For about a decade, a large chunk of white-collar work looked suspiciously like a very long, very well-catered pantomime. Everybody had their role, and calendars heaved under the weight of back-to-back meetings and pointless catch-ups. Everybody bemoaned it as a waste of time but participated anyway. Project teams formed, re-formed and rebranded. Teams of highly paid (and often highly strung) people worked on projects that achieved very little but, underneath it all, cost a small fortune in man-hours, office space, and overhead. Somewhere in the background, actual customers occasionally bought things.
This era of corporate bloat looks like it’s finally over. And, if you ask me, it’s a miracle it took this long.
Across tech and beyond, boards and CEOs have seemingly rediscovered an old management hobby: counting.
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Headcount, cost per head, revenue per head, layers between the CEO and the person who actually sells or ships something. The result has been a tsunami of “right-sizing” that feels increasingly like it’s here to stay. Take, for example, Intel, who plan to cut roughly a fifth of its workforce by the end of 2025 in a drive to become “more disciplined” and cost conscious. Or Amazon, who have announced successive rounds of corporate layoffs, now totalling tens of thousands of jobs, while reporting healthy profits and talking about “streamlining operations” and “reducing bureaucracy”. It’s not being hidden.
The palatable story that we often hear is one of efficiency. The less polite version is that corporate bloat was living on borrowed time and had gotten out of control.
The decade that made bloat feel normal
To understand why right-sizing now feels so brutal, it helps to remember how gently the ballon was inflated. Cheap capital made headcount look like a rounding error and growth was the only respectable religion. In that environment, hiring an extra layer of managers or launching another internal “transformation” did not feel reckless. It felt modern and strategic.
Pandemic years supercharged the habit. Demand spikes, remote work, and a general sense that the old rules had been suspended led many firms to hire aggressively “just in case”. A Straits Times review of major tech cuts in 2025 traced them directly back to those pandemic hiring sprees, when firms took on thousands of people in anticipation of online demand that never quite stayed at 2020 levels.
Inside those swollen organisations, a lot of people were working hard. The question is what they were working hard on.
- Internal steering committees to oversee other steering committees.
- Programme managers whose primary output was a slide with arrows.
- Weekly status calls where everyone went around the virtual room to say “no update this week”.
- “Strategic projects” with no clear deadline and a faint hope of some meaningful output.
Many of these roles were created with good intentions. Someone needed to “own” that thing leadership had just read about in a business book. Someone had to be the “glue”. Over time, the glue started to weigh more than the object it was sticking together.
The important point is not that people were lazy. Far from it. The problem was that the system in most organisations rewarded visible activity more than actual impact. As long as money was cheap and revenue graphs pointed vaguely upwards, there was little incentive to ask awkward questions about value.
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Right-sizing is a rational, if ruthless, business
Those questions have arrived.
Borrowing costs are higher. Investors have stopped clapping for every new headcount chart. In boardrooms, “efficiency” has replaced “scale” as the most fashionable word. A recent analysis of tech layoffs noted that from mid-2025 onward, job cuts at firms like Intel, Microsoft and Amazon were explicitly linked to cost-cutting and a pivot toward AI-centric operations.
Like it or not, cutting pointless or low value headcount simply makes good business sense. Fewer layers, fewer meetings, fewer catch ups, just as much “real” business being done. The only downside to the businesses involved is the reputational blip of ripping the band aid off.
If you are a CEO looking at a multi-layered organisation with fuzzy accountabilities, you could:
Spend years tweaking processes, coaching managers, and hoping productivity quietly edges upwards.
Or you can:
Remove layers, cancel “nice to have” internal work, and cut thousands of salaries in one painful quarter.
From a cold, hard, business results perspective, option two feels like the safer play. And you can hear it in the language being used - Intel’s new leadership has talked quite clearly about ending the era of “blank checks” and building a more “cost-conscious organisation” as it slashes tens of thousands of roles.
