Hey👋,
I'm Giacomo

Eleven star engineers are set to make $200M this year.💰

Meanwhile, hundreds of thousands just lost their jobs.

And they won't get it back!

Job openings for software engineers in the US are now nearly half of pre-pandemic levels.

Microsoft just announced another 9,000 layoffs, adding to the 6,000 cut in May.

Yet, for some lucky ones, pay packages have almost doubled.

💸 Median compensation for a Principal AI Researcher in Big Tech hit $5M, vs $3.5M just three years ago.

For comparison, a typical Big Tech software engineer not involved in AI, makes between $180k–$220k (base salary).

The gap is widening. And it's accelerating fast!

Recruiters estimate that only a few hundred people globally possess the skills to build cutting-edge AI models.

This is less than the number of players competing in the football Champions League!

Eleven of them were just poached by Meta last week.
The rest is evaluating their options.

OpenAI even granted employees a week off to organise one-to-ones with top performers, figuring out how to convince them to stay.

👉 Want a preview of AI's impact on the broader job market?

Start with tech.

A handful of superstars earning historically unprecedented sums,

while everyone else lives under constant threat of layoffs and AI-driven replacement.

Welcome to the economy of superstars at its peak.

Sunday thoughts: your career is like this dry lawn.

I spent weeks watering it, almost daily.
Then I left for one weekend.

Two days of exceptional heat,
and this is what I came back to.

All burnt and dry.

All the work from the previous weeks and months, erased.
Just like that, in two days.

Sometimes, you work hard, you stay consistent, for months, years, decades.

And then a single distraction ruins everything.

Sometimes it’s not even your fault. Like this heatwave.

Third year in a row it happens.
(Climate change 😢)

But every year I fix it. And guess what?

The lawn always comes back greener and better.

Every spring,
I upgrade my tools.
I learn new techniques.
I remove dead grass and use stronger seeding.

Every spring I start over, but never from zero.

Until two exceptionally hot days strike again.

And I restart, over and over again.

Who else feels the same about their careers?

🔥 Meta just poached 11 Ai superstars for $200M+ each.

So I shamelessly stalked their profiles to find the "secret sauce" for a $200M payday.

Here's what I found:

1️⃣ Being Chinese helps, a lot.
7 out of 11 hires are Chinese, most coming from Tsinghua University.
(Quick, enroll your kids now!)

2️⃣ They’re young!
Mostly mid/late 20s or early 30s.
(Except for the few older, non-Chinese folks 😅)

3️⃣ Minimal work experience.
Many joined OpenAI as their first full-time job.
Now onto their second job, casually upgrading to multimillionaire status after just 2–3 years.
(I guess updating their CVs didn't take long 😆)

4️⃣ Zero LinkedIn hustle.
Few connections, no posts. Some not even a profile photo.
(When Zuck calls your cellphone, you don't need referrals 😋)

5️⃣ Speak only 1–2 languages.
I thought geniuses spoke 3+ languages.
Apparently not, most "just" speak Chinese and English.
(I guess no time to waste here)

Here's THE LIST, in case you're curious:

Trapit Bansal
Shuchao B.
HUIWEN Chang
Ji Lin
Joel Pobar
Jack Rae
Hongyu Ren
Johan Schalkwyk
Pei S.
Jiahui Yu
Shengjia Zhao

The lesson?
I'm doing it all wrong 😂

What surprised you most about this Ai dream team?

11 engineers accepted Zuck's $200M+ offer to join Meta AI Labs.

Regular employees.
Scoring hundreds of millions.
Overnight.

Surely they'll quit in a week and become FIRE influencers. 😂

I'm dying inside with FOMO!

I could also achieve a 9-figure tech job.
All I need is to be more intentional and strategic with my job search.

So, here's the deal:
I'm officially hiring a LinkedIn career coach.

· Budget: $5'000/month
· Timeline: 6-9 months
· Goal: score a 9-figure tech job

The math is flawless:

· Investment: $5'000 * 9 months = $45'000
· Reward: $200'000'000+
· ROI: 444'344%

Why did I not think of this before??

My DMs are open.

These charts are insane. 🤯

Over half of the EU’s GDP growth came from Ireland, a country that makes up just 1% of the bloc’s population.

GDP growth, Q1 2025 vs Q4 2024:
🇮🇪 +€12.8B | +9.7%
🇪🇺 +€19.6B | +0.6%

To put it in perspective:
The second fastest-growing economy was Malta, at "just" +2.1%.

Ireland is a complete outlier.

How is this even possible?

1️⃣ A tax haven for Big Tech and Pharma (and others).
Ireland’s 12.5% corporate tax rate has long attracted global giants, especially from the US.

They register their IP there, post profits to pay low taxes and move those profits back home. This scheme clearly inflates GDP.

