If BURNT unpacks the roots of burnout, The Exhaustion Index tracks it in real time, because exhaustion isn’t just personal, it’s global. Each week, I break down the biggest conversations on work, rest, and productivity, so you don’t have to doomscroll your way to enlightenment.
Think of this as BURNT’s news section, minus the wellness clichés, plus some sharp, necessary critiques.
This week, we’re talking about:
📖 Wait Now We Need Humans?! The AI Layoffs Are Backfiring
🎧 Bezos & The Washington Post = A Disaster
📊 Benito Antonio Martínez Ocasio!
🚩 You May Need A Resume Strategist
🎨 Wise Words from Junot & Doris
Let’s get into it.
For the last year, companies have been loudly telling us that AI would “replace” people, streamline teams, and permanently reshape work. While that is true, according to a new report cited by Inc., 50% of companies that cut jobs due to AI expect to rehire for similar roles by 2027!
Don’t be fooled, this rehiring will most likely fall under different titles. What’s striking isn’t just the reversal, but how fast it’s happening. While 62% of businesses are testing AI tools, and 26% of employees used AI at least weekly in 2025, the promised efficiency hasn’t materialized in the way executives sold it. Chatbots are struggling with nuance, customers are fed up and teams are thinned past the point of functionality. The whiplash: layoffs framed as innovation, followed by rehiring framed as strategy, is frustrating us all. Now, if this feels familiar, it’s because we’ve seen this cycle before. New tech gets mythologized, then labor absorbs the shock, followed by reality catching; the difference this time is how many people were burned along the way. Le sigh, we shall see.
Recently on q morning Zoom call, The Washington Post’s executive editor announced they were laying off roughly a third of an already gutted newsroom. A ZOOM CALL.
Radio Atlantic breaks down how Bezos, who bought the Post in 2013 promising to save journalism, has instead presided over its systematic hollowing out. Joshua Benton from Harvard’s Nieman Journalism Lab walks through the playbook: treat reporting as a cost center, demand profitability from an institution never meant to be a cash cow, cut “inefficiencies” (translation: people), act shocked when quality collapses. This is the same pattern everywhere. Buy something meaningful, demand it be "sustainable," burn out the workforce, blame them for not "innovating" fast enough. What connects it all? Decisions made by people with zero stake in the actual work.
Bad Bunny’s Super Bowl LX halftime performance drew 135 million viewers, making it one of the most-watched halftime shows in history. Meanwhile, Turning Point USA’s “All-American Halftime Show” featuring Kid Rock peaked at around 6 million viewers.
Any backlash to Bad Bunny wasn’t about talent. Conservatives called him a “foreigner” for singing in Spanish and celebrating Puerto Rican culture. Puerto Ricans have been U.S. citizens since 1917. Kid Rock said his show was for “folks who love America,” as if speaking Spanish makes you un-American.
Well, I hate to break it to the racists out there, but the overwhelming majority chose inclusion over performative patriotism.
WE LOVE YOU BENITO!
Yes, the job market is brutal, and now there’s an entire industry of resume strategists helping people game a system that’s increasingly run by algorithms. 88% of companies now use AI in hiring, which means your resume isn’t being read by a human first, it’s being scanned by software that decides in seconds whether you’re worth a recruiter’s time.
The problem? AI recruiting tools are a mess. They screen for keywords, filter out qualified candidates over formatting issues, and according to Gartner, only 26% of applicants trust AI to evaluate them fairly.
Introducing specialists who know how to structure a resume so it gets past the bots and actually lands in front of a human. Greg Langstaff (@langstaff.greg) is one of them, and his advice is spot on!
Hate to break it to you…this is not a job market, its a rigged game.
One of my favorite writers, Junot Díaz shared this Doris Lessing quote, and honestly, it’s the reminder a lot of us need right now:
“Whatever you’re meant to do, do it now. The conditions are always impossible.”
We spend so much time waiting for the right moment, the right resources, the right level of stability. But if you’re waiting for burnout culture to fix itself, for capitalism to suddenly care, or for conditions to feel less impossible before you make your move, you’ll be waiting forever.
The conditions are always f*cking impossible. Do it anyway.
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