From an investor’s point of view, that clarity is refreshing. From an employee’s point of view, it feels like the company waking up after a long, pleasant dream and deciding the cast list is too long.
Anyone who believed the last decade’s hiring boom represented a permanent new social contract was reading the wrong genre.
Is AI all to blame?
Into this corny pantomime walks AI. For some leaders, AI is a genuine operational tool. Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff has been exceptionally direct about this. The company has cut around 4,000 customer service roles as AI agents now handle roughly half of all support conversations, and he has said on the record that he “needs less heads” as a result. Clear as day.
Other firms are following a similar pattern. HP plans to cut between 4,000 and 6,000 jobs globally as part of a multiyear AI-driven restructuring that it expects will deliver around a billion dollars in annual savings. Andy Jassy of Amazon has stressed that recent job cuts are primarily about stripping out bureaucracy and cleaning up culture, while also acknowledging the “transformative impact” of AI on how work inside the company is organised.
So yes, AI is one of the characters of this story, but it’s not the wicked witch.
A recent Harvard Business Review piece made the point rather neatly. Many companies are reducing headcount not because AI has already transformed their operations, but because they assume it soon will. Leaders are baking future AI productivity into today’s cost base and removing jobs in anticipation.
In other words, AI is often serving as catalyst, justification, or polite euphemism for a more basic calculation. Whether or not the tech delivers on every promise, the bloat created in the previous decade was never going to survive a more disciplined era.
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The new normal: fewer layers and colder maths
If the glory days of bloat are over, what replaces them?
Early signs suggest three shifts that matter for anyone working in HR, talent, or employer brand.
1. Clearer lines between roles and revenue
Every headcount request now lives under a harsher spotlight. Leaders who could once sign off “strategic” hires on a vague growth story are now expected to explain, in small words, how this person protects or generates money, or meaningfully reduces risk.
Roles that cannot be easily linked to customer value or cost control are in trouble. Vague internal “innovation” jobs without clear delivery, internal communication roles with no real audience strategy, and endless programme management layers are suddenly much harder to defend. I’d say it’s about time, too.
2. Fewer layers, wider spans
The “great flattening” is not just a media phrase. Amazon, for example once again, has linked its recent cuts to a desire to eliminate unnecessary organisational layers that slow decisions.
Flatter structures mean managers with more direct reports and less room for pure coordinators. The heroic middle manager whose job is mostly to attend calls and “cascade” information down the chain is becoming an endangered species. The biggest surprise is probably that these roles survived as long as they did.
3. Permanent efficiency mindset
Once boards have seen how margins improve when thousands of salaries vanish, it’s going to be very hard to return to the old habit of over-hiring “just in case”. Investors are watching... always. So are politicians. A recent global survey on layoffs found that 60 percent of employees felt their leaders lacked empathy during job cuts, and separate polling by Just Capital suggests the public associates large, repeated layoffs with poor management decisions as much as with unavoidable economic pain. But that’s a very human lens to view the cuts from, not a business one. Bad human decision, yes. But business decision? Not at all.
The combination of, profit pressure and reputational risk, creates a curious tension. Leaders clearly want leaner organisations. In fact, I’d say they’re under mounting pressure to deliver on this brief. They also know that every round of cuts leaves a mark on trust. But is the trust fallout a roadblock or more of a speed hump?
Momentum isn’t always progress, especially when you always end up back where you started.
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So, is employer branding now redundant?
In markets where there appears to be an oversupply of qualified people, it is tempting for some executives to look at their EB and TA budgets and feel a sudden urge to right-size those too (and in many cases they are).
After all, if news of layoffs is everywhere and your “apply” inbox is bulging, why bother polishing a talent narrative? Several reasons, actually...
Oversupply of applicants is not oversupply of fit
Even in highly affected sectors, there are still painful shortages in specialist skills, in particular locations, and in people who can cope with lean teams, high ownership and limited hand-holding. Anyone who has tried to hire a genuinely strong staff engineer, product leader or niche data specialist in the last year can confirm that casting a net over the general job market does not magically resolve the issue.
