I came across a LinkedIn post the other day that described “hypegineering,” which the poster explained refers to the moment when AI “marketing becomes more innovative than the technology itself.”

That post came from Ralph Aboujaoude Diaz, the global head of GRC for British consumer services company Haleon. Until last year, Diaz worked in operations cybersecurity for consumer goods giant Philip Morris. 

In his post, Diaz added that “side effects may include believing mediocre tech is revolutionary, confusing hype with progress, buying solutions to problems you don’t have and defending it like your job depends on it.”

As amusing as that might seem, the problem is frighteningly real. The sad truth is that enterprise IT executives are partly — perhaps mostly — to blame for the current hype around AI.

For many decades, senior IT leaders (pre-dating when it was called MIS) were the technology hype-deflators with razor-shape BS detection skills. That level of skepticism was needed. Tech vendors have always exaggerated and left out critical context when they weren’t outright lying about their products. 

Enterprises trusted the IT gate-keepers to ferret out reality from the smoke and mirrors. 

But there was a critical difference back then: senior management (especially CEOs, CFOs and board members) didn’t pay much attention to tech. They wanted the benefits, but they left the details to IT management to sort things out. With senior managers, benign neglect can be an incredibly good thing. 

As much as we might all think that we want our bosses to really care about our efforts, be careful what you wish for. (For Dilbert fans, think of the pointy-haired boss; a boss who has strong beliefs but no understanding of technology is a nightmare.) 

Alas, that is the situation many enterprises find themselves in today. IT management fully understands the level of absurd hype coming from a multitude of AI players. But unlike years and technologies past (RFID? NFC? Biometrics?), deflating hype balloons is easier when it’s comes solely from vendors. When senior managers start spouting this garbage, IT’s hype-deflation ability morphs into contradicting the very people at the top of their own corporate food chain.

That forces IT leaders who want to stay gainfully employed to do a lot of what used to be called lying. “Well, boss, yes these agentic systems have guardrails that will block destruction,” the lie begins, “but we can’t anticipate what any user or attacker might say in a prompt.”

That’s far more corporate acceptable than the actual truth: “Boss, a guardrail that an agent can disregard isn’t a guardrail. It’s more of a mild suggestion.” 

Or IT could say, “Well, yes, boss, autonomous agents could exponentially increase efficiency — as long as you’re OK with the risk that they might send our internal data to the competition.”

For the sake of the company, tech leaders and decision-makers need to reassert themselves and perform serious reality checks on all AI efforts. But this is more fraught than merely contradicting a top boss. IT  could be seen as embarrassing that top boss by pretty much proving that they were either naive or ignorant enough to be conned by the hype. 

Telling them they’re wrong seems nicer than calling them stupid. And yet, someone in IT has to find a politically palatable way to do both. 

While the number of US jobs declined by 23,000 in July, employment in the tech sector rebounded as the AI revolution continues to gain steam.

The national unemployment numbers were reported Friday by the US Bureau of Labor Statistics. At the same time, research firms said July was a good month for IT hiring compared to June.

According to CompTIA, which analyzed the BLS data, tech sector jobs rose in July by 3,700. In June, the IT sector had lost 900 jobs.

Companies last month hired in the cloud, hosting, information processing, data, and semiconductor manufacturing sectors, CompTIA said in a statement. 

“We’re entering a labor market where opportunity is increasingly concentrated around specific skills, industries, and investments,” said Ger Doyle, regional president of North America at ManpowerGroup, a labor consulting firm.

For example, data center hiring was up 39% in July compared to the same period last year, Doyle said. Not surprisingly, the data-center growth has been fueled by AI infrastructure needs and demand for hardware. That has helped increase the number of jobs in ancillary sectors such as transportation.

July hiring data showed heavy truck driver demand, which surged by 181% from June, Doyle said.

According to the BLS data, employment went up by 2.4% in the “computing infrastructure providers, data processing, web hosting, and related services” sectors, which is listed under the information sector.

Jobs in the “computer and electronic product manufacturing” sector — which is bunched under manufacturing — rose by 2.9% from June to July.

But bad news continued for the telecommunications sector, where the number of jobs declined by 1.5% from June to July. That continued a downward slide in recent years.

Overall job layoffs slowed in July, with 33,429 cuts announced; that’s down from 45,849 cuts announced in June, and the lowest since July 2024, according to data from Challenger, Gray and Christmas.

“Hiring has also increased over last year by 25%, so while AI is shifting the labor market, it is not dismantling it,” said Andy Challenger, chief revenue officer for Challenger, Gray & Christmas.

The tech sector announced 9,867 cuts in July, bringing the year-to-date total to 149,023 so far in 2026, according to Challenger figures.

Tech sector hiring and job losses vary as organizations use different measurement techniques to gauge the overall hiring environment. 

The top-line US unemployment rate declined to 4.1% from 4.2%, in part because of  workers leaving the workforce or not looking for jobs, indicating a slow labor market.

Still, hiring demand exists across the US, despite declining labor force participation and longer job searches, Doyle said.

Because technology underpins many of the changes occurring across sectors such as healthcare and services, employers are rethinking hiring.  “That’s why the labor market many workers are experiencing doesn’t always match the one described by the headline numbers,” Doyle said.

ADP’s National Employment report said only 44,000 jobs were added to private payrolls in July, with choppiness across sectors.

But demand for AI skills continues to rise, according to research firms that track growth by analyzing job listings. CompTIA noted that about 14,000 new job listings in July sought AI and machine learning skills.

It’s not clear how the ongoing AI boom may be hurting or helping human jobs. Many recent job cuts have been attributed to AI, though some companies have been accused of using the technology as a rationale for cuts they made for other reasons.

A recent OECD report said that even manual jobs once thought immune to AI are at risk of being taken over by robots. The OECD report said creative jobs — typically management, arts, and social work — will be least threatened by AI.

There are also increasing indications that successful AI deployments will require humans in the loop. For example, more consulting firms are using forward-deployed engineers (FDEs) to implement agentic AI. And smaller consultancy firms are finding more productivity by automating mundane work with AI and spending more time meeting client requirements.