Big Tech’s earnings are on deck. There’s more for investors to watch than AI spending.

Investors are gearing up for quarterly results from Microsoft, Alphabet and Amazon, and while AI capital spending will draw most of the attention, workforce decisions deserve a closer look. Recent job cuts across top-tier tech companies are raising questions about how AI adoption is reshaping roles inside the very firms building the technology.

The debate centers on whether AI is primarily augmenting workers or replacing certain functions. For investors, headcount trends can offer clues about operating costs and productivity, but they are rarely a clean signal on their own. Companies may cut staff for reasons unrelated to AI, from restructuring to cost discipline, so the context behind each announcement matters.

What to watch in the reports: management commentary on hiring plans, the pace of AI-related capital expenditure, and whether efficiency gains are showing up in margins. How executives frame workforce changes alongside AI investment could shape how the market reads both the near-term cost picture and the longer-term operating model for Big Tech.