Rory O'Driscoll@rodriscoll
AI has become the justification for every layoff. It's the perfect excuse card, but there is a lot of spin involved. Every layoff is some combo of the following five very different AI stories.
1. Nothing changed, we just realized we have too many people. We are going to blame AI, but we are bullshitting. This is the AI as an excuse; it was really sloppy hiring, and we are just blaming AI. (See Block)
2. Growth has gone away so now we have too many people. This may be because of AI if you are a SaaS company. All the customer love is now going to AI. But it's less AI as a productivity lift, and more about you just building a less ambitious growth company. (See Salesforce and most every SaaS company)
3. We spent our money on capex to build AI so now we can’t afford as many people. Management may say it’s about AI making us productive (4 below) but my gut is a lot of it is about Nvidia getting our money so now there is none for you. (See Meta and Oracle)
4 We are really using AI the way god intended us to. We don't need as many people. This is the ONLY version of the story that is actually about a productivity increase. It's real, it's happening, but I wonder if it is even the majority of the layoffs. (See some software engineering departments right now)
@jasonlk raised a fifth reason that doesn't get talked about enough: we just have the wrong people. Maybe we don't need 20 engineers who all know C++, but rather eight who have strong AI skills. This I think should be happening everywhere.
Every time a layoff announcement comes out, I try and mentally categorize per the above.
