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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

#41

Post by ailegalbeagle »

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?

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

#42

Post by AstroBen »

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…

I mean theyre probably lying so..

I can't believe anyone is that dumb

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

#43

Post by jayd16 »

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…

More like "I need to fire everyone, how can I spin this?"

Don't forget the implicit admission that "my product can be made in claude code."

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

#44

Post by testing22321 »

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.

Reducing expenses and increasing profit NOW is the goal of shortsighted leaders.

Who cares about any other path - get rich quick!!

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

#45

Post by wood_spirit »

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…

(Nokia went from king to pauper in the year when the iPhone and then Android launched. They death spiralled and Elop was brought in a few years later to transition them to using Microsoft Windows mobile. However, windows mobile was as old and uncompetitive as Symbian so couldn’t compete. Was very obvious at the time although the boards seem to have been living in their dream worlds)

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

#46

Post by scotty79 »

cjonas wrote: post #20
lateforwork wrote: post #15

The "spending money on each other" part is untrue. It is mostly going in one direction, towards Nvidia, and that's the reason they crossed $5 Trillion in market cap recently.

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.

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

#47

Post by lpapez »

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.

Less headcount usually means faster pace - less lines of comminication, less red tape etc.

Or at least that's what many C-level people believe to be true. "We need to move like a startup" is a common mantra repeated by executives, even megacorps like Amazon.

I guess it's true to some degree though, anecdotally as an IC at a tech company, I feel like I could move a lot faster if some people around me removed and replaced by an automation instead.

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

#48

Post by jayd16 »

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.

The moving faster is how it would work in a good economy with investment dollars. We're in a cycle where we need excuses to lay people off so that's AIs main use case.

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

#49

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

#50

Post by GolfPopper »

firefoxd wrote: post #21

Most companies using AI are just paying for a subscription. They aren't actually building LLMs or other machine learning applications that take over a known task. You could easily replace the term AI with just subscription. When they say they are laying off workers, they are saying "we signed up for Cursor, and enabled some AI features on Jira and Salesforce" The layoff is just an excuse until they realize that just…

And keep in mind that while the company may care about its overall efficiency, its individual organs only care about their internal incentives. If the LLM gets the ticket out of someone's area of responsibility faster, why do they care if that makes it harder for someone else?
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