revenue of approximately $5 billion, representing nearly 53 percent year-over-year growth. Earnings per share are expected to be $0.20, a 67 percent year-over-year increase. The company ended 2025 with 131 million customers, making it the largest private financial institution by customer count in Brazil and a leading fintech across Mexico and Colombia. Nubank launched in 2013 with a credit card and no branches; it now serves roughly 15 percent of Brazil’s adult population.

The Nubank earnings report matters for a reason that has nothing to do with whether you own the stock.

When a company grows revenue by 53 percent annually and has 131 million customers, it is consuming a large amount of senior talent. Engineers, data scientists, product managers, risk analysts, and operations leads are all competing to work there. What Nubank pays, what it offers in terms of scope and growth, and what it expects from its people becomes the reference point for the senior tech labor market in Brazil. That is why these numbers matter to founders hiring remotely in São Paulo or Belo Horizonte, even if their company has nothing to do with fintech.

In the same week that US companies are announcing tens of thousands of job cuts, one of the world’s largest fintech companies is reporting 53 percent revenue growth, driven almost entirely by engineers, product managers, and operators trained in Brazil and Mexico. Nubank was not built by importing people from Silicon Valley. It was built by graduates of UNICAMP, UNAM, and Universidad de los Andes who chose to build something serious in their own region.

For founders who treat Latin America as a secondary market for affordable labor, this is worth revisiting. The talent pool that built Nubank is the same pool you are competing for.

Advice:

If Nubank's numbers come in strong today, expect salary expectations among senior technical professionals in Brazil to keep rising through 2026. Set your compensation benchmarks against what leading regional companies are actually paying now, not against what US companies paid two or three years ago.

That is it for this week.

Three stories that reward a closer read than the headline suggests. The jobs report looked good, but the revision and the sector breakdown tell a more complicated story. Cloudflare's cuts are the first of this cycle that appear to be about actual AI adoption rather than financial engineering, and that company is closer to your size than Meta is. Nubank's earnings are a proxy for how competitive the Latin American senior talent market has become, whether or not you work in fintech.

The talent decisions that hold up over the next two years will be made by people who read the revision, not just the headline.

That is what this newsletter is for. And it is what we help clients work through every week at lupahire.com.

Until next time,
Joseph Burns
CEO & Founder, Lupa

Hey there,

I keep seeing stories of people who laid off their devs and now spend more money on AI tokens than they did with a senior team.

AI itself is not what drives up costs. The real issue is a lack of structure. If you let go of your team without a clear plan for how tools will replace their judgment, knowledge, and work, you end up having to rebuild what you lost. It just costs more, and fewer people remember why things were done a certain way.

The companies that succeed are the ones that understand what AI can really do, where people are still needed, and how to train their teams to work with both. This takes more planning than just sending out a memo about layoffs, but you do not need to be as big as Meta or Amazon to make it work.

At Lupa, we are having this conversation with clients more than any other right now. The real question is how to build a team that knows how to use these tools so well that everyone becomes more valuable than before.

Let's get into it.

🌐 News Shortlist

1. The March Hiring Surge Got Buried Under the Noise

Recap: The Bureau of Labor Statistics released its March Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey on May 5. Job openings stayed at 6.9 million. Hires rose to 5.55 million, up 655,000 from February, the biggest monthly gain in over a year. Professional and business services added 165,000 hires. Transportation and warehousing added 108,000. Accommodation and food services added 124,000. Quits and layoffs stayed about the same.

Even though headlines focused on AI layoffs and tariff worries, employers actually hired at the highest monthly rate in over a year. That is what the JOLTS numbers show, but it did not get much notice.

The fact that professional and business services led the hiring surge is important. Companies hire in this area when they are planning for the future, not just filling empty spots. Adding 165,000 hires in one month shows these were thoughtful decisions, not just routine changes.

The broader picture is more complicated. Job openings remain at 6.9 million while monthly hires are still well below that figure, meaning companies are looking but taking longer to commit. Q1 GDP came in at 2.0 percent on April 30, below the 2.3 percent consensus, with most of the growth driven by a government shutdown reversal and defense spending rather than organic private-sector momentum. The macro has weaknesses that the headline number does not show.

Still, the JOLTS data speaks for itself. Employers who hired in March did not wait for a better GDP number. They made their call based on what their businesses needed. If you are still waiting for conditions to feel safer before hiring, the data shows that a meaningful number of your competitors have already acted.

Advice:

Professional and business services hiring moved in March, while most people were looking elsewhere. If you have an open role you have been holding until things settle, the market around you is not waiting.

2. Big Tech Is Repricing Labor. It Is Calling That AI.

Recap: Amazon, Meta, and Microsoft cut or restructured tens of thousands of roles in early 2026, all citing AI-driven efficiency as the primary justification. Meta announced 8,000 cuts effective May 20, concentrated in recruiting, HR, and Trust and Safety. Amazon eliminated approximately 16,000 corporate roles in Q1 while reporting AWS growth of 24 percent, its fastest in 13 quarters. Microsoft offered voluntary separation packages to roughly 8,750 US employees. Across recent earnings calls, Meta and Amazon executives referenced efficiency fifteen times combined. Collectively, Google, Amazon, Meta, and Microsoft plan to spend $725 billion on AI capital expenditure in 2026, up 77 percent from last year. A Bloomberg analysis found that roughly half of the roles attributed to AI-driven cuts will be rehired offshore or at lower salary bands.

The AI narrative is carrying a lot of weight in these announcements. It sounds inevitable and strategic, which is easier than saying we overhired during the pandemic, and the balance sheet needs correcting. The Bloomberg finding complicates the story. If half the cut roles are rehired elsewhere at a lower cost, this is as much a labor repricing story as an automation one.

What is actually happening is a specific financial trade-off. Companies spending $725 billion on AI infrastructure need to find that capital somewhere. Payroll is the highest controllable cost and the one that generates the most useful narrative when explaining the decision to shareholders. Efficiency is accurate if you define it as the conversion of people costs into infrastructure costs. It is not the same as proving that software made those jobs unnecessary.

This difference is important for founders. Big Tech can make these moves because of its size. If Meta cuts three thousand engineers, they still have thousands left and a huge research budget. But if a fifty-person company cuts one engineer to pay for a new tool, their whole product plan could change for months. Smaller companies do not have the same flexibility.

The Washington Post's May 1 analysis says the same thing: these layoffs are not just about AI. Some are about stock compensation timing, others about product changes, and some are about headcount that should have been managed sooner. Framing it as an AI story makes it easier for the market to accept, but that does not make it true.

Advice:

When Big Tech talks about AI-driven efficiency, think about what they are not saying in their earnings calls. For your own team, the real question is not how many people to cut, but whether you have the right people.

3. A Twenty-Five-Year Trade Deal Just Changed the Latin America Investment Map

Recap: On May 1, 2026, the EU-Mercosur free trade agreement entered provisional application after 25 years of negotiations. The agreement creates a 700-million-person trading zone and is the European Union's largest trade deal in terms of the scope of tariff reductions. It sharply reduces or eliminates tariffs on cars (previously as high as 35 percent in Mercosur countries), machinery, pharmaceuticals, and agricultural goods in both directions. EU firms will save an estimated $4.68 billion annually in tariff costs. The deal came into effect as US tariffs under the current administration have pushed both regions to diversify trade relationships.

Brazil, Argentina, Uruguay, and Paraguay have just been connected to the EU’s single market at a significantly lower cost. That is not only an agricultural export opportunity. It is an investment story. European companies now have a cleaner, more economically attractive path to establish operations inside Mercosur. They will use it.

The EU-Mercosur deal accelerates a trend already underway: companies are moving money out of US-focused supply chains because tariffs are making them more costly. European manufacturers, logistics firms, and tech companies seeking nearshore options to serve both North America and Europe will increasingly turn to Brazil, Argentina, and the rest of Mercosur. This will bring more foreign investment, more multinational jobs, and more competition for experienced professionals in those markets.

For US founders hiring in Latin America, the window before European companies arrive in force is narrowing. Today, you compete primarily against local employers and other US companies for senior technical and operational talent in Brazil and Argentina. In a few years, you will also be competing against German industrials, French logistics firms, and Spanish financial services companies that now have a trade framework, making their presence in Latin America significantly more economical. That competition is not here at full scale yet, but it is coming.

Advice:

The EU-Mercosur deal is a long-term change, not just a short-term news story. But the demand for experienced talent in Latin America will rise before it shows up in hiring numbers. If you are planning to build a team in Brazil or Argentina, moving now puts you ahead of the curve.

That is it for this week.

Three stories, one pattern: the headlines do not tell the whole story. The JOLTS data show hiring picked up in areas that the layoff narrative had frozen. The Big Tech AI story is really about finances, not just AI. And a trade deal signed twenty-five years ago just changed the economics of investing in Latin America, even if it will take time to show up in hiring numbers.

The best hiring decisions get made with a clear view of what is actually happening, not what is making headlines. That is what this newsletter tries to bring every week. It is also what we help clients do at lupahire.com.

Until next time,
Joseph Burns
CEO & Founder, Lupa

Hey there,

Lately, I’ve been thinking a lot about my time in Latin America and the impact, positive or negative, that we gringos have here. Many foreigners move to cities and skip Spanish lessons. They pay rent in dollars and push up prices for locals. They expect the city to adjust to them. That works for a while, but then it stops. Locals notice when people take from a place without giving back. Sooner or later, there’s a price to pay.

I’ve been here long enough to see both sides. Early on, I had to ask myself: am I just taking advantage of a good market, or am I building something that gives back?

That question is a big part of why I started Lupa. I wanted to connect US companies with Latin American talent in a way that really works. When companies treat hiring here as just a way to save money rather than a real commitment, they usually fail within a year. They blame the region, leave, and leave the people they hired in a tough spot. That hurts everyone: the company, the hires, and the market.

The goal was always simple: help companies succeed in Latin America so they want to return, and place candidates in jobs where they can really grow. When both sides win, everything works.

Let’s get into it.

🌐 News Shortlist

1. The Hiring Market Looks Active. It Isn’t.

Recap: New analysis from Indeed Hiring Lab, published April 13, shows a widening gap between job postings and completed hires in the US. Job postings have climbed steadily, but the actual hiring rate has fallen from 4.5% in 2021 to 2.8% today. Supporting data from BambooHR’s 2026 State of Hiring report shows applicants per posting have nearly doubled, from roughly 46 to 95 over the same period. Worker productivity rose 4.9% last year, one of the sharpest increases on record. At a late-2025 CEO summit, two-thirds of top executives said they plan to keep headcount flat or reduce it, citing trade policy uncertainty, elevated interest rates, and AI.

The US labor market isn’t falling apart. It’s just stuck, and that difference matters to founders trying to hire right now.

Here’s what’s really happening: companies post jobs to keep their pipelines full and look stable, but they aren’t making offers like they used to. Productivity gains that should mean more hiring are instead used as reasons to keep team sizes the same. Teams that once needed eight people now do the same work with six, and leaders are fine with that. So jobs stay open, applications pile up, and nothing gets filled.

