The Layoff Wave Is Here. But Someone Still Has to Do the Work.

Bosch is cutting 13,000 jobs. Volkswagen eliminated 7,000 roles in Germany. Rolls-Royce is shedding 2,500 positions, specifically targeting back-office and support functions. ASML - despite posting record sales - cut 1,700 jobs to “simplify its structure.”

Germany’s automotive sector lost 47,000 jobs last year alone. UK unemployment hit a five-year peak. Nearly every second German company is planning or implementing further cuts.The official narrative is efficiency. Streamlining. Right-sizing for the new reality.

But there’s a quieter story happening inside founder-led businesses - one that rarely makes the headlines.

The Work Doesn’t Disappear

When support roles get cut, the tasks those people handled don’t vanish. Calendars still need managing. Emails still need answering. Meetings still need preparing. Vendors still need chasing.

In large corporations, the work gets redistributed across surviving team members. In founder-led companies, it flows upward. Directly to the CEO.

This is where the cost-cutting logic quietly breaks down.

A founder doing 5 hours of administrative work per week isn’t saving money. They’re absorbing €125,000+ per year in opportunity cost - time that isn’t going toward selling, deciding, building, or thinking. The things only they can do.

Cutting support staff to save €40,000 while the CEO becomes the de facto admin is not a cost reduction. It’s a transfer of cost - one that’s much harder to see on a spreadsheet.

AI Didn’t Solve This. It Reframed It.

A significant part of the current layoff wave is being attributed to AI. Companies replacing human workers with automation. And for certain repetitive, low-context tasks, that’s partially accurate.

But AI doesn’t manage itself. It doesn’t catch exceptions. It doesn’t understand the subtext of a client email. It doesn’t notice that a meeting scheduled for Thursday conflicts with something that was agreed three weeks ago in a different thread.

What AI actually did was raise the floor. Low-skill, purely mechanical support became automatable. High-quality, judgment-based executive support became more valuable - because now it also includes knowing how to use the tools.

The companies cutting administrative roles and replacing them with AI are, in many cases, eliminating the wrong layer. They’re removing the human judgment that sits between the automation and the outcome.

The Founders Getting This Right

The founders navigating this environment well aren’t cutting support. They’re restructuring how they get it.

They’re moving away from the binary choice of “hire a full-time employee” or “do it yourself.” Full-time hires carry fixed costs, onboarding risk, and management overhead that don’t fit a lean scaling phase. Doing it yourself is the most expensive option of all, even if it doesn’t show up on the payroll.

What works is a third model: senior-level, fractional support - someone who operates as a genuine executive partner, not a task executor, at a cost structure that fits where the business actually is.

The layoff wave is real. The economic pressure across Europe is real. But the response isn’t to absorb the work yourself. It’s to find a smarter, leaner way to make sure it gets done - by the right person, at the right cost.

Wondering if this applies to your situation?

If you’re a founder or CEO spending meaningful time on work that shouldn’t require your attention, the first step is getting clear on what that’s actually costing you. How much of your week are you spending on work that shouldn't need you?

Take our free 30-second delegation audit to find out.