LinkedIn·Thursday, 30 July 2026·27d ago

While Big Tech are cutting jobs "𝘣𝘦𝘤𝘢𝘶𝘴𝘦 𝘰𝘧 𝘈𝘐", ASML just committed $1B to keep its people. Meta cut 8,000 jobs this year while…

Andres De Jonge

Co-founder @ Driven

While Big Tech are cutting jobs "𝘣𝘦𝘤𝘢𝘶𝘴𝘦 𝘰𝘧 𝘈𝘐", ASML just committed $1B to keep its people. Meta cut 8,000 jobs this year while shifting 7,000 more into AI teams. Amazon eliminated 16,000 corporate roles in January. That's roughly 40% of its workforce, its CEO citing AI's ability to replace human tasks directly. 𝑳𝑰𝑲𝑬 𝑾𝑯𝑨𝑻? The message from a lot of the industry: technology makes people optional. Then ASML, arguably the most irreplaceable company in the entire AI supply chain, the one that builds the machines that print the chips everyone else needs, did the opposite. A $22K restricted stock grant for 𝑬𝑽𝑬𝑹𝒀 employee, 𝑾𝑶𝑹𝑳𝑫𝑾𝑰𝑫𝑬, granted in 2027 and vesting in 2030. Stay four years, get the payout. A retention bonus if you want to call it that way, worth close to $1B in total. That's the part that feels human. At a moment when "AI will replace you" has become a boardroom talking point, ASML sent the opposite signal: we need you, and we're willing to pay to prove it. We at Driven, are also believers of AI-first, in the product, in the company, in our mindset. But we also see the flaws, that still need humans to solve it day to day. That's why: Incentives shape behaviour. What a company chooses to pay for, for who, how much and when says more about its real strategy than any mission statement.