Author: Daniel Scott

The first sign at RSM was a calendar invitation rather than a memo. The title, “Business Update,” was ambiguous enough to refer to anything and specific enough to have a single meaning by this point. People in the company knew. Hundreds of employees had left by the time the meetings ended early last week, the majority of whom were junior employees who had completed their first or second hectic season and were still learning how to read a workpaper without flinching. The figures continue to fluctuate. Going Concern’s tipsters described a wave of dismissals concentrated in audit, and The Times…

When layoffs become a season rather than an event, a company experiences a certain kind of weariness. You can find OpenText employees discussing just that by scrolling through the threads on TheLayoff.com or reading through the discussions on Reddit’s r/waterloo. Some refer to it as “yearly spring cleaning.” Another longtime engineer claimed he was fired in eight minutes after working on the same product for seventeen years. For seventeen years, eight minutes. It’s difficult not to pause and read that. Based on OpenText’s own headcount data, BetaKit calculated that the most recent layoffs, which were confirmed in late March 2026,…

At Upwork’s Palo Alto headquarters, there is a certain kind of irony that is difficult to ignore, but no one will publicly acknowledge. A company that was founded solely on the notion that human labor is abundant, in demand, and valuable to connect across borders has recently announced that it will lay off about 25% of its own employees. On May 7, the memo was distributed. Many people who had been following the platform for years were left wondering what the new pitch was supposed to be after the stock fell by nearly 20% by the following morning. Hayden Brown,…

On a Thursday, when most people are already half-checked out and scrolling through their phones in between meetings, the memo appeared on LinkedIn. The founder of DeepL, Jarek Kutylowski, described it as the hardest choice of his professional life. A quarter of the Cologne-based company, or about 250 employees, were being let go. The post had been shared, screenshotted, analyzed, and subtly contrasted with six other posts that had appeared in the same week by Friday morning. Reading these things now gives me the impression that they are beginning to rhyme. DeepL used to be Google Translate’s courteous German counterpart.…

This week, something is unsettling about passing an NSCC campus. The structures have the same appearance. The Waterfront Campus’s signs still have that recognizable institutional blue glow. However, the atmosphere has changed on the inside. People are not as talkative. Doors remain closed for a bit longer. You could practically hear the inbox notifications falling like tiny, heavy stones throughout the province on Wednesday when acting president Anna Burke’s letter was distributed to employees. On paper, the figures are clear. Ninety-one positions were lost. There were 45 real layoffs—a hole of fifteen million dollars. Management is the majority of those…

The way Peter Bosek rose to the top of one of the biggest banks in Central Europe seems almost archaic. He didn’t move between London’s investment banks. In Berlin, he didn’t pursue a fintech valuation. Until Erste Group decided it was finally ready to enter Poland, he stayed mostly in Vienna, mostly inside one institution, and mostly out of the news. Then all of a sudden, his name was everywhere. His wealth isn’t particularly noteworthy when compared to the CEOs of European banks. According to public records, his base salary accounted for about 31% of his total compensation for the…

It was at a wedding outside Bath last autumn that I realized something had really changed. The bride’s father, a retired accountant who claimed to have attended “more weddings than birthdays,” was standing with a small wooden board that contained one pickled walnut, three roasted beets, and a smear of cashew cream. He stared at it for a long time. “Where’s the beef?” he asked, almost to himself. His spouse chuckled. He consumed the beets. He returned for more. Every time caterers tell me how much the work has changed over the past two or three years, I can’t help…

A chef in Lisbon informed me a few weeks ago that his restaurant only serves seven items, almost apologetically. Seven. He expressed it in a manner akin to admitting to forgetting your birthday. With a shrug, he poured a glass of vinho verde and said, “But each one, I can defend.” I still think about that statement. From neighborhood bistros in Cape Town to the kind of glassy hotel restaurants that used to print menus the size of broadsheet newspapers, it captures something subtly occurring throughout the hospitality industry right now. Once a symbol of generosity and aspiration, the lengthy…

I experienced it for the first time in a small house outside of Bologna, where the host, whom I had never met before, kept refilling my glass before I had finished the last sip. She didn’t inquire. She was not very fluent in English. She simply poured, grinned, and resumed slicing at the counter. I recall thinking how odd it was to be totally comfortable in a kitchen that wasn’t mine and to be seated at a table where I didn’t know anyone’s last name. I no longer felt like a guest at all by the time the pasta arrived…

In upstate New York, I was standing close to a wood-fired pizza oven that was set up next to a barn when I first noticed it. The bride had no shoes. An hour or so prior, the groom had undone his tie. The room felt different from any wedding I had ever attended, I realized somewhere between the second slice and a passed tray of little fried things I couldn’t identify. tighter. heated. Instead of laughing in rented chairs, people were laughing the way they do at home. It dawned on me then. Not everyone was being fed by the…