KM Kevin Martin On Data Engineering Central

“I feel like in the big Fortune 500 world, it's just slop: people are creating more and more garbage and more and more busy work, and nothing is actually getting done. So whenever I see a big company lay off 10,000 people because of AI, I'm like, is that real? Or is that a financial move?”

Data Engineering Central · Software Engineering & Infra · November 2026

Context

Kevin gives his 'hot take' on AI from the perspective of a non-technical daily user, saying most of what we hear is hype. The host agrees that big-company AI layoffs are mostly a financial move.

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Transcript

Data Engineering Central

Kevin Martin

I think my hot take on it, just from like a layman's perspective, is I think most of what's most. What we hear right now is just hype.

Dan Beach

Yeah, for sure.

Kevin Martin

Like you hear that all white-collar jobs are going to be gone in six months, whatever, whatever. I feel like there are a small percentage of like entrepreneurs and maybe small, small startup kind of companies that are like actually using AI and like replacing people and like crushing it. But I feel like in the big Fortune 500 world, it's just slop that people are just creating more and more garbage and creating more and more busy work that nothing is actually getting done. So whenever I see a big company lays off 10,000 people because of AI, I'm like, is that real? Or is that a financial move? And it's

Dan Beach

correct. I believe it's a financial move. Yeah, for sure. It seems to be most of the people I've talked to in interview. It's kind of like, yeah, it seems like most people understand that. It's like, it's just a perfect storm and they're using that as an excuse probably to

Kevin Martin

saying that in 2026. Like in three years, it could be completely taken over the world. I would not be shocked by that.

Dan Beach

Yeah. It's interesting here, not that far from me to the south. We've got a bunch of data centers here in the Midwest and certain, you know, for obvious reasons because we have a lot of windmills, like we got wind power and the land is compared to the East or West Coast, our land is cheaper, right?…

Speaker names come from our own diarization. The position is estimated from where the line sits in the episode.

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