The best people still have options
Strong candidates do not wander the market for long. Many move sideways into other sectors, smaller firms, or their own ventures. Others are insulated from layoffs entirely. For this group, employer reputation matters more, not less. They know they will land somewhere. The question is whether they choose to land with you.
Reputation risk has gone up
Public and employee patience for clumsy layoff communication is thin. Research on mass layoffs repeatedly shows drops in trust in leadership among both those who leave and those who stay, and those perceptions bleed into external channels.
Ignoring employer brand in that environment is a little like ignoring plumbing in a building with a history of leaks. It saves money, until it does not.
From glossy promises to hard-edged clarity
I do see the work of employer branding is evolving though, and it would be a mistake to pretend otherwise.
For years, much EB activity has concentrated on attraction campaigns. Nice videos, culture microsites, heartfelt “day in the life” stories, and stories about growth and opportunity with very soft edges.
Some of that still has a place. A lot of it now feels out of sync with reality.
In a post-bloat world, the organisations that will come across as credible are those that talk plainly. Not heartlessly, and not with triumph over cuts, but with a level of honesty about the deal on offer.
That means:
- Being upfront that teams are lean, expectations are high, and politics are less tolerated because nobody has time for them.
- Talking about the kind of resilience and self-management people will need, instead of implying that every workplace challenge will be gently tackled by a working group resembling a book club.
- Showing how the company behaved during hard decisions, from severance and support for leavers to the way leaders communicated with those who stayed.
Glossy employer brand work told stories about working somewhere “special”. The new version will tell people, quite concretely, what they can count on, what they cannot, and what they will gain in career capital if they join.
If you work in EB or TA, this is your pivot
The bloat era was kind to a lot of talent functions. Hiring volumes were high, budgets flowed, and you could run three campaigns a quarter without anyone demanding a rigorous ROI breakdown (although they still should have).
Helping HR, talent acquisition, employer branding, and company culture professionals find careers worth smiling about.
Those days are largely gone. That does not mean your work is pointless. It does mean the brief has shifted. Some practical moves.
1. Get much closer to the P&L
Know how your organisation actually makes money, where margins are tight, and which roles protect revenue, reduce risk or unlock growth. Frame your work in those terms. “This campaign will help us hire senior cloud engineers in markets where we are losing deals” is a better conversation than “we would like to refresh our EVP”.
2. Prioritise critical roles and skills
You will not get budget to polish every job family. Identify the few key roles the organisation really cannot afford to mis-hire or leave vacant. Build sharper propositions and targeted content for those. For generic roles in oversupplied markets, focus on process efficiency and assessment quality rather than elaborate attraction work.
3. Co-own the layoff story
HR and EB often arrive late to restructuring conversations. That is a mistake. The cost of mishandled layoffs shows up in future hiring, engagement, and even consumer behaviour. Global research points to lasting business consequences when layoffs are perceived as opaque or careless.
Insist on being in the room early. Help design communication that is direct and humane. Build manager toolkits. Plan how you will talk about the changes externally, not in a smirking “tough choices” tone but with enough detail that people can see there was some thought involved.
4. Focus on the survivors
The people left after right-sizing are not “lucky to still have a job”. They are often tired, anxious, and quietly updating their CVs. Their view of your employer brand is shaped by what happens after the announcement.
Work with leaders to explain, in clear adult language, why decisions were made, what now changes in how work is done, and what support exists. Avoid the temptation to plaster over the cracks with perk-heavy “back to normal” messaging. There is a new normal. Name it.
5. Apply the no-fluff test to your own projects
The same scrutiny being applied to “fluffer” roles will be applied to fluffer campaigns. If you cannot point to a clear link between an EB project and outcomes in hiring, retention or reputation, ask whether it deserves to survive the next budget review.