This sets a trap for founders. The market looks competitive because there are so many applicants, but the people you really want are mostly still employed and not moving. Quit rates are near record lows. The best candidates aren’t actively looking. They feel secure enough to wait, especially since tariffs and AI make changing jobs riskier than it was two years ago.

This caution makes the freeze worse. Employers aren’t investing in their teams as much as the headlines suggest, and top candidates aren’t taking big risks. The whole market is waiting for things to settle.

Advice:

If you have an important opening, treat it like a real competition, even if you get lots of applicants. High volume doesn’t mean high quality. The people you want need a strong reason to move, and right now, that bar is higher than it’s been in years.

2. Meta and Microsoft Cut 23,000 Jobs and Blamed AI. That Is Not the Whole Story.

Recap: On April 23 and 24, Meta and Microsoft announced cuts affecting a combined 23,000 employees within a 24-hour window. Meta plans to eliminate 8,000 roles starting May 20, concentrated in its Trust and Safety division, where AI moderation tools have reportedly surpassed human reviewer accuracy across most content categories. Microsoft announced buyouts to approximately 8,750 US employees. Both companies explicitly cited AI-driven efficiency gains as the primary driver. The announcements came the same week that Alphabet, Amazon, Meta, and Microsoft confirmed plans to spend nearly $700 billion combined on AI infrastructure in 2026.

Both companies do have real business reasons for these cuts. AI moderation tools really are replacing some content review jobs. That part is true.

What deserves more scrutiny is the framing. A December 2025 survey found that 59% of hiring managers admitted they emphasize AI when announcing layoffs because it plays better with stakeholders than acknowledging overhiring or margin pressure. “AI did it” quickly closes the conversation. It sounds like an inevitable force of nature rather than a deliberate set of choices made over several years. It shifts accountability away from the decisions that led to the overcorrection in the first place.

This matters for founders paying attention to these headlines and trying to decide what to do next. The idea that AI is wiping out whole business functions is only partly true—and it’s also helpful for those who want that story to be believed. The same companies cutting jobs are spending more than ever on AI infrastructure. That’s a choice about where to put their money, not proof that the labor market is falling apart.

A better signal is what these companies are hiring for now: AI integration roles, technical customer success, forward-deployed engineers, and enterprise AI support teams. For every job lost to automation, another is growing to manage, deploy, or sell it. The shift is real and uneven, but it’s not a total elimination.

Advice:

Don’t let Big Tech’s reasons for restructuring shape your hiring plans. Most of what they’re doing is correcting for too much hiring between 2020 and 2022. Founders who build teams that fit their real needs and train people on AI tools now will be in a much better spot than those who use AI uncertainty as an excuse to stop hiring.

3. Argentina Got a $1 Billion Vote of Confidence from the IMF.

Recap: On April 15, the IMF cleared Argentina’s second program review, unlocking a $1 billion disbursement and endorsing a package of structural reforms. The package includes labor market flexibility legislation, the restoration of companies’ ability to repatriate profits, and the formal dismantling of capital controls that had been in place since 2019. The IMF projects Argentina will grow 3.5% in 2026, the strongest growth forecast among the region’s major economies. However, March 2026 came in at 3.4% monthly inflation, bringing Q1 cumulative inflation to 9.4%. The government had budgeted 10.1% for the entire calendar year.

Argentina is really recovering. The big picture—FDI coming back, capital controls gone, and the IMF program on track—shows real structural change. For companies that had given up on the country, there’s now a strong case to take another look, backed by real institutional support.

The inflation numbers add important context. The government planned for 10.1% inflation for all of 2026, but they’ve already hit 9.4% in just three months. This doesn’t mean stabilization is failing; it just means costs are rising faster than expected. Companies hiring in Argentina now need to update their view that it’s a very low-cost market. Senior professionals know their buying power is shrinking and are pricing their work to match. The best candidates have been quoted in USD for a while, and that’s not changing.

This creates a more complex opportunity, not a simple one. Argentina’s talent—across engineering, product, finance, and legal—is still very strong, thanks to top universities and a long history of technical skill. That hasn’t changed. What has changed is pay and how candidates think. The best people aren’t hugely undervalued anymore, and many now look for jobs paid in dollars because they know how inflation affects peso salaries. That’s still a real advantage for US companies hiring there, but it takes better preparation and stronger offers than before.

Advice:

If you plan to hire in Argentina in 2026, use up-to-date numbers. The big picture is getting better, but costs are rising, and top candidates expect more. Companies that come in with real pay benchmarks and a clear commitment to the market will build much better teams than those still using 2023 assumptions.

That’s it for this week.

All three stories come back to the same question: are you really building something, or just looking for an easy advantage?

A frozen labor market rewards companies that put in the effort to find and win over the right candidate, rather than just waiting for many applicants. AI layoff stories deserve a closer look—founders who ask, “Who benefits from this story?” will make better choices than those who just accept it. In Argentina, companies that come prepared and make real offers do better than those who expect the market to adjust to them.

One way to hire in Latin America is to take value and leave. Another way is to build something lasting and return. The second way is harder, but it’s the only one that matters. If you want to talk about what that could look like for your team, reach out to us at lupahire.com.

Until next time,
Joseph Burns
CEO & Founder, Lupa

Hey there,

This week, I was named to Atlas and Hoxo’s Top 100 Recruitment Leaders in North America. Honestly, I had no idea I was on their radar.

A year ago, I made a commitment to post on LinkedIn every day. I stuck with it, knowing that consistency mattered—not just for the algorithm, but because you only get better by putting your work out there. Even after 11 million impressions, I never expected this outcome.

I also learned how important it is to listen. The comments, direct messages, and even the pushback all help. That feedback makes the content better over time.

But honestly, the real reason any of this works is simple. I do not focus on myself. I write about Latin America—its talent, history, culture, and the amazing talent markets that many US founders miss. That focus is why I started Lupa. When content is based on real experiences, people notice.

Grateful to represent Latin America recruiting on the leaderboard. And to everyone who reads, comments, and shares, you are the reason this platform means anything. This is just the beginning.

Let’s get into it.

🌐 News Shortlist

1. The March Jobs Report Just Threw Everyone’s Predictions Out the Window

Recap: The US economy added 178,000 jobs in March 2026, far exceeding the Dow Jones consensus estimate of 59,000. The gain follows February’s revised loss of 133,000 jobs. Unemployment held at 4.3%. Health care, construction, and transportation led the gains. Federal government employment continued to decline, with the government now down roughly 355,000 employees since early 2025. Meanwhile, labor force participation slipped, and long-term unemployment remained elevated.

The headline number looks great—three times the forecast and the biggest monthly gain since Trump’s second term began. But if you are actually hiring, the details in the report matter more and tell a more complex story.

Right now, the labor market is best described as ‘low-hire, low-fire.’ Most people are not being laid off, except in the federal workforce, but they are not changing jobs either. Quit rates are at historic lows because workers feel it is risky to switch. While this looks good for retention, it actually means the pool of candidates for open roles is smaller and less active than it appears.

The sectors adding jobs show where demand is strongest. Health care continues to grow, corresponding with demographic trends. Construction is up because of infrastructure projects across the country. The shrinking federal workforce is sending experienced people into the private sector. If you are hiring for operations, compliance, or program management, this is a talent pool worth considering.

Overall, this is not a boom or a bust. The best candidates have choices and are prudent about making moves. If you want to hire top talent now, you need to act quickly and make stronger offers than you did last year.

Advice:

Do not assume the market is opening up just because of the 178,000 jobs number. The people you want are already employed and comfortable. Your offer has to be strong enough to make them consider leaving their current job.

2. 67% of Workers Say Their Employer Is Failing on AI Training

Recap: New research from SHRM and Gloat found that 67% of US workers disagree that their employer has acted proactively in training them to work alongside AI. Only 17% report that their company is doing anything meaningful to upskill workers in AI-impacted roles. Meanwhile, 51% of workers say they want more AI training. Separately, 80% of HR leaders now use AI for functions like researching employment laws and summarizing reports, but only one in ten has fully automated any HR function.

The reskilling gap is turning into one of the year’s biggest hiring stories. It is not a new problem, but it is getting worse just as AI adoption speeds up.

It is simple: companies are rolling out AI tools faster than they are training employees to use them. This creates a two-speed workforce—a small group of ‘power users’ who learn on their own, and a much larger group that falls behind. As Anthropic’s head of economics said at the Axios AI Summit last month, there is no big difference in unemployment figures between AI-exposed and non-exposed jobs yet. But the skills gap within those jobs is growing quickly.

This has a direct impact on hiring. If you are a founder or operator building an AI-ready team, you have two choices. You can hire people who already have these qualifications and compete with everyone else, or you can hire strong candidates and train them. Right now, 67% of workers say their employer is not investing in training. That is your chance.

The EU AI Act is also worth mentioning here. By August 2, 2026, any company using AI to screen, rank, or evaluate job candidates in the EU must comply with documentation, bias audit, and human review requirements. If you use AI in your hiring process and have any European exposure, that deadline is four months away.

Advice:

Companies that train their teams on AI now will have an advantage in hiring and keeping talent over the next two years. Those who wait will be fighting for the same small group of self-taught people. Build these skills inside your company—it is cheaper, faster, and helps build loyalty.

3. Foxconn Bet $900 Million That Mexico Is the Future of AI Hardware

Recap: Foxconn is building a massive AI server assembly facility in Jalisco, Mexico, with an investment of approximately $900 million. The plant will produce NVIDIA GB200 NVL72 servers, primarily for OpenAI’s $500 billion Stargate project. NVIDIA’s sales in Mexico grew 300% over the past year, and the company has added 45 new corporate partners in the country since late 2024. Foxconn recently invested an additional $136 million to expand capacity and was not slowed by tariff uncertainty.

While the US discusses tariff refunds and return-to-office rules, Foxconn is busy building the world’s largest assembly operation for advanced AI servers—in Mexico.

The Jalisco plant will make NVIDIA’s GB200 servers, which power the Stargate project. Foxconn did not pause when tariffs were announced. The company grew its server business in Mexico during Trump’s first term and is investing even more now. When asked about tariff risks, several manufacturers gave the same answer: they are staying.

It is not exclusively about cost. Geography, mature supply chains, and a growing talent pipeline all play a role. NVIDIA is working with UNAM and Tec de Monterrey. There are now 1,100 AI startups in Latin America using NVIDIA’s platforms. Mexico City has the region’s largest tech talent pool, with 300,000 professionals.

If you think of Latin America only as a nearshoring option, it is time to broaden your view. The region is not simply a place to hire software engineers—it is where some of the world’s most advanced hardware is being built for the biggest AI project ever announced. The talent pool and infrastructure are growing side by side.

Advice:

Latin America’s value is rising fast. If you have considered the region for engineering or operations hires, now is the time to move. The companies investing $900 million are not making guesses—they have already run the numbers.

