Tech employers are saying it's efficiencies gained in AI that led to layoffs for the past few years. Yet they have increased headcount in engineering offices in other countries at the same time.

This is also happening at small and midsize companies that ship software. It's easy to find this information, particularly for the largest companies like Amazon, Microsoft, and Google.

Like the article states, there are a number of confounding factors. But it's not AI, no matter how much founders and CEOs want it to be true.

It's the pursuit of lower cost employees.