2️⃣ Trump’s tariffs reshuffled pharma supply chains.
US-bound drugs are often manufactured in Ireland. (for same reason as above)

Facing tariff uncertainty, companies front-loaded shipments before Trump’s deadline, temporarily boosting "exports".

But they're not real exports, it's just tax planning.

There’s even a term for this statistical illusion:
“Leprechaun economics”.

It was first coined in 2015, when Apple famously shifted billions through Ireland.
Now it’s back in fashion.

But while tech and AI giants continue their frantic race (OpenAI and Antrophic have large presence in Ireland), normal workers are being left behind.

Because while GDP soared +9.7%,
GNP actually fell -2.1%. 📉

Ireland has by far the largest GDP–GNP gap in Europe.

👉 GDP counts what companies produce inside Ireland.
👉 GNP subtracts what’s sent abroad after.

Normally the two metrics are very close.
Not in Ireland.
In Q1 2025 there was a huge €55bn gap, or 38% of GDP.

For comparison, Italy had a gap of ~€1bn (or 0.2% of GDP), normal for a western country.

The result?
Locals are worse off than a quarter earlier, despite a massive GDP growth.

While this is no new phenomenon, the effects are now more visible and Ireland is just the front-runner.

As AI and tech investment and compensations explode, so does the distortion.
Drugs are manufactured in Ireland only to be re-imported to the US, raising prices and inflating trade imbalances.

Innovation always comes at a price.

The question is: who pays it?

Are you a marketer worried about brand visibility on AI chatbots?

Then stop scrolling now👇

Only 14% of top brand mentions are consistent across ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Google AI Mode.

One AI strategy?
Think again. 😂

GEO, Generative Engine Optimisation, is still early days, but it’s time to take it seriously already.

🛠 Tools like Ahrefs Brand Radar show you how different AI chatbots actually see your brand.

↳ ChatGPT Search prefers licensed sources.
You better be mentioned in the Financial Times. 😅

↳ Perplexity and Google AI Mode behave more like classic search engines.
But don’t be fooled, training bias still shapes what they surface.

That’s why understanding how LLMs “think” is becoming critical.

How do tools like Brand Radar track this?
They literally prompt chatbots millions of times, then analyse the responses.

Ever wanted to find out how LLMs actually think?

Get a GEO tool!

This chart is INSANE!

Amazon Web Services (AWS) spent 49% of its revenue on CapEx in 2024.
Almost half of every dollar went straight into AI infrastructure training.

All-in!

That’s nearly 2x more than what it spent back in 2013, when it was building its infrastructure from scratch. 🤯

Meanwhile, Big Tech as a whole has poured 12% of its total revenue into AI-related CapEx this year alone.

So either:
• We're living through the biggest bubble in tech history
• Or this is just the appetiser

I’m betting on the latter!

Only in Switzerland… 🥰

Spotted this note from the local police, taped to a park bench:

“If you’re the person who left behind a pair of ASICS shoes, a blue t-shirt size M and house key with cloverleaf symbol, please get in touch.”

No judgment. No bureaucracy.
Just pure kindness 🇨🇭

Honestly, I’ve never seen anything like it.
A handwritten lost & found letter from the police, patiently waiting. ❤️

But it does make me wonder…
Who forgets that much stuff all at once? 😅

Happy mid-week everybody!

This week, Tesla finally put its first robotaxi on the road.

But let’s rewind a bit…

-> Elon in 2015: “By 2018, Teslas will be fully autonomous.”

-> in 2016: “By 2021, we’ll have a fleet of one million robotaxis.”

-> in 2023: “Optimus humanoid robots will be available for $30k by the end of the year... oh, and one will land on Mars in 2026."

-> in 2014: “The new Tesla Roadster is coming this year.”
Then it was 2019.
Then 2020.
2021.
2022.
2023.
2024.
Now 2025. Still waiting. 😅

-> in 2015 again: “Crewed Starship missions to Mars as early as 2025.”

Elon Musk has made some of the wildest tech predictions of the century.

And yet…
He’s not been that wrong. He’s just late.

Bit by bit, almost everything he said is becoming real.

If every Tesla becomes a robotaxi, like he envisions, that fleet will blow way past one million vehicles.

Amazon CEO Andy Jassy just said the quiet part out loud.

And it's a big deal! here's why👇

Many tech companies have laid off staff due to AI.

But...

➡️ Most of them still grew their overall headcount, signalling a restructuring, not a real reduction (so far).

This time is different.

Jassy said:
“It’s hard to know where it nets out over time, but we expect to REDUCE our total CORPORATE workforce.”

1. This is about fewer people, not different people.
2. He's not talking about warehouse jobs, he’s talking about knowledge workers.

office roles, product, marketing, tech etc

This might be the first time a major tech CEO openly links AI to an actual net loss in white-collar jobs.

It won’t be the last.