That’s it for this week.

Three stories, one theme: the labor market is not broken, it is changing. New jobs are appearing, but they need new skills. Companies are putting millions into new regions, but talent pipelines are still developing. The gap between companies that adapt and those that wait is growing every quarter.

The best thing you can do now is simple: hire well, train your team, and build where the fundamentals are going. That is exactly what we help companies do at lupahire.com.

Until next time,
Joseph Burns
CEO & Founder, Lupa

Hey there,

Happy April Fools’ Day. I almost started with a fake headline, like “Lupa raises $500M Series A” or “Every tech company agrees to stop calling layoffs ‘organizational realignments.’” Honestly, though, this week’s real headlines are already unbelievable.

Oracle laid off up to 30,000 people yesterday morning via a 6am email. Meanwhile, LinkedIn data shows AI has created 1.3 million new jobs in two years. And the trade agreement that makes cross-border hiring in North America possible is up for its first formal review this summer.

The real news is more interesting than anything fake. Instead of “AI is destroying everything,” the real story this quarter is that the labor market is changing quickly, and companies that adapt will come out ahead.

At Lupa, we spent the week doing what we always do: pairing the right person to the right role. That stays the same, no matter how surprising the headlines are.

Let’s get into it.

🌐 News Shortlist

1. Oracle Fires 30,000 People With a 6am Email

Recap: On Tuesday, March 31, Oracle began what analysts believe could be the largest layoff in company history. Employees across the US, India, Canada, and Mexico received termination emails from “Oracle Leadership” at approximately 6am local time with no prior warning. Investment bank TD Cowen estimates the cuts will affect 20,000 to 30,000 employees, roughly 18% of Oracle’s global workforce. Access to company systems was cut immediately.

The numbers are big. Oracle announced a $2.1 billion restructuring plan in its SEC filing. TD Cowen says the layoffs will free up $8 to $10 billion in cash flow, which will go straight into AI data center infrastructure. Oracle’s net income jumped 95% last quarter, and it has $523 billion in remaining performance obligations. Financially, this firm stays stable.

However, what people will remember is how it was done. No phone call, no meeting, no talk with a manager. Just a 6am email and a locked laptop. Employees on Reddit said some teams lost at least 30% of their members, and some people found out they were let go only when they lost access before even reading the message.

There are business reasons to restructure when investing. Companies change direction and strategies regularly. That’s normal. However, treating the process like a logistics task—where 30,000 people learn about their jobs from an automated email before sunrise—is not. How you handle a transition shows your remaining employees, your customers, and the market who you really are.

Oracle will likely be fine financially. The $156 billion infrastructure build is a real strategy for real demand. However, the knowledge those 30,000 people had doesn’t move to a data center. And the trust of the employees who are still there just took a hit that no all-hands meeting can repair.

Advice:

If you ever need to make cuts while building a company, plan how you’ll communicate it before you plan how much you’ll save. How you deliver the news matters more than the memo itself.

2. AI Has Quietly Created 1.3 Million New Jobs

Recap: A LinkedIn report published in partnership with the World Economic Forum found that AI has created more than 1.3 million new jobs globally in just 2 years, including roles such as AI Engineer, Forward-Deployed Engineer, and Data Annotator that barely existed before 2023. The WEF projects 170 million new roles by 2030, with a net gain of 78 million jobs after accounting for 92 million displaced. LinkedIn also reported a 34% year-over-year increase in AI/ML job postings, even as overall tech postings declined 8%.

This is the story that deserves more attention. It not only contradicts the layoff headlines but also further adds important context to them.

The labor market isn’t falling apart—it’s shifting. Global hiring is still about 20% below pre-pandemic figures. Nevertheless, LinkedIn’s data shows the slowdown is mostly due to economic insecurity and post-pandemic adjustments, not AI taking over. Except for a few roles, jobs with high and low AI exposure are being filled at about the same rate.

What’s changing is the mix of jobs. AI Engineer is now LinkedIn’s fastest-growing job title, up 143% from last year. The typical hire has 3.7 years of experience, so it’s not just for senior executives. Mid-career professionals with the right skills can get these roles. Plus, 52% of professionals worldwide say they’re actively job hunting in 2026. The talent and demand are both there—the match just looks different than it did two years ago.

The WEF gave a number worth remembering: a net gain of 78 million jobs by 2030. The transition won’t be easy; nevertheless, the opportunity is real for people and companies set to adapt.

Advice:

If you’re hiring, don’t look for the same profiles you hired in 2023. The roles are changing. If you’re job hunting, AI skills aren’t just a bonus anymore—they’re becoming standard. LinkedIn data shows that workers are now more than twice as likely to add AI skills to their profiles than they were six years ago. Take note and follow their example.

3. The USMCA Review Is Coming. North American Hiring Hangs in the Balance.

Recap: In July 2026, the United States, Mexico, and Canada will begin the first formal review of the USMCA trade agreement. Under Article 34.7, the three countries can extend the agreement for 16 years, initiate annual reviews, or begin a termination process. The review is expected to cover rules of origin, labor standards, nearshoring incentives, and broader issues, including migration and drug policy.

This story isn’t getting enough attention, but it matters more than most of the stories covered today.

The USMCA governs a $1.93 trillion trade corridor across three countries and 500 million people. The July review will determine whether the agreement gets extended to 2042, creating 16 years of regulatory predictability, or enters a period of annual reviews that could freeze cross-border investment decisions for a decade.

If you’re building distributed teams with talent from Latin America, this isn’t just background noise. Mexico brought in $40.9 billion in foreign direct investment in the first three quarters of 2025, up 14.5% from the year before. New investments jumped 218%. That growth is closely linked to the stability the USMCA brings. If the review goes well, it keeps the conditions that make nearshoring possible. Otherwise, the uncertainty might slow things down for years.

There’s some real irony here. In the same week a US tech company lays off 30,000 people to invest in AI, the trade rules that let companies hire skilled engineers in Latin America are being reviewed. Companies building strong teams now are watching both issues. While layoff headlines get attention, the trade review will shape what happens next.

Advice:

If you’re hiring or planning to hire in Latin America, mark July 2026 on your calendar. The results will affect everything from compliance costs to how fast you can grow a cross-border team. Don’t wait for the news to catch up.

That’s it for this week.

I began by saying the real headlines are stranger than any April Fools’ joke. There’s a bigger point: the labor market is changing shape. Jobs are being created as others are cut. Money is moving. Trade agreements are under review. Everything is shifting.

Successful companies won’t panic or ignore change. Instead, they’ll act thoughtfully, hire the right people, treat them well, and build teams they want to keep.

If you’re wondering what that could look like for your company, we’re always willing to chat at lupahire.com.

Until next time,
Joseph Burns
CEO & Founder, Lupa

Hey there,

This week, I keep wondering: Who actually benefits from the constant narrative that AI is taking everyone’s jobs in business media?

Think about it. Every CEO who blames AI when announcing layoffs gets a stock bump and avoids tougher conversations about overhiring or margin pressure. AI companies that stay in the “disruption” headlines benefit from the sense that change is inevitable. If everyone believes the transition can’t be stopped, the question shifts from whether to buy the tools to which ones to buy. Boards that want to freeze hiring now have an easy justification that sounds strategic instead of reactive.

That doesn’t mean AI displacement isn’t real. It is. Some jobs are being automated, entry-level hiring is slowing, and disruption is speeding up in certain areas. But “certain areas” is an important detail, and the main story doesn’t leave much room for specifics. Panic makes a better headline than nuance.

So this week I looked for the real numbers. Here are three stories, and none of them is about layoffs.

Let’s get into it.

🌐 News Shortlist

1. OpenAI Is Nearly Doubling Its Headcount

Recap: The Financial Times reported this week that OpenAI plans to grow its workforce from about 4,500 to around 8,000 employees by the end of 2026. The hiring covers product, engineering, research, enterprise sales, and a new role called “technical ambassadorship.” This function is meant to help large organizations actually use AI tools in their businesses. OpenAI is also expanding office space in several markets. The company is shifting from being mainly a research lab to a full-scale enterprise software company, now competing for the same B2B contracts as Salesforce, Microsoft, and Oracle.

The company most frequently associated with replacing jobs is now leading one of the biggest hiring waves in tech. That’s worth thinking about.

OpenAI’s growth shows where AI is in its business journey. Building models is just one part. Selling them to companies, integrating them into workflows, providing technical support, and renewing contracts all require different kinds of teams.

The “technical ambassadorship” category is the most interesting signal. It describes people who sit between the product and the customer — fluent enough in the technology to demo and troubleshoot, skilled enough in business to understand what the client actually needs and why adoption isn’t happening. This is a role that didn’t exist five years ago. It is in demand now because the gap between “AI can do this” and “your team is actually using AI to do this” is enormous, and closing it requires humans.

The bigger picture is that for every company cutting jobs because of AI, there are other companies—AI vendors, their partners, and the enterprise software teams built around these tools—that are hiring. These jobs are different from the ones being cut. They usually need more experience, technical skills, and strong communication. But these jobs do exist.

Advice:

If you’re hiring in enterprise software, AI infrastructure, or roles connecting technical products with business buyers, clarify what makes your job compelling and move quickly. Streamline your hiring process to remain competitive with OpenAI for top candidates.

2. Brazil Is Leading the Americas in Tech Hiring Confidence

Recap: ManpowerGroup’s Q2 2026 Tech Talent Outlook, released March 19, found that US employers reported a Net Employment Outlook of 41% for tech hiring — an 8-point increase from the prior quarter. Globally, tech hiring intent reached 45%, up 9 points year over year. Within the Americas, Brazil led at 63%, followed by Panama at 61% and Canada at 45%. India led globally at 69%. Colombia came in at 13%, reflecting more cautious employer sentiment. The survey was conducted from January 1 to February 3, before the outbreak of conflict in the Middle East.

This story isn’t getting much attention because layoff headlines are louder and easier to write.

An eight-point jump in one quarter is a real change in the US. It doesn’t mean tech hiring is back to 2021 levels—it’s not. But it shows that employers who are ready to grow are starting to hire. The jobs they’re filling are different now: more senior, more specialized, and more focused on AI. There are fewer open roles overall, but the ones that do open are filled more intentionally.

Brazil’s 63% is the number to watch. This isn’t a market under pressure—it’s growing. The local fintech and e-commerce scene, with Nubank reaching 131 million customers and Mercado Libre seeing 45% revenue growth, is creating strong demand for senior engineering, product, and data talent. Now, US companies hiring remotely are competing for the same people, which is pushing up pay for top candidates and making hiring harder than it was a year ago.

Colombia’s 13% tells a different story. It’s not about poor talent—the country has great professionals in tech, finance, and operations. Instead, it shows that local employers are cautious during a presidential transition year. For companies willing to put in the effort, such hesitation creates an opportunity: the best candidates are often more available and open to new roles when local demand is low.

