GoKawiilMeanwhile, Back At The Earnings Call
The Layoff Two-Step.
Across tech, retail, media, logistics, and finance, a very specific script has taken over: cut a wave of frontline and mid-level jobs, say "AI" as many times as possible in the press release, and quietly reroute the freed-up payroll into GPU leases, data center buildouts, and "agentic AI" licensing fees. The workforce gets "optimized" to pay for the AI. The AI then gets credit for replacing the workforce. And the executive team that approved both line items — the layoffs and the AI budget — stays exactly where it was, at exactly its previous salary. In tech alone, well over half a million jobs have been cut across successive waves of these announcements, a growing share of them explicitly attributed to "AI-driven efficiency," while aggregate CEO pay at the same companies kept climbing right alongside the AI capital expenditure.
👔 Fictional New CEO • 1st Incoming Chief Executive Officer | Servant Leader | Grateful Humbled and honored to step into this role at such a pivotal moment for our company. I've spent the last two weeks listening — to customers, to our board, to myself — and I can say with total conviction: our people are our greatest asset. (This post was scheduled before this morning's announcement. We are aware. We are moving forward.)
What The Press Release Said What It Meant "Right-sizing the organization" We fired thousands of people and kept the org chart's tip fully intact. "Reallocating resources toward AI investment" Your old salary is now a line item in a GPU lease. "Building an AI-first organization" An AI agent has your job now. The executive who signed off on the agent still has theirs — plus a raise. "Agentic workforce optimization" We didn't optimize the workforce. We replaced it, then spent the savings on more of what replaced it. "Focus on core priorities" We kept the executive team. Apparently that was the core priority. "A difficult but necessary decision" Necessary for the AI budget. Difficult for everyone except whoever approved both the cuts and the budget. "Investing in our future" The "future" is fewer people, more compute, and an unchanged corner office.
Executive Leadership 0% reduction Senior Directors -8% Middle Management -22% Frontline & Support Staff -34%
The only layer immune to "efficiency" is the one that approves it.