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Tech companies are firing everyone to "fund AI", spending money on each other

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Re: Tech companies are firing everyone to "fund AI", spending money on each other

#51

Post by jonway »

CharlieDigital wrote: post #22

I rarely post comments on LinkedIn, but I saw some of the dumbest content today and felt compelled to leave a response: > Just met a founder who fired his entire team because he was able to individually beat their entire productivity with Claude Code My only thought when I read this is that this absolutely embarrassing...for founder who wasted dozens of hours recruiting, qualifiying, interviewing, onboarding, and tra…

It feels like poor technical leadership to me. Who knows how large that team was, maybe its 2-3 people, but it also sounds like they don't know how to manage them.

The flip side is now there's nobody else to troubleshoot when the house of cards inevitably collapses. Whats he gonna do, "Hey Siri, do a security review on this codebase"?

Quantity has a quality of its own, but I feel like if its a website with an iOS app you're just vibe coding your way towards the memes, and if its something actually pushing the envelope one guy and an API key isn't going to cut it, no matter how many tokens you spit out.

Re: Tech companies are firing everyone to "fund AI", spending money on each other

#52

Post by dale_glass »

Atreiden wrote: post #31
testdelacc1 wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At least investing in companies that will buy Nvidia makes sense somewhat, even if it feels dodgy. What possible sense does it make for Nvidia to invest in a maker of telecom equipment (Nokia) with no public plan, and the value of the investment jumps 30% as soon as it’s announced? It’s not like call routing needs to be “AI enabled” or they’re putting Nvidia GPUs in their custom silicon. Feels like Nvidia has too muc…

Nokia had some of the best mobile hardware (and software!) in the game until they were bought by Microsoft and promptly killed. I've been patiently waiting for their resurgence. Building embedded/mobile devices is their forte, which is also coincidentally the hardware space where AI is most poised to shine. Nvidia made a move in the same direction when they tried to acquire ARM. That got antitrusted (fairly so) but i…

> I've been patiently waiting for their resurgence. Building embedded/mobile devices is their forte

Wouldn't most of those people have gone elsewhere by now? If you're a mobile device superstar, why would you stick around at Nokia once the mobile device part of it crashed and burned?

A company's just a legal structure, people change over time. And that was more than 10 years ago, and didn't they sell their mobile division to Microsoft?

Re: Tech companies are firing everyone to "fund AI", spending money on each other

#53

Post by Herring »

ailegalbeagle wrote: post #41
dragonwriter wrote: post #6

We’re in a general economic decline masked, in some key aggregate measures, by the AI bubble. That’s the reason for the job cuts. Shuffling money around between AI adjacent companies may (but I doubt it) be enough to keep the AI bubble going through the downturn, in which case stockholders in those key companies manage to ride it out without pain, and executives too because they serve their constituency well. More li…

> general economic decline I'm not seeing it, do you have any proof you can offer that your statement is true?

https://www.ey.com/en_us/insights/strategy/macroeconomics/us...

https://am.jpmorgan.com/us/en/asset-management/adv/insights/...

EY forecasts 1.7% GDP growth, most of which is AI (~1.1% according to jpmorgan). The broader economy is facing headwinds (policy uncertainty, tariffs, etc etc).

Re: Tech companies are firing everyone to "fund AI", spending money on each other

#55

Post by [deleted] »

ailegalbeagle wrote: post #41
dragonwriter wrote: post #6

We’re in a general economic decline masked, in some key aggregate measures, by the AI bubble. That’s the reason for the job cuts. Shuffling money around between AI adjacent companies may (but I doubt it) be enough to keep the AI bubble going through the downturn, in which case stockholders in those key companies manage to ride it out without pain, and executives too because they serve their constituency well. More li…

> general economic decline I'm not seeing it, do you have any proof you can offer that your statement is true?

[deleted]

Re: Tech companies are firing everyone to "fund AI", spending money on each other

#56

Post by rapatel0 »

There has never been a better time to build. The vast majority of executives likely don't comprehend AI and it's capability. (I'm not talking about silicon valley) I'm talking about everything else.

The highly likely scenario is that: - These people will spend money on "AI" to solve stuff to keep their job - These people will be so slow to respond that they are ripe for disruption/exit.

Re: Tech companies are firing everyone to "fund AI", spending money on each other

#57

Post by jonway »

scotty79 wrote: post #46
cjonas wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Then Nvidia is turning around and investing back in the AI companies so they can in turn buy Nvidia chips...

Nvidia is basically allowing some of its clients to pay with partial ownership of their companies instead of with cash for the chips they want, because there's simply not enough cash in them for the lofty goals lots of people think are achievable.

God that sounds so crazy. Its giving me "sell our municipal water to Private Equity to buy a park, imagine the tax revenue!" vibes except its just diluting the shares.

It feels like economics in the US is turning into FanDuel mobile gambling. Can we pass a law to disincentivize this garbage and make them start paying dividends again?

Re: Tech companies are firing everyone to "fund AI", spending money on each other

#58

Post by bix6 »

alephnerd wrote: post #33
shermantanktop wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agree with a lot of this. But on the last point, that’s the “blame middle management” theory. And I have seen outrageous, florid displays of exactly that behavior in those ranks. But the CEOs have been there all along, doing the math on ZIRP and getting caught up in FOMO. They could have tightened their belts at any time, or demanded better justifications for investments. Why didn’t they?

> But the CEOs have been there all along, doing the math on ZIRP and getting caught up in FOMO. They could have tightened their belts at any time, or demanded better justifications for investments. Why didn’t they? Because the job of a CEO is not to micromanage. The whole point of hiring middle management is to keep CEOs out of micromanaging decisions. The job of C-suite is to 1. Be the arbitrator between different o…

If you (c-suite, boards) aren’t giving direction then how are the middle managers supposed to know what to build so that it aligns with long term growth goals? This feels like abdicating responsibility and then firing people for building the wrong thing when you never told them what to build in the first place?

Re: Tech companies are firing everyone to "fund AI", spending money on each other

#59

Post by bix6 »

The consumption side has so far been held up by higher income consumers. Now that so many of them are being fired all that’s left to prop up the economy is AI spend. I’ve heard some think it could go on for a few more years but I’ve also increasingly seen bubble / circular finance posts so it feels like we’re getting closer.

Re: Tech companies are firing everyone to "fund AI", spending money on each other

#60

Post by matwood »

silisili wrote: post #37
CharlieDigital wrote: post #22

I rarely post comments on LinkedIn, but I saw some of the dumbest content today and felt compelled to leave a response: > Just met a founder who fired his entire team because he was able to individually beat their entire productivity with Claude Code My only thought when I read this is that this absolutely embarrassing...for founder who wasted dozens of hours recruiting, qualifiying, interviewing, onboarding, and tra…

What's weird to me is that they say 'well, with AI we need less people for the same output.' Why is the conversation rarely framed 'with AI we will move faster and have more output'? It feels like companies would be well served to expand their product teams and roadmaps to go bigger, but instead choose to hold the pace now with less headcount.

Once the dust settles around AI, I agree with you. Unless we think the collective company's backlogs are going to stop being infinite, then any extra productivity that can be gained will be gained.

With that said, I think AI is just cover for the current set of layoffs. Companies are still right sizing from the pandemic/ZIRP over-hiring. Additionally, while none will say it at the risk of angering the administration, the economic uncertainty based on how someone is feeling day to day means companies want to derisk.

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