Advice:

If hiring technical talent in Latin America for Q2 or Q3, expect tough competition in Brazil. Start searches earlier and highlight unique role benefits. In Colombia and other cautious markets, consider targeting roles that don’t require top-tier Brazilian expertise to ensure a smoother hiring process.

3. Stanford Economists Checked What AI Is Actually Doing to Jobs

Recap: At the 2026 Stanford SIEPR Economic Summit, a panel of economists—including Erika McEntarfer, former head of the Bureau of Labor Statistics—shared early findings on AI’s impact on hiring. Entry-level software developer hiring for ages 22–26 is down 20%. Call center hiring is down 15%. These are real declines, not just predictions. Still, the panel found no sign of a broad labor market collapse: unemployment for workers exposed to AI hasn’t gone up much, the overall job market is steady, and jobs with low AI exposure—like home health aides, skilled trades, and manual labor—are still growing. The researchers also noted a shift in professional fields like law, banking, and medicine, moving from pyramid-shaped hiring (many junior roles, fewer senior ones) to something more like a diamond or inverted shape.

The headline says “AI is eliminating jobs.” The more accurate story is that AI is cutting out the lowest level of certain knowledge jobs, but the middle and senior roles are mostly staying the same.

A 20% drop in entry-level software developer hiring doesn’t mean all software developers are being replaced. It means junior developers who used to write boilerplate, fix simple bugs, and handle documentation aren’t being hired because AI tools can do that work well enough. Senior developers who design systems and make key decisions are still being hired, often at higher pay. The same pattern is happening in law, finance, and operations.

The shift from a pyramid to a diamond shape in hiring is the most important finding. Junior roles serve two purposes: handling work that doesn’t need senior judgment, and developing future senior professionals. If AI takes over the first job, it becomes harder to do the second. Companies cutting entry-level jobs now are creating a talent pipeline problem that will show up in two or three years—and will be costly to fix.

For Latin American professionals, this data makes things clearer. The biggest interference is in entry-level, highly standardized technical jobs based in the US. The roles that are stable—or even growing—are the ones international hiring usually fills: experienced professionals with specific skills who can work independently and make good decisions. The talent pool I work with is mostly mid-to-senior level. That’s not by accident. It’s why demand has stayed strong.

Advice:

If you’ve cut or frozen entry-level jobs for AI efficiency, ensure you are still developing talent and mentoring staff. Don’t just automate tasks—actively build career growth programs or risk future skill gaps.

That’s it for this week.

Three different data points, but the same pattern: disruption is real and focused, and growth is also real and focused. The space between those two is where a smart hiring strategy happens right now. That’s what I help clients with. If you want to talk about it for your team, you can find me at lupahire.com or just reply here.

Until next time,
Joseph Burns
CEO & Founder, Lupa

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Hey there,

Venezuela made baseball history last night, beating Team USA 3-2 in the World Baseball Classic final. I was rooting for Team USA, but watching Venezuela celebrate their win at loanDepot Park, I was struck by the moment.

This team knocked out Japan, the defending champions, used their entire bullpen the night before against Italy, and still came back to win. When Bryce Harper tied it in the eighth, the Venezuelan players didn’t panic. In the ninth, Eugenio Suárez drove in the go-ahead run, and they held on.

Nobody believed in Venezuela, Suárez said after the last out. But now we win the championship.

I spent part of the evening talking to Venezuelan colleagues and friends. They were all feeling the same thing, and it was hard to put into words — something like relief mixed with joy. For people who’ve had to build their careers and their lives far from home, in conditions most people never have to think about, there aren’t many moments of pure celebration without a shadow of something else attached. Last night was one of them. Venezuela declared today a national holiday.

The grit that the team showed on the field is something I see in Venezuelan professionals every single day. They adapt. They persist. They find a way. And last night, in front of the whole country watching from wherever they are in the world, they got to celebrate it openly.

Congratulations to Venezuela. You earned this.

Let’s get into it.

🌐 News Shortlist

1. Meta Is Planning to Cut Up to 16,000 Employees — and the Market Rewarded It Immediately

Recap: Reuters reported on March 13 that Meta plans to lay off about 16,000 employees, more than 20% of its workforce. The cuts offset Meta’s plan to double its AI spending to $135 billion in 2026, mostly for data centers, GPUs, and custom chips. Senior leaders are being told to prepare for smaller teams. Despite Meta calling the reports speculative, the stock still climbed nearly 3% on the news.

The stock reaction is the story worth paying attention to.

Meta’s share price went up when the layoffs leaked. The same thing happened with Block in February. Markets now reward companies that announce workforce cuts for AI, and boards see the signal. When cutting people produces a 3% share price pop, the incentive is obvious.

Meta is cutting jobs to fund its $135 billion AI infrastructure commitment this year, not because AI has replaced workers. Payroll is the fastest source of cash. We saw the same with Oracle two weeks ago: a big bet on AI, headcount as the shock absorber.

This is a different story from “AI replaced these jobs.” But it gets filed under the same headline, and that conflation is doing real damage to how people understand what’s actually happening. For leaders building teams right now, the practical upside is real: the professionals being displaced from Meta, Oracle, and Block are talented, motivated, and available. If you’ve been trying to hire senior people and couldn’t attract the caliber you needed, the next 60 to 90 days may be the best window you’ll have in some time.

Advice:

Don’t take every AI layoff announcement at face value. Ask whether the company is cutting because AI changed the work, or because they need cash to fund their AI bet. The first has strategic implications for your own hiring decisions. The second is just about capital allocation.

2. Atlassian Cut 1,600 Jobs and Was Unusually Honest About Why

Recap: On March 11, Atlassian announced it was cutting 10% of its global workforce, about 1,600 employees, to self-fund investments in AI and enterprise sales. CEO Mike Cannon-Brookes was direct: AI changes the mix of skills needed and roles in some areas. Over 900 of the cuts were in software R&D. The company reported strong cloud revenue growth, and its Rovo AI product passed 5 million users. Atlassian made the move from a position of strength, not crisis. The stock rose 2%.

What stands out about Atlassian is the candor.

Cannon-Brookes didn’t sugarcoat it. The skills the company needs have changed, the bar has moved, and they’re choosing to adapt now on their own terms instead of being forced into it later. Most CEOs won’t say that publicly.

More than 900 of the 1,600 cuts were in software R&D. With AI-assisted tools replacing this work, Atlassian now needs fewer people to build the tools software teams use. This is what transition looks like in 2026 from inside a software company.

Cannon-Brookes’ version: we’re in a good position, the nature of the work is changing faster than we are, and we’d rather decide deliberately than react. It’s a defensible but uncomfortable position. Most companies reach for vaguer language.

Advice:

Read the Atlassian memo. It’s one of the clearest public explanations of how a software company thinks through an AI-driven restructure from a position of momentum. Companies will soon talk about “reshaping the skill mix” instead of “replacing people with AI.” Learn the language now to ask better questions about it later.

3. Nubank Just Reported 131 Million Customers and Profits Up 62% — Latin America’s Digital Economy Is Growing on Its Own Terms

Recap: Nubank reported Q4 2025 net income of $894.8 million, up 62% year-over-year. Revenue rose 45% to $4.86 billion. The customer base grew 15% to 131 million across Brazil, Mexico, and Colombia. That makes Nubank the largest private financial institution by customers in Brazil and the top issuer of new credit cards in Mexico. The company is now aiming for a US launch after OCC approval. Mercado Libre, meanwhile, reported revenue up 45%, $19.9 billion in Gross Merchandise Volume, and its Mercado Pago fintech unit serves 78 million monthly active users. Both companies are rapidly adopting AI.

While US tech companies cut headcount to fund AI, Latin America’s digital economy is still early and growing fast.

Nubank serves roughly 15% of Mexico’s adult population and is the largest private bank by customers in Brazil. They built their base by making financial services accessible to people excluded by traditional banks, and their cost structure keeps them ahead. The 62% profit growth shows the model is scaled, not just bigger.

Mercado Libre’s numbers tell a similar story. 45% revenue growth, when US e-commerce is at 7–9%, shows what happens when a platform is still digitizing a whole region. The logistics-fintech flywheel is compounding: cheaper shipping drives more buying, and more payment data enables better credit. That’s a different business story than anything in US tech this week.

Nubank and Mercado Libre are scaling aggressively and hiring for it. Nubank is building its US presence. Mercado Libre is investing in fulfillment and enterprise AI across Latin America. They’re competing for senior talent, sometimes directly with US firms.

Advice:

If you work with or invest in LatAm, Nubank and Mercado Libre set the baseline for sustainable growth in the region. Companies focused on financial inclusion, digital payments, and logistics aren’t following the US tech playbook. Get clear on what makes them different before you try to benchmark them.

That’s it for this week.

Venezuela won by doing exactly what people said they couldn’t. They stayed composed when it mattered, responded under pressure, and finished what they started. That’s how I think about building teams right now. It’s about building with intention, knowing what you’re building, why it matters, and who you need to do it, not chasing a narrative with cuts and restructures.

That’s the work I do every day at Lupa. If you want to talk, you know where to find me: lupahire.com or just reply here.

Until next time,
Joseph Burns
CEO & Founder, Lupa

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Hey there,

I’m just coming back from my golf practice. I spent most of the winter working on my golf swing.

I’m about a 2 handicap. On a good day, I can shoot par, which is better than most amateurs but still far from pro level. Last year was my best year yet. Even so, I came back in January and started over from scratch.

I focused on where my hands are during the takeaway. It sounds minor, but getting it right means relearning the whole movement. There’s a comfortable way to do it, which is an easy improvement but only brings a small gain. The harder way feels wrong for months, but eventually leads to something bigger.

I keep thinking about that at work. Lupa is at about $2M in revenue. To get to $20M, I need to change focus completely: how I lead, what I hand off, what I stop doing myself. None of it is comfortable. All of it is necessary.

When hiring, I keep asking clients: Are these roles right for where you’re going, or just leftovers from when you were smaller? Most founders inherit job descriptions from earlier versions of their company. It’s easier to keep filling those roles than to stop and ask if they still fit.

There was a lot of news this week, but only a few stories actually mattered.

Let’s get into it.

🌐 News Shortlist

1. Anthropic publishes real data on which jobs AI is displacing; the most important finding is buried beneath the headlines.

Recap: On March 5, Anthropic released a labor market paper with a new metric: observed exposure. It tracks what AI could do versus what people actually use it for at work. The most exposed jobs by real usage data are computer programmers, customer service reps, and data entry keyers. Financial analysts and market research specialists follow. The least exposed—cooks, lifeguards, dishwashers, bartenders—make up about 30% of the workforce. Those in the most exposed roles are more likely to be female, older, more educated, and higher paid. Despite fears, there hasn’t been a systematic rise in unemployment for high-exposure jobs since ChatGPT launched. But there’s a telling signal: entry-level hiring for younger workers in exposed fields has dropped 14% since late 2022.

