I honestly don’t believe it. I think they’re laying people off to mislead investors into thinking the AI can do their jobs, because that’s an enormous amount of expenses that would be cut, and thus an enormous increase in profits, if it were true.
We’re in a huge recession, masked by inflated stock numbers.
Very few businesses are doing good, unless they’re sucking investor money via AI promises.Right, reality is much more nuanced than „attributed to AI“. It‘s employers claiming they replaced them with AI without showing us the actual numbers as proof. Likely because they don‘t have any.
But while AI posters, Websites or even emails and spreadsheets might‘ve looked flashy to the untrained eye at first, they quickly started to look generic. It‘s overloaded, nothing sticks out and nobody cares.
Don‘t even get me started on AI generated videos that are still just slop or vibe code that may look stupidly productive at first but may turn out to be impossible to maintain in the long run. Especially when the few AI companies that survive the crash want to make some serious money.
Yeah, I’ve seen a number of articles talking about how if a company isn’t doing well and needs to do layoffs that it’s a better narrative for investors that savings were found via AI. Then it’s not a “company is doing poorly” story, but a “company is forward-thinking” one.
Like, there are real layoffs that have happened and are induced by AI, but I’d also be pretty confident in saying that it’s not all of the ones where leadership is citing AI.
Should be attributed to idiot managers grasping at the latest straw-du-jour to save money. Might as well blame bad carpentry on hammers.
They say they lay people off because AI does the job better (59% of 97). Doesn’t mean very much.
Alternative name for the stat:
Jobs laid off where struggling company used AI as a scapegoat.And the site is vibe coded. You couldn’t write it…
My first thought. Everything is going to look the same soon isn’t it
I know. AI text and AI website just reeeeeks of slop.
If you get laid off just vibe code a competitor using your institutional and architectural knowledge, then undercut your former employer with customers you already know.
Many companies have a clause that strictly forbids exactly this behavior for at least a year, sometimes longer.
Which is unenforceable in most countries.
glad i switched from IT to post office 15 years ago. still rocking the infosec.
the writing has been an the wall for a while.
What do we do about it?
Refuse to use LLMs; don’t use / train your replacement. Change careers, pivot to something you can’t be replaced by LLMs. Could still be programming in an industry that doesn’t use them for privacy or security reasons.
