Layoff stress.  Let's talk about it.  

In December, 2025, Amazon announced 30,000 layoffs.  This is shocking for a company that for years could not hire enough people.   Software developers account for about one-half of these layoffs due to the rapid adoption of AI coding tools.   The others layoffs are staff who largely managed these no-long-necessary coders.  Meta, Microsoft, and Oracle are similarly letting go tens of thousands of staff members.

Twenty years ago, learning to code was the ticket to an in-demand and well-paid career.  This was even true 10 and five years ago.  Computer science degrees are still in demand, but there has been a shift from from writing code to building systems with AI.  Data science, software architecture and the development of artificial intelligence continue to be in high demand, but making a living coding in Python, Java or C++ is imperil.  A friend at a large professional services organization, which as has laid off 10% of its employees, put it this way, "We used to throw bodies at client problems, now with trained AI agents very few bodies are needed."

College-educated work of many types may no longer be the ticket to the good life.  Indeed, students have figured this out as evidenced by the proportion of those aged 18-24 enrolled in college falling from its 2011 peak.   While re-training to become an HVAC specialist or plumber might be an option, a 2026 as poll reported that 30% of mostly college-educated employees believe AI is likely to replace their jobs, producing chronic stress in the white-collar ranks. 

As I have discussed before, chronic stress takes neural bandwidth away from job performance and social relations resulting in a vicious cycle in which stress stays high and well-being degrades.  There are a number of things people can do manage the coming job-threat due to AI.

First, and most obviously, become the AI-guy or AI-gal at work.  Spend nights and weekends building an AI agent for your job or Vibe-coding an app. A retired friend of mine emailed me recently that she used Vibe to create two apps over a weekend; if she can do it, so can you.  There are many AI certification programs one can complete in order to get ahead of the AI curve.  Especially good ones are offered by IBM, Google, and MIT.

Second, be an ally for direct-reports.  Met with those you lead regularly to discuss how to improve productivity and output quality by using and/or creating AI assistants.  Your job is secure when your team becomes essential to reach organizational goals.  If you have a budget, fund AI training for team members and use this to openly discuss how AI will augment work processes.  Just as when work was changed by the personal computer in the 1980s and the internet in the 1990s, there will be rapid job destruction and creation due to AI.  Your job will be secure if you become a job creator.   Hold regular meetings and, if possible, one-on-ones to inform colleagues of your group's goals and how they can contribute.  AI is not the end of their jobs, but an opportunity to embrace a new way of working.   

Third, proactively coordinate with your leadership team to discuss how you and your department will contribute to the AI transition.  A psychologically-safe team performs better and innovate faster than colleagues who are constantly stressed due to the risk of job loss. Evolve your team's work so that their contributions are undeniable.  Quantification is the key and is straightforward when using AI tools.  Think of how to convince a skeptical CFO that the organization cannot flourish without your team.

Finally, actively manage your team's well-being.  The last thing you need is additional sick days, low morale, or outright quits.  Immersion's free neurologic emotional fitness app SIX shows work colleagues which work tasks sustain their ability to be happy and productive. The SIX enterprise portal shows leaders continuous objective data on job effort and psychological safety, enabling rapid interventions before crises occur.  Enterprise SIX also identifies departments with the highest productivity so that best practices can be shared.  

SIX is the app employees need now.  Not just to survive the onset of AI, but by empowering them to measure the joy of being of service to others and learning new ways of work.  SIX's trained AI assistant offers subscribers prospective advice on how to be productive and happy at work based on their own unique and private data.  The SIX platform shows anonymized data that categorizes the effort and satisfaction employees obtain from their work.  We call these neurologically meaningful experiences Key Moments and our published research shows they directly contribute to health and happiness.  

Anything new seems weird but weird can also be satisfying when a challenge is met.  SIX shows individuals, privately, when new challenges are objectively valuable to their brains.  Leaders can hold contests to reward colleagues for the number of Key Moments they get every week.  Learning is both difficult and ultimately enjoyable so make it fun and AI will become second nature. 

AI is a tool, nothing more.  SIX is your companion tool, running in the background offering advice on how to thrive as AI enters nearly every business.  There has never been a more urgent time to offer SIX in your employee assistance program.  Or, sign up yourself for the free version and give it a spin.