Commentary on the report is missing the real gap: not between safe and exposed jobs, but between what AI can do and what it’s actually doing. For example, computer and math jobs have 94% theoretical exposure, but only 33% actual coverage. Office and admin jobs are 90% theoretical, 25% actual. Legal is 80% theoretical, 15% actual.

That gap isn’t a comfort. It’s a countdown, showing where displacement is heading and how much runway is left. Anthropic’s framing is cautious: effects so far are modest, but the mechanism is now in place and the trajectory is clear.

The drop in entry-level hiring for younger workers is the clearest signal. There is no mass unemployment yet, but a 14% drop is how disruption begins: quietly, at the edges, before it appears in the data. Companies aren’t firing people. They’re just not replacing them or hiring new graduates to fill the pipeline.

This explains why the international hiring market looks different right now. In Latin America, demand is up for roles needing high judgment and direct client contact—the kinds of things AI can’t handle yet. Task-based roles are slowing, matching Anthropic’s data almost perfectly.

What matters here is that Anthropic, the company behind Claude, isn’t a neutral observer. Publishing data that implicates their own product in labor market disruption is meaningful, and deserves credit.

Advice:

Read the report itself. The chart showing theoretical versus observed exposure by job category is the best way to see where things are going. If much of your team’s work is in the “blue zone,” meaning what AI could do but isn’t doing yet, that’s your planning horizon.

2. Latin America’s startup funding just had its strongest year since 2022, but fewer companies benefited.

Recap: The Latin America VC Report 2026 found venture capital investment hit $4.1 billion in 2025—a 13.8% rise over 2024, marking the first real recovery after three years of decline from the 2021 peak. Still, the number of deals dropped to 681, the lowest since 2017. Average check size grew to $6.1 million. Brazil and Mexico took most of the capital. Fintech dominated funding, but late-stage rounds shrank sharply, and seed deals fell from 321 to 247.

The important number isn’t the $4.1 billion; it’s how few deals actually happened.

More capital is going to fewer companies, raising the bar for getting funded. Investors write bigger checks only for those who have already executed. The speculative bets of 2021 are gone. Now, a smaller set of investors are concentrating capital on proven founders in established markets. Brazil and Mexico took most of it. Fintech still led. Seed-stage startups across the rest of the region are struggling.

This shift changes how startups build teams. When money is easy, founders hire to show momentum. Now, with capital concentrated, they hire to prove execution. These are different philosophies, with different roles and candidates. The companies still getting funded can show every hire made a difference.

The real warning sign is the drought in seed-stage funding. Seed deals dropped sharply in a year. That’s the pipeline for future Series A rounds—if the seed market stays tight, many startups simply won’t exist to raise later. A thinner early ecosystem will ripple through hiring, talent, and the health of LatAm’s tech workforce before it shows up in big-picture VC data.

There’s one reason for optimism: several VC firms that raised funds in recent years are close to deploying that capital, so a new wave of investment is likely in 2026 and 2027. The rebound has started. The only question is whether it broadens out or stays concentrated at the top.

Advice:

If you’re a founder raising in Latin America, every hire needs a clear answer to what they make possible that no one else can. Investors are grilling teams the same way they question products. Build for that scrutiny.

3. Oracle plans to cut up to 30,000 jobs to fund its AI data centers.

Recap: Bloomberg reported on March 5 that Oracle is planning major layoffs across divisions, with estimates as high as 30,000 jobs, which is about 12 to 18 percent of its global workforce. The reason is a cash crunch from a massive AI data center expansion, including a $156 billion OpenAI deal. Oracle’s stock has dropped sharply, open positions are frozen, and they’re considering selling the Cerner healthcare unit. Wall Street expects negative cash flow for years before the AI investment pays off.

This is a different kind of layoff than what happened at Block.

Block cut people because AI made them more productive. Oracle, in contrast, is cutting people to pay for an overextended bet on AI infrastructure. These layoffs aren’t about efficiency; they’re collateral damage from the AI arms race.

Oracle is locked into a $156 billion deal with OpenAI. With banks pulling back from financing data centers, Oracle’s borrowing costs have doubled and the stock has dropped. Payroll is the fastest place to cut. This isn’t AI replacing work; it’s overcommitting to the buildout and making people pay for the GPU bill.

The real lesson: betting on AI infrastructure as a moat without understanding the returns is dangerous. Oracle went all in to compete with AWS and Azure. The demand is there, and contracts are signed, but the timing and financing created a squeeze that lands on the workforce.

Advice:

Watch Oracle’s earnings this week. How they frame the cuts will reveal how companies talk about AI-driven restructuring. The framing will shape how boards and investors judge similar moves elsewhere.

That’s it for this week.

Two stories this week have a common theme: capital is concentrating, deals are fewer, and every hiring decision faces more scrutiny than ever. Anthropic shows which roles are at risk. LatAm VC data reveals the funding environment for builders in the region. Oracle shows what happens when you bet on AI before the economics make sense.

I help founders and operators build teams in Latin America. The most important question now isn’t how many people, but which people and why those roles matter right now. If you want to talk about it, you know where to find me: lupahire.com or just reply here.

Until next time,
Joseph Burns
CEO & Founder, Lupa

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Hey there,

News moved quickly this week, and so did opinions. Three big stories came one after another, all raising the same question: what happens to knowledge workers as AI keeps advancing?

Every client conversation lately circles back to this. Not in a “sky is falling” way—just practical. What does your team actually need humans for, and what’s just inertia? The companies that take time to sort this out now will be in far better shape than the ones scrambling to react later.

At Lupa, we work with companies to hire with purpose. Before a job goes live, we dig into what the role actually needs to accomplish. That’s become more useful in 2026 than it ever was a few years ago.

Let’s get into it.

🌐 News Shortlist

1. Jack Dorsey Cut 40% of Block’s Workforce and Said Most Companies Will Do the Same

Recap: On February 26, Block — the parent company of Square and Cash App — announced it was laying off more than 4,000 employees, reducing its workforce from roughly 10,000 to under 6,000. CEO Jack Dorsey tied the decision directly to AI, writing in a shareholder letter that “intelligence tools have changed what it means to build and run a company.” The business is not in distress; Block reported $2.87 billion in gross profit in Q4, up 24% year over year. Dorsey said he expected most companies to reach the same conclusion within a year. Block’s stock surged as much as 24% on the news. Critics noted that Block more than doubled its headcount between 2019 and 2022, and some analysts attributed the cut as much to COVID-era overhiring correction as to genuine AI displacement.

Forget the headcount. The way markets responded says more: Block slashed nearly half its staff, profits stayed strong, and shares jumped 24%. Investors are favoring lean, AI-powered teams these days—even if AI isn’t doing all the work yet.

Dorsey avoided the usual corporate language. There was no mention of restructuring or realignment. He pointed to AI as the reason and acted on it. Some of this is just correcting overhiring from the COVID boom, but the way he explained it is what’s getting other boards’ attention.

If you’re running a team, pay attention to what markets actually care about right now. The companies getting rewarded are lean and know how to use AI. Hanging on to a bloated headcount from the old growth-at-all-costs playbook? That’s a harder story to sell.

Slashing staff doesn’t make AI effective overnight. Block spent years developing its own AI tools before cutting headcount. They got efficient, then made staffing changes. Companies that try it the other way around are just putting new labels on layoffs.

Advice:

Before you consider how many people AI could replace, ask yourself how much of your current work is clearly defined enough for AI to handle. Most teams need more clarity before they worry about headcount. Focus on that first.

2. Nvidia Beat Estimates by a Wide Margin — and the Stock Fell Anyway

Recap: Nvidia reported fiscal Q4 2026 results on February 25, posting $68.1 billion in revenue — up 73% year over year and well ahead of analyst estimates. Data center revenue hit $62.3 billion, up 75%. The company guided Q1 2027 revenue to $78 billion, also above expectations. Despite what one Morgan Stanley analyst called “the largest, cleanest beat and raise in the history of the semis industry,” Nvidia shares dropped more than 5% the following day. Investor concerns centered on whether hyperscaler AI infrastructure spending — forecast to approach $700 billion combined this year across Alphabet, Amazon, Meta, and Microsoft — would ultimately generate returns. China remains excluded from revenue projections due to export restrictions.

The numbers are huge, but the reaction tells you more about where we are right now.

Nvidia’s numbers would have seemed impossible a few years ago. The infrastructure and demand are real, and even Jensen Huang says agentic AI is here. But Wall Street’s focus has changed. Now, it’s all about whether these huge investments will actually pay off.

It’s a fair question. Big tech companies are investing hundreds of billions in AI. Some bets will pay off, while others might end up like the fiber glut of 1999: useful later, but too much too soon. No one really knows what’s ahead.

AI infrastructure spending keeps unlocking new capabilities, and tools that were out of reach two years ago are suddenly affordable. Plenty of teams are paying for the tech, but the real difference comes from actually using it to change how work gets done—not just letting subscriptions pile up.

The teams seeing real value from AI have changed their habits along with their tools. That takes time. You don’t get it just by springing for the new license.

Advice:

Review the AI tools your team pays for. For each tool, ask yourself what would stop working or slow down if you stopped using it tomorrow. If the answer is “not much,” you’re likely stuck in a subscription trap. Choose one workflow and rebuild it around the tool before adding more.

3. Microsoft’s AI Chief Says White-Collar Work Will Be Fully Automated in 18 Months

Recap: In an interview with the Financial Times published in late February, Mustafa Suleyman, CEO of Microsoft AI, said he expects AI to reach “human-level performance on most, if not all professional tasks” within 12 to 18 months. He listed lawyers, accountants, project managers, and marketing professionals as those most at risk. Suleyman pointed to faster computing power and the rapid changes already happening in software engineering, where he said engineers have shifted from writing code to “debugging, scrutinizing, and strategic work.” His statement came the same week as Block’s layoffs and a viral essay comparing today’s AI moment to the early days of COVID, which was widely shared and debated.

Every so often, another big AI name says something like this, the internet debates it, and then moves on. AI is going to reshape white-collar work—no question. The real issue is the fixation on an 18-month timeline and the word “automated.”

“AI can do this task” isn’t the same as “AI has replaced this job.” The gap isn’t technical; it’s organizational. Companies already have AI tools for drafting, summarizing, writing copy—you name it. But changing how work actually gets done takes much longer. The real holdup is whether leadership is willing to rethink workflows, structures, and accountability.

Suleyman knows it, too. And, of course, he works at Microsoft, which has every reason to hype this timeline. That doesn’t mean he’s wrong—but it’s something to keep in mind.

From what I’ve seen, the first roles to disappear aren’t always the easiest to automate on paper. It’s the fuzzy jobs—where no one’s sure what the person really does, value isn’t clear, and a manager can quietly hand it to AI without pushback. The well-defined, judgment-heavy roles? Those tend to stick around. The vague ones don’t.

