In some ways, Wednesdays are the worst days for this kind of thing, and that’s when the email arrived. Not Monday, when at least you anticipated it, nor Friday, when you can vanish into the weekend. About 3,000 employees at Intuit were informed that their last day would be July 31 on a typical midweek morning in Mountain View. In the time it takes to read a memo, 17% of the workforce has left.
The CEO of Intuit, Sasan Goodarzi, presented it in the typical manner. simplifying. making the structure simpler. establishing a quicker “builder culture.” That same evening, he made a statement on Jim Cramer’s “Mad Money” that has been bothering me ever since. He told Cramer, “None of it had to do with AI.” “Everything was about how to become more effective.” Although I think he believes what he said, the timing makes it difficult to sell.
Because this is what no one at Intuit is saying aloud. The company has signed multi-year deals with AI startups Anthropic and OpenAI to integrate their models into its software, weaving its tax and accounting tools into Claude and ChatGPT. You don’t need to be a cynic to see that a company that is investing heavily in AI while eliminating 3,000 jobs may be telling two different stories. “AI investment” and “simplification” seem to be the same sentence taken from two different perspectives.
There is a geographical component to the cuts as well. In order to consolidate teams into important hubs, Intuit is closing its offices in Woodland Hills and Reno. I can’t stop thinking about those buildings: the conference rooms with whiteboards still covered in last quarter’s plans, the parking lots that are only partially occupied. In 2024, the company closed its Edmonton office, affecting 1,800 employees. The farewell is nothing new to this company.
The severity’s accuracy is what impresses me. Base pay of sixteen weeks plus an additional two weeks for each year of service. Generous, almost apologetic by tech standards. The kind of figure that implies Intuit was fully aware of how this would appear.
It’s difficult not to interpret this in light of the overall tone. According to one tracker, over 140 companies have eliminated over 111,000 jobs, and as of this week, over 114,000 tech workers have been laid off in 2026. Amazon, Microsoft, and Meta have all announced thousands of cuts while increasing their investments in AI. Every executive maintains that their situation is unique, despite the pattern being too consistent to be a coincidence.
After Credit Karma and TurboTax merged, Goodarzi identified three drivers: fewer management layers, the elimination of roles that required a lot of coordination, and the removal of redundant functions. Investors were not reassured. In morning trading, shares fell by almost 5%.
One quote from the World Economic Forum in January sticks in my memory. According to two executives who spoke to Reuters, AI would be used as a convenient justification for layoffs that businesses were already preparing. Perhaps the true story here isn’t whether AI took the jobs, but rather whether it allowed everyone to stop acting as though the jobs were safe. Which version we’re in is still a mystery. You get the impression that even Intuit is unsure as you watch this play out.
