Kevin Beaumont2d ago

Was just talking to a friend at a US technology company, they’ve had their budget reduced by 50% as the company says it wants to announce “the largest layoffs in US corporate history” to prove GenAI can replace jobs.

There’s no plan to actually replace the jobs with GenAI.. they just have to decimate their area.

Not naming company as the staff don’t know they’re about to fed to the line going up.

Show threadJarek 
@GossiTheDog From my observations many (but of course not all) of the reductions have in fact very little to do with AI. It's just a convenient scapegoat, or it comes later, brought by whoever is left and trying to survive with same workload handled by a smaller team. Saying you're successful deploying AI and need less people as a result looks better than admitting overinvestments. Employees also often don't understand market conditions changing and their division numbers no longer adding up when the company as a whole has resources to invest into AI.
Jun 16 at 12:02amWeb
Show threadDuchamp Pérez1d ago
@Jarek @GossiTheDog Employees understand business better than executives. Many of these layoffs will fire key revenue or system bearing teams because executives want a percentage of people fired and don't understand what work is meaningful for the business