Advice:

Take a hard look at your team. Instead of thinking about what AI could do in theory, figure out which roles actually deliver clear, uniquely human value. Can you sum up what unique judgment each person brings—something AI can’t reliably match? If not, you don’t have to cut the role, but you should talk about it now, before you’re forced to.

That’s it for this week.

All three stories point in the same direction: markets are rewarding companies that figure out how to use AI for real efficiency, and the conversation about what that means for teams is speeding up faster than most leaders realize.

I’m not here for the doomsday predictions, and you shouldn’t be either. The real question is: if AI can handle more work, what should your team focus on? The companies that figure this out and hire for it will be the ones people want to join in the future.

That’s the conversation I have with clients every week. If it’s one you want to have, reach out or reply here.

Until next time,
Joseph Burns
CEO & Founder, Lupa

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Hey there,

After what happened in Jalisco this weekend, a few people reached out to check if I was okay. I appreciate that.

But people outside Mexico sometimes forget how big the country is. The situation in Tapalpa and parts of Guadalajara was serious, but Mexico City, where most of our team is based, is over 500 kilometers away. Cancún is even farther—more than 2,000 kilometers. Most of Mexico went about business as usual.

I mention this because companies often make a similar mistake with global teams. One headline can shape the whole story. One event can lead to assumptions about an entire country.

If you’re hiring people from other countries, you can’t afford to oversimplify like that.

Let’s get into it.

🌐 News Shortlist

1. They built the AI. Then they got laid off.

Recap: Salesforce quietly laid off nearly 1,000 employees in early February, cutting roles across marketing, product management, data analytics, and its Agentforce AI team. This follows last year’s elimination of roughly 4,000 customer support roles, which CEO Marc Benioff attributed to AI agents handling support tasks. Five senior executives also exited between December and February.

It’s ironic: the people who built the automation tools ended up being replaced by them. The system is operating exactly as designed, with no contradiction in its logic.

Benioff has been more open than most. AI cut customer support jobs from 9,000 to about 5,000. Now, agents handle about half of customer conversations. Revenue is strong and efficiency has improved. The message is clear: if software can do your job, the company will choose higher margins.

It’s not just about cutting costs. It’s about shifting value. Support, marketing, and data teams got smaller, while sales grew. Companies are making it clear which roles they think matter most in an AI-driven world. The rest are seen as flexible.

Salesforce is just one example that helps explain what motivates companies.

Advice:

If you tell your team that AI is there to help, be clear about what that actually means. Spell out what will change and what won’t. People can deal with restructuring, but they struggle when leaders act like nothing important has changed.

2. AI skills now pay more than degrees

Recap: Research from Oxford and the World Economic Forum shows AI skills now command a 23% wage premium in the UK, compared to 13% for a master’s degree and 8% for a bachelor’s. Separate hiring experiments found listing AI skills significantly increases callback rates. Meanwhile, over 90% of professionals report receiving no formal AI training in the past year.

The market now values practical skills more than degrees. That’s a big change. Companies care less about your education and more about what you can automate.

But most companies are solving this the lazy way. They are paying premiums to hire externally instead of upgrading internally. That creates a small elite inside the company and a large group quietly falling behind.

If AI skills carry a 23% premium, training is no longer optional. It’s leverage. The companies that build AI fluency across teams will outcompete the ones poaching the same résumé keywords from each other.

Degrees show potential, but skills show results. The market is making its choice.

Advice:

Before you increase salary bands for your next AI hire, increase your training budget. Capability compounds internally. Recruitment premiums don’t.

3. Layoffs are accelerating. The framing hasn’t changed.

Recap: More than 40,000 tech workers have been laid off so far in 2026 across over 100 events. Amazon alone accounts for 16,000 cuts. Meta reduced 1,500 roles from Reality Labs. Several firms cite AI adoption and operational efficiency while simultaneously reporting strong revenues.

At this point, the script is predictable. Announce restructuring. Mention AI. Emphasize efficiency. Stock holds. Months later, new roles appear in different departments.

Margin discipline is driving this situation, not collapse. Many of these companies are profitable. They are not reacting to crisis. They are optimizing.

For smaller companies, this creates a window. The market is full of experienced operators who did not fail. They were reallocated out of the model.

But here’s the catch. If you hire them and run your company the same way Big Tech did, you will recreate the same churn.

Advice:

If you’re hiring, this is an opportunity. If you’re leading, don’t copy restructuring language without understanding the consequences. And if you were laid off, understand this: many cuts right now are strategic, not performance-based. That distinction matters.

That’s it for this week.

No grand thesis. No dramatic prediction.

Just remember: headlines get all the attention, but real incentives are quieter. If you pay attention to what companies reward, cut, and train for, you’ll see where things are headed.

And if you’re thinking about building teams that don’t rely on panic cycles, I’m always open to that conversation.

Until next time,
Joseph Burns
CEO & Founder, Lupa

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Hey there,

This week, I found myself in conversations I didn’t expect to have so soon. These weren’t sales calls, but internal discussions. I realized that a part of the business I’ve been quietly building now needs real leadership.

Last week, I shared that our RPO work is growing. Now, it’s grown enough that I’m looking for a Head of RPO to help lead and expand it. This feels both exciting and steady. RPO is the service I care about most because it focuses on systems instead of transactions. We work directly with teams for a flat monthly fee, doing the work together. There’s less noise and more action.

If you’re interested in applying or know someone who might be, please use this link to submit your application.

Moments like these change how I read the news. When you’re building something real, you stop reacting to every headline and start focusing on what truly shifts incentives, timelines, or behavior.

Let’s get into it.

🌐 News Shortlist

1. Trump and Petro moved from public feuding to cooperation, and that’s normal

Recap: President Donald Trump and Colombian President Gustavo Petro met this week after months of public clashes on social media and through official statements. The meeting focused on migration, drug trafficking, regional security, and Venezuela. Both sides described the conversation as constructive and signaled a willingness to coordinate more closely in the short term.

Recently, the two leaders exchanged insults in public, on Twitter, Truth Social, and through official channels. But when they met face to face, they got along well. This is common in international politics. Leaders often act tough for their own countries, then have practical talks when their interests match.

Any results from this meeting are positive, but likely short-term. Petro’s term is almost over, and Colombia will choose a new president soon. Any deals or changes in tone should be seen with that in mind. This is not a lasting shift, just a response to current needs.

What is stable is the underlying relationship. The vast majority of Colombians prefer strong ties with the United States. The countries have deep economic, cultural, and people-to-people connections that outlast any individual president. Those fundamentals matter more than public sparring between leaders.

Advice:

If you do business in Colombia or hire people there, don’t let political drama worry you. Short-term teamwork is useful, but long-term choices should rely on the strong ties between the countries, not the news. The U.S.-Colombia relationship is bigger and more stable than any one government.

2. The new H-1B rule benefits large companies more than startups

Recap: The U.S. government has changed the H-1B visa lottery to give preference to higher-paying jobs. Now, people applying for higher-paid roles are more likely to be chosen, while those in lower-paid roles have less chance. The official reason is to support “high-skilled” immigration, but in practice, this helps bigger companies with set pay scales.

This change is not about restricting immigration, but about shifting who benefits. The system now favors employers who can offer higher pay and handle more risk, which usually means large companies instead of startups.

For startups, relying on the H-1B was already risky. This new rule makes that risk even clearer. If your hiring plan depends on a lottery that now favors those who pay the most, it is not a solid foundation.

This fits a larger trend. Immigration options are getting less flexible, more costly, and more focused on big companies. While it is still possible to find talent, companies now need to reconsider their hiring strategies instead of relying on the U.S. visa system.

Advice:

If you run a startup or a growing company, avoid tying key roles to H-1B results. Create hiring plans that do not depend on lotteries, delays, or changing policies. This often means building remote teams, hiring internationally, or designing roles so your business is not at the mercy of immigration rules.

3. Dating apps are losing trust, and that’s a business problem

Recap: Match Group says Tinder is still losing active users, and Hinge’s growth is slowing down. Meanwhile, a viral Hinge “experiment” showed a man making a fake female profile that got over 1,000 likes in just one day. This sparked new debate about how dating apps share attention and value, making users even more frustrated and raising fresh questions about long-term engagement and retention.

Some might see this as just online drama, but it shows a deeper problem. Dating apps only succeed when users feel their effort is rewarded fairly. If many users feel ignored or manipulated, trust fades—even if the numbers still look good.

The real issue is incentives. Companies like Match Group focus on engagement, subscriptions, and keeping people on the app. Over time, this often means most of the attention and success goes to just a few users. That might help in the short run, but it eventually causes many others to leave instead of becoming loyal customers.

This pattern isn’t just in dating apps—it happens on other consumer platforms too. When products move away from what users expect, growth slows down and even employees start to question things. It’s not only about losing users. It’s about people losing faith in what the product is supposed to do.

Advice:

If you’re building a product, pay attention to where users are getting frustrated—not just where the money is coming from. If people start calling your product demoralizing instead of helpful, the issue isn’t just marketing or features. It’s about alignment. Fix it early, or you’ll lose users later.

That’s it for this week.

Most weeks don’t come with clean conclusions. They just add a little more context to the decisions you’re already making. This one felt like that.

If you’re hiring, building teams, or managing products, the work might look straightforward on paper but is tough in real life. Focus on what really impacts your daily work. Be clear about tradeoffs, and try not to get distracted by things that aren’t urgent.

If you or someone you know is interested in the Head of RPO role, please let me know.

Until next time,
Joseph Burns
CEO & Founder, Lupa

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Hey there,

The year has started off really well. I’m especially happy to see our RPO business growing so strongly. I’ve wanted to focus on this part of Lupa for a long time, so watching it take off has been truly energizing.

Just to clarify, since I’m often asked about this: RPO stands for Recruitment Process Outsourcing. Instead of paying a fee each time you hire, we support your recruiting or HR team for a set monthly fee. This model works especially well for companies that hire regularly, as it better aligns everyone’s incentives.

On a lighter note, I recently went to a Mexican wedding and somehow ended up wearing a sombrero. I’m sharing a picture because I think I actually pulled it off.

Let’s get into it.

🌐 News Shortlist

1. Why the 75-country visa freeze is not a hiring ban

Recap: Starting January 21, 2026, the U.S. Department of State will stop issuing immigrant visas for people from 75 countries. This affects both family and employment-based green cards. The pause only applies to consular processing outside the U.S. and does not have a set end date, but interviews and applications can still move forward. Non-immigrant visas, like those for temporary work, students, and business travel, are still being processed as usual.

Whenever a policy like this comes out, especially one affecting countries often used for remote or nearshore hiring, founders and HR leaders ask me if it causes problems for them. The answer is no. This is only a pause on immigrant visas that lead to permanent residency. It is not a ban on hiring or on work-eligible visas.

For hiring managers and leaders, the key point is this difference. You can still hire people from these countries, pay them, manage them, and build teams with them. This policy does not affect non-immigrant work visas, and it does not stop anyone from working remotely for a U.S. company from their home country.

