Author: David Reyes

Watching a business shrink in slow motion has a subtly depressing quality. For the better part of two years, OpenText, the Waterloo-based software company that used to feel like the reliable older sibling of Canadian tech, has been paving the way for whatever comes next. About 880 people participated in the most recent round, which took place in March. Four percent of the labor force. A figure big enough to completely transform entire teams in a single night, but small enough for a press release to absorb without any effort. After leaving, one employee posted on social media that it…

The timing of it was almost too exact. On a Thursday in early May, Upwork—a company founded solely on the notion that work could be divided into more manageable chunks and transported across borders via Wi-Fi—announced it was laying off about 25% of its own employees. 145 or so individuals. Before the majority of East Coast residents had finished their dinner, the stock fell 19%. The wording made it hit harder than the typical tech layoff news. The founder of Upwork since 2020, Hayden Brown, did not follow the conventional wisdom regarding “rightsizing” or “evolving priorities.” “The two-pizza team is…

Even by the punch-drunk standards of tech in 2026, there was something different about the DeepL layoff announcement. It wasn’t the quantity, but 250 job losses are by no means insignificant. It was the mood. The memo from Jarek Kutylowski didn’t sound like crisis management. It had a thesis-like tone. smaller groups. fewer levels of management. AI is integrated into everything. Almost on schedule, “Founder mode” is back. Reading it twice gives me the impression that he was auditioning a new model for the rest of the industry to follow rather than responding to the market. For many years, DeepL…

After the email arrived on Wednesday morning, LinkedIn’s own feed began the odd task of promoting its own layoffs by lunchtime. Workers, many of whom were located in Bellevue and Seattle, began posting the kind of well-crafted notices that have become commonplace in the tech industry—those in which employees thank their managers, mention their dog, and subtly affix a “open to work” banner. Being fired from the platform designed to withstand layoffs seems a little ridiculous. The company did not present the layoffs, which accounted for about 5% of LinkedIn’s 17,500 employees, as an AI story. Automation was not the…

Fidelity’s most recent update is exactly the type of corporate announcement that comes in soft language, almost apologetic in its wording. The financial behemoth with headquarters in Boston claims to be hiring thousands of new employees while firing about 800. The math appears to be growing on paper. It sounds completely different in conversation in the cafes around 245 Summer Street. The official position is that this is not a retreat but rather a restructuring. About 25,000 positions are being moved into what Fidelity calls a new operating model as it rebuilds its product and technology teams. With a clear…

When bad news arrives on campus, a certain silence descends, and the NSCC’s central office in Halifax has been experiencing it for a week. In a letter to the college community on May 6, acting president Anna Burke stated quite bluntly that 91 positions were being eliminated overall and that 45 people had lost their jobs. The cause was a $15 million hole that could no longer be covered. Even though the politics surrounding it are complex, the math itself is not. A decrease in the province’s operating grant accounted for about $9.4 million of the shortfall; the remaining $5.5…

A Bell employee in a downtown Toronto office swipes a plastic fob against a reader, hears the door click softly, and then returns to the morning traffic. One of Canada’s most bizarre workplace stories this year has been defined by that image, which is half rumor, half corporate accusation. Bell, or more accurately, its parent company BCE, claims to have discovered individuals engaging in such behavior. The dismissed workers claim they didn’t do anything like that. A far messier reality lies somewhere in between those two interpretations. The official line is neat. A few employees were fired for cause after…

PayPal’s decline has an almost unyielding quality. The business continues to take actions that, in theory, ought to be beneficial. It surpasses earnings. It repurchases stock. It reduces expenses. It even hired a new CEO with a reputation for resolving complex, sluggish companies. Nevertheless, the stock slips again each time it appears to be ready to breathe. While the overall market continued to rise, shares were trading close to the year’s lows by early May, down about 22%. Investors are worn out. By all accounts, the May 5 first-quarter report was a beat. Revenue was $8.35 billion instead of the…

Cloudflare is currently experiencing an odd atmosphere. The kind you get when a business reports the best quarter of its existence, but its stock still plummets. Following one of the biggest single-day declines the stock has ever experienced, shares of NET were trading close to $191 on Tuesday afternoon. It was close to $260 a few weeks ago. One story is revealed by the numbers. Another is being told by the market. The contradiction is difficult to ignore. Revenue reached $639.8 million, the highest amount in the company’s sixteen-year history, up 34% year over year. The number of large customers—those…

The problem with WWE roster cuts is that they rarely happen suddenly. Wrestlers are familiar with the calendar. After WrestleMania, they sense a shift in the atmosphere, much like teachers do during the final week of classes. The magnitude of the wave and the silent, spreadsheet-like logic that lies beneath it are what make 2026 unique. Over thirty names were either fired or informed that their contracts would not be extended. Aleister Black, Zelina Vega, Kairi Sane, and the whole Wyatt Sicks stable were on the list, which also included Xavier Woods and Kofi Kingston of The New Day, both…