N. Lee Plumb for TX-2(@PlumbNick)

Well this isn’t exactly how I hoped my day would start. After 8 years, I just got laid off - as did 16k of my peers.

But before anyone rushes in with explanations that make them feel better, let me be clear about what this wasn’t. It wasn’t performance and it wasn’t AI. It wasn’t location, versatility or impact.

I was an L7, I led global AI enablement. I built systems executives depended on, moved wherever the company needed me and fixed problems that had been sitting untouched because no one else could untangle them.

And I was still cut.

Here’s the part we’re all supposed to politely ignore: in the U.S. right now, experience isn’t an asset, it’s a liability. And if you’re expensive because you’re good at what you do, the system eventually “optimizes” you out.

This doesn’t happen in isolation. It’s enabled by a global labor market with almost no guardrails. Companies aren’t just competing on products anymore, they’re arbitraging labor across borders, wages, benefits and worker protections. When replacement is cheaper than retention, the decision gets framed as strategy instead of consequence.

AI becomes the excuse, not the cause. It’s the clean narrative that hides what’s actually happening: experienced workers being swapped out through global labor substitution while leadership talks about “efficiency” and “the future of work.”

That cycle keeps repeating because nothing in our policy stack meaningfully pushes back. Trade, labor and technology policy all pretend they’re separate, and workers pay the price for that fiction.

I saw this coming and that’s why I’m running for Congress. I understand how this system works because I’ve lived inside it and I know it won’t fix itself. This is a rules problem and the rules are written by people who don’t bear the cost.

If this resonates, don’t just nod along and move on. Support my candidacy, back someone who actually understands how global labor, AI and corporate incentives intersect and believe me when I say I am motivated to address this directly.

By pretending this is inevitable, we’re accepting the outcome.

#amazonlayoffs