The most relevant historical comparison many of us have lived through is Venezuela under sanctions. U.S. companies paused some formal immigration pathways, and some paused hiring entirely out of fear. But what we actually learned was that talent does not evaporate when paperwork slows. You still hire, still integrate, and still build outcomes. Administrative friction is not the same as legal prohibition.

There are tools and services that help you hire across borders when usual options are limited. International payroll and employer-of-record services let you legally employ people without opening a local office or signing contracts yourself. We use these methods too when they fit. The real risk is not in hiring internationally, but in thinking that policy headlines change what you can actually do.

Advice:

Don’t let this visa pause stop your hiring or planning. If someone is in a country affected by the suspension, be open about it, but make it clear that you are not stopping employment—only that moving to the U.S. permanently may take longer. Use payroll and compliance partners as needed, and put your energy into onboarding, training, and keeping your team, not worrying about paperwork. This policy slows down paperwork, but it does not stop work.

2. Return-to-office mandates are here to stay, but most teams shouldn’t follow their lead

Recap: A recent arbitration ruling at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services confirmed that presidential return-to-office directives do not automatically override existing union contracts. This shows that federal RTO mandates have legal and procedural limits, even as the administration keeps pushing for more in-person work in public agencies and large organizations.

We discussed this last week and have mentioned it before. These legal steps will take time, with ongoing discussions in courts, unions, and internal reviews. Still, the long-term trend is clear: large organizations and public institutions will likely have more people working in the office over time.

But that doesn’t mean you should do the same. Big companies and government agencies face different challenges. They deal with old office spaces, strict management structures, political pressure, and less flexibility. Office mandates make sense for them, even if they aren’t always efficient.

I often see smaller companies copying these moves without thinking about the reasons. Startups and mid-sized teams gain a lot from being flexible, hiring global talent, and keeping costs low. Giving that up just to follow Amazon or a federal agency is rarely a smart strategy. Usually, it’s just a reaction to the news.

Advice:

If you are reconsidering remote work, do it deliberately. Write down what you gain from being distributed, what it would cost to reverse that, and what problem you are actually trying to solve. Make the decision based on your team, your economics, and your goals, not because larger institutions are reverting to older models that fit their reality, not yours.

3. The Doomsday Clock is good at one thing: distracting you

Recap: The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists set its Doomsday Clock to 85 seconds before midnight, the closest it has ever been. They pointed to rising nuclear tensions between the U.S., Russia, and China, ongoing wars in Ukraine and the Middle East, weaker arms control, and worries about AI. Major news outlets covered the announcement.

This story comes up every few years. The clock moves closer, the headlines get more dramatic, and it takes over the news for a short time. I saw it, felt annoyed, and now I’m talking about it.

To be clear, the people behind the clock are serious, and the risks they mention are real. But the way they present it is meant to stir up emotion, not provide clarity. It doesn’t help you make better choices or change your actions. It just takes your focus away from things you can actually control.

That’s the real problem. Even people who know better, like me, still get caught up in it. We end up reacting to big, abstract problems instead of focusing on real work. Distraction doesn’t come from being careless, but from feeling like everything is urgent.

Advice:

Pay attention to what grabs your focus without helping you make better choices. If a headline makes you anxious but doesn’t give you anything useful to do, notice it and move on. Your time is better spent making decisions that help your team, your customers, and your work—not on clocks that change once a year.

That’s it for this week.

If there’s one theme here, it’s attention. Some stories are meant to catch your eye, while others quietly influence how we hire, manage teams, and make choices. The challenge is knowing which is which.

As always, focus on what you can control. Choose carefully what you respond to, and don’t let distractions decide for you.

If you want to discuss hiring, team structure, or whether RPO is right for you, just reach out.

Until next time,
Joseph Burns
CEO & Founder, Lupa

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Hey there,

This week, we had what people like to call Blue Monday, supposedly the most depressing day of the year. I’m not sure I buy it. Especially if your team is fully remote.

From leading distributed teams, I’ve learned that mood and momentum depend more on clarity than on dates or office spaces. When people know what’s going on, what’s expected, and the direction ahead, distractions matter less.

That’s why these stories caught my attention this week. They highlight times when institutions, leaders, and companies face pressure and must respond while everyone is watching. AI adoption, capital discipline, and talent deals aren’t just trends—they affect how teams feel, how careers progress, and how trust is earned or lost.

Let’s get into it.

🌐 News Shortlist

1. AI anxiety is a leadership problem, not a technology one

Recap: A global Randstad Workmonitor survey of 27,000 employees found that 80 percent expect AI to change their daily work. Gen Z feels the most anxious about automation, while Baby Boomers are the most confident about adapting. Meanwhile, job postings asking for AI skills have increased quickly, but few workers have received formal AI training.

This newsletter has always stressed one thing: AI should help teams become stronger, not just reduce their size. The fear in this data makes sense. People naturally worry when they are unsure if the goal is to support them or to replace them.

The generational divide is clear. Older workers have seen many technology changes, from spreadsheets to cloud software to mobile devices. For them, AI is just another tool to learn. Younger workers are newer to their careers, often in jobs that can be automated, and they have had much less training. What seems like confidence or fear is really about experience and uncertainty.

For leaders, your intentions are important. If you want to use AI to boost speed and quality, not to cut jobs, you need to say so clearly. If you stay silent, people will make their own assumptions. When companies introduce new tools without explaining why, employees often fear the worst, especially since layoffs are now common after efficiency improvements.

Advice:

If you are bringing in AI and do not plan to reduce your team, say it early and plainly. Put money into training before buying new tools, and make sure everyone knows who is responsible. People trust leaders when they understand why a tool is being used and how it will change their job, not when they are left to figure it out on their own.

2. Argentina paid Washington back fast, and that changes how the market sees it

Recap: In late 2025, the U.S. Treasury extended a $20 billion currency swap line to Argentina to stabilize the peso ahead of critical elections. Argentina ultimately drew $2.5 billion from that facility and fully repaid it within a few months. U.S. officials publicly framed the repayment as evidence of improving financial discipline under President Javier Milei.

At first, many saw the swap line as a risky political and financial move. Most did not expect Argentina to act quickly or repay the money. The government’s fast repayment is more than just a technical success. It shows credibility.

We have watched Milei’s actions closely, including his risks and bold moves. Still, what matters is getting things done. Quickly paying back U.S. dollars, in a country known for defaults and capital controls, changes how investors and partners see risk. Argentina still has challenges, but the baseline has shifted.

This change is clear in hiring. Argentina has long been a top spot for remote talent. As the country becomes more stable, Argentine professionals are charging higher rates. This is not a problem—it means the market values their reliability, global skills, and ambition. You are paying more for people ready to compete worldwide, not for uncertainty.

Advice:

If you are hiring in Argentina, it is time to adjust your expectations. The era of big discounts due to economic turmoil is ending. Now, you will find a large group of skilled professionals who know how to work internationally and expect fair treatment. Over time, this shift benefits companies that value quality and long-term results.

3. The FTC is closing the acqui-hire loophole Big Tech relied on

Recap: The U.S. Federal Trade Commission announced it is increasing scrutiny of acqui-hire deals, arrangements where large tech companies buy a startup’s talent or license its technology without acquiring the company itself. FTC Chair Andrew Ferguson said regulators are examining whether these deals are being used to bypass traditional antitrust review. Recent examples include Meta, Microsoft, Amazon, and Nvidia securing key talent or IP without full acquisitions.

Acqui-hires were not really about making innovation more efficient. They were about avoiding risk. As traditional mergers and acquisitions got slower, more public, and more regulated, Big Tech started buying results in parts—talent in one deal, IP in another—so they could avoid extra scrutiny.

Now, the risk is shifting. Big companies can handle more regulation, but founders cannot. If your exit plan relies on being quietly bought without much attention, that plan quickly becomes risky when regulators step in. What once seemed like smart deal-making now looks more like trying to get around the rules.

This pattern is nothing new. Shortcuts work only for a while. When regulators get involved, value returns to companies that build real products, earn real revenue, and have strong teams. Deals that only grab talent are easy for regulators to undo. Real businesses are much harder to overlook.

Advice:

If you are a founder, don’t assume a quiet acqui-hire will be an easy way out. Build something that can stand up to close review. If you are hiring, be ready for more competition for top talent in the open market. When loopholes close, the work still gets done, just in a more open and honest way.

That’s it for this week.

When things get tougher, shortcuts start to look appealing. Some leaders say less. Some organizations try to act quietly. Some markets change prices faster than people expect.

The companies that succeed aren’t always the fastest to react. Instead, they explain their choices clearly, invest where it counts, and build things that last when people start looking more closely.

If you’re considering hiring, team structure, or where to focus this year, now is a good time to slow down and think things through. Most problems I see aren’t caused by bad intentions, but by avoiding tough conversations.

If you’d like to discuss what this could mean for your team or your plans this year, feel free to reach out. My calendar is open.

Until next time,
Joseph Burns
CEO & Founder, Lupa

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Hey there,

And just like that, we are already two weeks into the new year.

I received many thoughtful replies to last week’s issue about Venezuela and the United States. People who live in the region or work with Venezuelans sent emails, messages, and quiet notes. I’m grateful for that. When I have direct experience and real context through the people I work with, I’ll share it again. I want to offer perspective based on reality, not quick opinions.

This week feels different. It’s not noisier, just clearer. A few signals are starting to appear that say a lot about what 2026 might look like for companies, teams, and careers. These signals aren’t new, but seeing them come together so early in the year is worth noticing.

Let’s get into it.

🌐 News Shortlist

1. Large companies are bringing employees back to the office, but most teams shouldn’t follow their lead

Recap: Newsweek recently highlighted several big companies, like Meta, Microsoft, NBCUniversal, Paramount, TikTok, and major banks, that are enforcing stricter return-to-office rules for 2026. Many now require employees to be in the office four or five days a week, and some are ending hybrid work altogether. Executives say they are doing this for reasons like culture, collaboration, and productivity.

If you look closely at the list, a clear pattern appears. These are huge companies with well-known products, stable structures, lots of infrastructure, and a long track record of profits. They are not trying new things—they are focusing on what already works for them.

What often gets lost is that these companies are solving very specific problems. Office mandates help justify long-term real estate costs, reassert managerial control, and quietly reduce headcount without announcing layoffs. That logic can make sense at scale, but it does not translate cleanly to smaller or faster-moving teams.

The broader trend here is imitation without context. When high-profile leaders bash remote work, it creates pressure to follow along. But copying the constraints of companies that are ten times your size often hurts more than it helps. Structure is useful only when it matches where you actually are.

Advice:

Before you decide to rent office space or end remote work, take a moment to think about the problem you want to solve. If your company gains from being flexible, hiring talent from anywhere, or keeping costs low, those advantages are still important. Often, the quickest way to lose ground is to copy others when your situation is different.

