Who Builds the Agents?
Snap cut 1,000. KPMG cut 10% of partners. The real story is who companies need next. Plus Heidrick reports C-suite independents up 151%, Mark Cuban on AI implementation, and podcast episodes with Maggie Ruvoldt and Michelle Allbon.
The HC TeamGet this in your inbox every week. Join 26,000+ subscribers.
Subscribe →Who Builds the Agents?
The layoff headlines keep coming.
- Snap cut 1,000 roles last week. CEO Evan Spiegel's memo: "We have already witnessed small squads leveraging AI tools to drive meaningful progress."
- KPMG is cutting 10% of its U.S. audit partners after a voluntary retirement push fell short.
- Disney eliminated entire marketing and publicity divisions the week before.
Every CEO is saying some version of the same thing: smaller teams, more AI, faster output.
But here is the part most companies have not figured out yet. As Matthew Mottola, our CEO, put it this week:
"There is the tool and there is the agent. The agent literally is a job rec, and the tool might just be Claude Code as the interface. But the actual building of the agent, running the agent, iterating the agent, you still need humans for that."
Think of it as three concentric circles:
- Inner circle: Your core FTEs. This is shrinking.
- Middle layer: AI agents as middleware. Claude, OpenAI, and a few others will own this.
- Outer layer: The human layer. Flexible, outcome-driven talent who build, own, and iterate the agents.
Mark Cuban said it differently this week. He called AI implementation "the largest wealth transfer of the AI era" and pointed out that 30 million of 33 million U.S. companies are single-person operations without AI expertise. The value is not in the model. It is in the people who know how to make it work inside a real business.
Heidrick & Struggles just confirmed this from the enterprise side: C-suite independent talent engagements are up 151% since 2021. Companies are not just cutting. They are rebuilding with flexible, specialized operators.
The question for every company right now is not whether to use AI. It is who builds your agents, who runs them, and who owns the outcomes when they break.
That is what Human Cloud is built for. Find the operators who can build your human layer today.
From The Founders
Matthew Mottola, CEO
What If Every Agent Is Just a Job Req?
Mark Cuban says the biggest AI opportunity is implementation. He stopped one layer short. Every agent is a job req. The tool is irrelevant. The human layer is everything.
Tony Buffum, CSO
Half of U.S. Employers Are Rejecting Qualified Candidates Over Compliance
FoxHire's Multi-State Hiring Compliance Burden Index made AP News, MarketWatch, Business Insider, and Yahoo Finance. 50% of employers are rejecting candidates over compliance concerns. 43.7% are quietly blacklisting entire states. The shift to flexible talent is accelerating because of it.
From The Pod
Two episodes this week. Maggie Ruvoldt shows what fractional leadership actually looks like at scale. Michelle Allbon is mapping the fractional talent market across Asia Pacific.
Maggie Ruvoldt
Fractional CHRO & HR Advisor
Maggie scaled an EdTech company from 100 to 5,000 employees and $1B in revenue, then went fractional. She now advises multiple companies simultaneously, delivering executive-level impact without the full-time overhead.
"Stop asking how many hours a fractional leader works. Start asking what they delivered."Listen Now →
Michelle Allbon
Co-founder & CEO, Fractional Directory
Michelle is mapping the fractional talent market across Asia Pacific. Her platform connects organizations with independent fractional executives in a region where the market is real, growing fast, and almost entirely unmapped.
"60% of independents will never go back to full-time work. The shift is structural, not cyclical."Listen Now →
From The Industry
Talent Strategy
C-Suite Independent Talent Up 151% Since 2021
Heidrick & Struggles' 2026 Talent Report shows a 151% increase in C-suite independent talent engagements since 2021. Organizations are deploying interim leaders and specialized experts to accelerate digital transformation, data analytics, and AI implementation.
AI
Mark Cuban: AI Implementation Is "the Largest Wealth Transfer" of the Era
Cuban's argument: 30 million of 33 million U.S. companies are single-person operations without AI budgets or expertise. The value is not in building AI models. It is in the people who walk into a business and make AI work.
Downsizing
Snap Cuts 1,000 Roles, Cites "Small Squads Leveraging AI"
Snap is cutting roughly 1,000 employees across multiple functions. CEO Evan Spiegel's internal memo framed the cuts explicitly around AI efficiency: small teams with AI tools are outperforming large teams without them.
Professional Services
KPMG Cutting 10% of U.S. Audit Partners
KPMG is cutting roughly 10% of its U.S. audit partners after a voluntary retirement push fell short of targets. When the auditors are restructuring, the restructuring wave has reached every corner of the enterprise.
Get insights like this every week
Join 26,000+ leaders staying ahead of the flexible talent market.
Subscribe Now →Related Articles
From Commencement Boo's To 4 AM Layoffs
Three crowds are making the AI headlines this week: commencement Boo's, the 2 AM Layoffs, and the HR Axe. While they fight, contractors are quietly rehired and 74% of flexible talent has gone AI-native. The cheat code is the talent solutions on Human Cloud.
Search Diversification Is Accelerating
This month more new search categories appeared on Human Cloud than any prior month. Construction, civil engineering, instructional design, and finance are all net-new. EOR remains the top search since December. FMS rose as a new category.
CX Talent Outpacing Broader Job Market...Why?
a16z data proves what we've been telling you, that AI amplifies, not automates, your human workforce. Whether costs favoring humans, or the human touch beating AI customer support, the right talent ecosystem has never been more important.