The Department of First Things First

August 2026

The Pre-Rising Audit
Five things to check in your tenant before 40,000 people try to sell you the future.
 • Michael Domingo
Bot vs. Bot
The Hiring Arms Race Isn't Broken. It's Working as Designed.
 • Michael Domingo
Backpack to Boardroom
SHRM sells belonging to students and dread to everyone who bought in. Then it lost $11.5 million proving it can’t do the job it certifies you for.
 • Michael Domingo
Unicorns, Builders, and the HRIS Gang: What Our Nicknames Are Admitting
tldr; Two people I respect and myself have three different names for the same job.
 • Michael Domingo
Twenty People Approved It by Not Questioning It
A Tuesday morning, a comp range, and the failure everyone will call an AI failure.
 • Michael Domingo
Silver Lake Isn't the Villain: Workday Already Ran the PE Playbook Without Them
Everyone's bracing for what private equity would do to Workday. Check the last eighteen months first.
 • Michael Domingo
The Actual Tally: What 91 People Called Themselves
Almost nobody used a title. Four in ten gave me an if-statement instead, and it only runs when a human asks.
 • Michael Domingo
The Tuesday Singularity: Why the Biggest Moment in AI Won't Feel Like One
Sam Altman says it's here. The AI disagrees, my seventh grader shrugged, and the cloud era already taught us how this actually goes.
 • Michael Domingo
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