2. Claude Cowork didn’t kill entry-level jobs, bad leadership will

Recap: Anthropic released Claude Cowork, an AI agent that can autonomously read, create, and modify files on a user’s computer. The tool can plan and execute multi-step tasks with minimal supervision, and reactions online were immediate. Many people argued this signals the end of entry-level and junior roles, especially in knowledge work.

A lot of the reaction focused on replacement. The idea that AI agents will simply wipe out junior roles and that companies can run leaner teams by cutting people. That framing misses where most organizations actually fail: not in task execution but in judgment, coordination, and accountability.

From a leadership perspective, the real leverage is not removing humans from the loop. It is upgrading them. A person who understands the business, knows how to prompt and supervise these tools, and can catch mistakes will consistently outperform an unsupervised AI agent. Tools raise the ceiling for good operators; they do not replace the need for them.

The broader pattern is familiar. New tools always look like labor substitutes at first. Over time, they become force multipliers for teams that invest in training and clarity, and sources of chaos for teams that treat them as shortcuts. The difference is not the technology. It is how seriously leadership treats enablement versus cost-cutting.

Advice:

If you are running a team, do not start by asking which roles you can eliminate. Start by asking who on your team actually knows how to use these tools well, and who you need to train. AI without ownership creates risk. AI paired with capable people creates leverage.

3. When people trust a chatbot with their health, something else is broken

Recap: OpenAI introduced ChatGPT Health, a special mode for health and wellness questions, after saying that over 230 million people ask ChatGPT about health each week. This feature lets users talk about symptoms, fitness, and medical information in a private space. OpenAI says it is meant to support, not replace, doctors.

We should ask ourselves how we reached this point. The real question isn’t why people are interested in AI, but why so many feel okay turning to a chatbot for questions about their health and medical choices. This change didn’t happen because AI became more trustworthy. It happened because other options became harder to get.

This isn’t just a story about technology—it’s about the bigger system. Long waits, high costs, confusing care, and limited access have led people to search for answers wherever they can. ChatGPT Health didn’t create this need. It simply filled a gap that was already there.

For leaders and policymakers, this is a worrying trend. When millions depend on a system that works by probability for health advice, it’s hard to know who is responsible. AI can help explain, summarize, and get people ready to talk to professionals, but it can’t take the blame if something goes wrong. That responsibility still belongs to institutions that are already under pressure.

Advice:

If you are building products, teams, or policies around AI, pay attention to why users show up in the first place. Adoption at this scale is rarely about novelty. It is usually a signal that existing systems are failing to meet basic needs, and that is where the real work begins.

That’s it for this week.

If there’s one thing these stories have in common, it’s that when pressure rises, organizations often try to control things before improving their skills. Offices take the place of trust. Tools stand in for training. Shortcuts are used instead of building real systems.

This doesn’t mean remote work is always the answer, that AI is risk-free, or that institutions can’t be fixed. It does show that when leaders are under stress, their true priorities come out fast.

As you plan for the rest of 2026, notice which problems you’re really solving and which ones you might be putting off. That difference is more important than following any trend.

If you’d like to discuss what this could mean for your team, your hiring plans, or your approach to structure this year, feel free to reach out. I’m available to talk.

Until next time,
Joseph Burns
CEO & Founder, Lupa

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Hey there,

Happy New Year, and thank you for continuing to read The Weekly Shortlist in 2026.

We had a real break at Lupa over the holidays. Hiring slows down in late December and early January, and most of our team is in Latin America, where year-end breaks are taken seriously. I gave everyone two weeks of PTO before Christmas, and we came back online this week. I still took a few calls at the end because I am bad at fully switching off, but overall it was a good reset.

Coming back on Monday, the news about the U.S. attacks in Venezuela hit hard. The first thing I did was call Venezuelan colleagues and friends to check on their families and hear what they had to say. Then friends across the Americas started reaching out to ask what I made of it. When you live and work here, you get used to the gap between what the media shows and what people on the ground are actually experiencing.

The reality is complicated. Leadership in both countries is questionable. There are serious issues around international law, justice, corruption, and U.S. power. None of that disappears just because a president is toppled. But setting that aside for a moment, from a human and operator perspective, this is ultimately a positive development.

I started Lupa after spending years working across Latin America and meeting Venezuelans everywhere I went. I wanted them on my team. They are elite professionals. Resilient, adaptable, calm under pressure, and deeply aware that opportunities are not guaranteed. That last part matters more than most people realize. They do not get these opportunities back home, and it shapes how they work.

Years later, some of the Venezuelans on our founding team are still with me. I have wanted to visit Venezuela for a long time, something that has not been realistic for years. I still do not know when that will be possible. But I know what it would mean.

This week, we are talking about Venezuela, not as a headline, but as a country full of people whose talent has been constrained for a long time, and what it means when those constraints begin to shift.

Let’s get into it.

🌐 News Shortlist

1. What actually happened in Venezuela over the weekend

Recap: Early on January 3, U.S. forces launched military strikes on Venezuelan military sites and infrastructure near Caracas. Soon after, special operations forces captured Nicolás Maduro at his home. The operation took under two hours and met almost no resistance. Maduro was then taken out of Venezuela and brought to the United States, where he faces federal charges that were first made public in 2020.

The operation started at about 2 a.m. local time. The first strikes hit military bases, air defense systems, and supply sites to stop the Venezuelan military from organizing a response. Soon after, some areas of Caracas lost power and commercial flights were interrupted. U.S. officials said these actions were meant to prevent threats, not to retaliate.

After the strikes, U.S. special operations forces went into Caracas and headed straight to Maduro’s home. Reports say Venezuelan security forces did not put up much resistance. Maduro was arrested, taken to a U.S. aircraft carrier, and then flown to the United States. Within hours, videos and photos showed him arriving in New York and appearing in federal court.

The U.S. government described the operation as part of its ongoing fight against drugs and terrorism. Officials referred to long-standing claims that Maduro and top officials in his government are tied to drug trafficking and terrorist groups. These accusations had been around for years but had not led to direct action against Maduro until now.

In Venezuela, reactions were mixed. Maduro’s supporters called the operation a kidnapping and an illegal foreign attack. Loyalist groups quickly set up an interim leadership, while opposition leaders showed relief but also worry about the lack of a clear plan for what comes next.

International reaction was divided. Several governments in Latin America condemned the action as a violation of sovereignty. Others, particularly on the political right, expressed support or avoided direct criticism. European governments issued cautious statements focused on stability and human rights. The United Nations reiterated concerns about the precedent such an operation sets under international law.

In the United States, the operation triggered legal and political scrutiny. Questions were raised about war powers, congressional authorization, and the legality of capturing a sitting head of state without international approval. The administration defended its actions by citing post-9/11 authorities and national security exceptions, signaling that it views this as a continuation of existing enforcement policy rather than a new military conflict.

Right now, the biggest question is who will govern Venezuela. U.S. officials say they will run a transition. Sanctions, diplomatic ties, and economic policies have not changed, so Venezuela remains in political limbo even after Maduro’s removal

2. A brief history of relations between the U.S. and Venezuela

Recap: Throughout most of the 20th century, the United States and Venezuela had strong political and economic connections. Venezuela supplied oil to the U.S. reliably, and American companies were active in the Venezuelan energy sector. Trade between the two countries grew steadily. These close ties lasted until the late 1990s, only starting to weaken after Hugo Chávez became president in 1999.

Things were different in the past. For many years, Venezuela was one of the closest partners in Latin America. U.S. oil companies helped build up Venezuela’s energy industry, especially after big oil discoveries in the early 1900s. By the middle of the century, Venezuela was one of the world’s top oil exporters and a major supplier to the U.S., especially during World War II and the years that followed.

The connection between the two countries went beyond oil. Compared to its neighbors, Venezuela was considered politically stable and kept its democratic institutions for much of the late 1900s. American companies invested in many areas, and Venezuelan professionals, engineers, and executives often moved between Caracas, Houston, New York, and Miami. In the U.S., Venezuelans were seen as skilled workers and business partners, not as refugees or political exiles.

Things started to change in the late 1990s. When Hugo Chávez was elected in 1998, he took a more confrontational stance toward the U.S. and made the oil industry more political. Even though trade and oil exports to the U.S. continued at first, trust faded as the government took greater control and the country’s systems weakened. The relationship did not end all at once, but slowly fell apart after almost a hundred years of close ties.

When considering Venezuela today, it’s important to remember that cooperation, not conflict, was the norm for most of its history. The decline in U.S.–Venezuela relations happened only recently. If the two countries rebuild their relationship in the future, it will probably look more like a return to their old economic ties than something completely new.

3. What reopening Venezuela could actually mean for U.S. business

Recap: Now that Nicolás Maduro is out and a transition period seems to have started, people are beginning to focus on what’s next for Venezuela’s economy and its ties with the United States. Sanctions are still in place, the government’s future is uncertain, and no one knows how long this will last. Meanwhile, Venezuelans both at home and abroad are openly talking about the chance to rebuild economic connections, find work, and team up with U.S. companies.

I want to be thoughtful about this. I don’t want to come across as opportunistic or as the gringo who assumes Latin America is just waiting to be discovered. That stereotype exists for a reason. But when I talk to Venezuelans, including my colleagues, I don’t hear resentment. I hear anticipation. Many are truly excited about the chance to work with Americans again, as equals, without politics getting in the way.

This is important because business ties between the U.S. and Venezuela didn’t fall apart due to a lack of compatibility. They broke down because the institutions failed. The talent was always there. Venezuelan professionals adapted, moved abroad, and succeeded elsewhere. Now there’s a whole generation that knows global standards, remote work, U.S. business culture, and how quickly opportunities can change. That mix is hard to find.

Since this is a business newsletter, let’s talk about timing. Many U.S. companies already work with Venezuelans remotely, and that’s become normal. The real question is what will happen when working together in person is possible again. It won’t happen overnight, and there are risks, but it will happen eventually. Offices, partnerships, and a long-term presence will only succeed for companies that take time to understand the country before everyone else rushes in.

Advice:

If you run a company with exposure to Latin America, start learning now, quietly and seriously. Build relationships, not narratives. Work with Venezuelan talent where they are today, and listen to how they think about the future. First-mover advantage does not come from being early to extract value. It comes from being early to understand how to build something that lasts.

That’s it for this week.

I know this was not a standard edition of The Weekly Shortlist. But this is not a normal moment, and pretending otherwise wouldn’t be honest. Venezuela is not just a headline or a policy debate. It’s people I work with, people I trust, and people whose careers were shaped by forces far outside their control.

If there’s one thread running through everything here, it’s this: talent doesn’t disappear when a country breaks. It moves. And when conditions change, even slowly, that talent looks for ways to reconnect, not to settle scores.

If you’re a founder, operator, or hiring manager interested in Latin America, now is the time to listen more than you speak. Get to know the history. Have real conversations. Focus on building relationships before making plans.

If you’d like to discuss what this might mean for your team or hiring plans, feel free to reach out. My calendar is always open.

Until next time,
Joseph Burns
CEO & Founder, Lupa