Comment by root_axis
11 hours ago
The AI argument doesn't make sense to me for layoffs. If AI is making the company more productive then there's an incredible opportunity to use the existing workforce to tackle the massive backlog of important work. A big layoff only makes sense if there is no more useful work to do or you're killing products.
It's AI but not in the way you think.
AI usage is getting expensive since Anthropic et al are turning the screws, and that money has to come from somewhere. Reducing AI usage is blasphemy of course, so cutting headcount is the only path forward.
Is there no one figuring out ROI on AI spend vs human payroll? I can't make sense of this idea that companies are firing productive employees because they're spending too much money on AI that isn't doing anything for them... they still hope chatbots will be worth it in the future?
> ROI on AI spend
You say that shit like that at the top table and you will be gone within the hour.
1 reply →
It's not that simple.
The marginal gains are inevitably diminishing (since you pick the lucrative options).
There's a practical rate at which work can be done, limited by all sorts of things like organisation friction, how fast customers are willing/able to adopt new features, and how fast you can learn from it.
Arguably AI can improve all of these, but those improvements might not be happening as fast as CloudFlare are able to pump out features.
Further, this is all exacerbated by upper management having to made decisions at the nth derivative. Meanwhile, salary costs you now. You might foresee vast riches in future, but you have to remain solvent and competitive until then.
These all points towards layoffs. There are many factors that point towards keeping employees.
How to decide? No idea. Rightfully no one trusts me to make these!