6. Lean into skills and employability
In a world where people have seen how quickly jobs can vanish, one of the few credible promises an employer can make is “you will leave here more employable than when you arrived”. EB should work closely with learning, mobility and workforce planning teams to show:
- How people move internally.
- Which skills the company is serious about building.
- Real stories of employees who have moved into more future-proof roles.
This is not altruism. Workers who believe their skills are growing are more likely to stay, more likely to perform, and less likely to become vocal critics when the next restructuring rolls through.
After bloat: more uncomfortable, more honest
None of this sanitises the human cost of layoffs. People lose livelihoods. Careers judder. Communities feel the impact. Survey data on employees’ mental health and trust in leadership after job cuts make for fairly grim reading.
At the same time, pretending that the previous decade of corporate bloat was sustainable does nobody any favours. The promise of life-long “strategic” roles that mostly involved moving information around inside a large organisation was always fragile.
The emerging reality is harsher and, in some ways, simpler. Organisations are smaller. Expectations are clearer. Headcount is scrutinised. Fluff is going out of fashion.
For employer brand and talent leaders, that presents an unglamorous but important task. Less poster design, more plumbing. Less talk about “magic” culture, more honest description of the deal. Less chasing of every new social platform, more involvement in the unshowy work of how people are treated when things get rough.
Right-sizing is not a moral philosophy. It is a set of choices about value, cost and risk. It is not going away. The question, for those who work in and around people functions, is how to make those choices less chaotic, less performative, and a little more humane.
The glory days of bloat are over. The grown-up work starts now.
Takeaways
The bloat years are over
A decade of padded headcount, extra layers of management and “strategic” busywork has finally hit the wall, and what felt normal now looks wildly indulgent in hindsight.
Right-sizing is cold, but commercially rational
With higher borrowing costs and impatient investors, cutting low-value roles, layers and meetings is simply the fastest way for leaders to improve margins and keep shareholders calm.
The new normal is lean and unforgiving
Every role now has to justify its existence through revenue, cost or risk, which means fewer layers, wider management spans and much less tolerance for pure coordination roles.
Employer branding is bruised, not redundant
Even with overflowing applicant pipelines, organisations still need to attract scarce skills and maintain trust, especially when their layoff decisions are being dissected in public.
EB and TA must move from gloss to grit
The job now is less about shiny attraction campaigns and more about clear-eyed storytelling, honest trade-offs, and helping design humane, credible layoff and “after the cuts” communication.
Fluff is out; plumbing is in
Talent and brand teams that survive will be the ones who can show hard links to hiring into critical roles, retaining key people and protecting reputation, not the ones winning awards for pretty posters.
References
References
| Source | Link |
|---|---|
| High-profile tech layoffs in the past nine months – The Straits Times | Read the article on The Straits Times |
| Major tech layoffs: An updated tracker – InformationWeek | Read the article on InformationWeek |
| Computer maker HP to cut up to 6,000 jobs by 2028 as it turns more to AI – The Guardian | Read the article on The Guardian |
| Marc Benioff says Salesforce has cut 4,000 roles in support because of AI agents – Business Insider | Read the article on Business Insider |
| Companies Are Laying Off Workers Because of AI’s Potential, Not Its Performance – Harvard Business Review | Read the article on Harvard Business Review |
| Research: The Long-Term Costs of Layoffs – Harvard Business Review | Read the article on Harvard Business Review |
| Global Report Warns Poorly Managed Layoffs Cause Lasting Business Consequences – Allwork | Read the article on Allwork |
| Here’s What the Public Thinks of Recent Tech Layoffs – JUST Capital | Read the article on JUST Capital |
| In Layoffs, Focus on the Human Element – INSEAD Knowledge | Read the article on INSEAD Knowledge |
| Layoffs affect all employees, even the survivors – The Straits Times | Read the article on The Straits Times |
| Amazon layoffs: 14,000 workers cut as AI reshapes the tech giant – San Francisco Chronicle | Read the article on the San Francisco Chronicle |
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