Discussion

cmrdporcupine: Ah, this decade's Fucked Company?https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fucked_CompanyActually, who owns that domain? It might be time for a revival.

tptacek: This is a brochure site from "The Alliance for Secure AI", which I am unfamiliar with, but whose site gives "AGI weirdo". Am I misreading?https://secureainow.org/

yakattak: The “explicit” tag on some of these should really be “self reported”. It seems like most companies these days mismanage themselves into layoffs and spin it as AI gains to appease shareholders instead.

driverdan: Most of the numbers are BS. They're regular layoffs with AI used as a scapegoat.

ThatMedicIsASpy: Mismanage or can't pay healthcare premiums anymore (US)?

aavci: Why are some companies listed multiple times?

sublinear: The table shows this better. All have just a single reported layoff "event" except Amazon which has three. Even a decade ago Amazon had many reports on Glassdoor and elsewhere of horrible middle management and employee churn.All these layoffs seem to track better with longer-term decline than AI progress. One would otherwise expect the layoffs to reflect the multiple and much hyped "step change" improvements over the past few years. Instead the chart shows a sudden plateau starting a month ago. Probably when this last made the rounds somewhere else (maybe reddit? too lazy to search).There's also a huge hole in media reporting regarding smaller businesses. That's where you'd expect AI to have the biggest impact. Instead we hear crickets.

tehjoker: It’s really hard to know if these reports are real or marketing. Usually the company is very nonspecific about the kind of positions replaced. I tried reading a few of these articles and it was just buisness speak drivel about strategic repositioning. I have no idea what those displaced employees were doing and if their function was even replaced.There is of course some value in self reported claims but usually a careful researcher would look for other evidence that those claims are sensible.

Avicebron: I don't think so..nothing about these folks backgrounds screams "understands LLMs" https://secureainow.org/staff/. Which to be clear doesn't mean they can't effectively pull together publicly available layoff data in a website.

ronbenton: How do they differentiate AI job loss from normal layoffs that companies are pretending are due to AI to get brownie points from shareholders?

epsniff: Not sure, but Im assuming it's based on self reporting or when companies like Oracle say "we are doing layoffs to manage AI costs"...

ianm218: > One would otherwise expect the layoffs to reflect the multiple and much hyped "step change" improvements over the past few years. Instead the chart shows a sudden plateau starting a month ago.Can you clarify the theory here? So if there is a “step change” you expect companies to do layoffs all at once? How does this account for I.e. diffusion lag or companies deciding if it’s better to chase growth vs. capital efficiency?

sublinear: Yes I would expect a lag, but we've been hearing hype with every model update about huge AI productivity improvements for years now.Despite this, the layoffs are steady over that time with no such spikes. If the goal was ever to cut costs, payroll is never spared since it's too big to ignore. Chasing growth is unlikely when lending and investment is tight. Why invest in other tech companies when you can invest in AI?

jmalicki: Health care premiums are expensive, but even the best insurance I've ever seen was a fraction of the compensation software employees were making.For some fields that's a huge amount of your compensation, but for software engineers it's noticeable but not going to be worth doing layoffs over by themselves.

operatingthetan: It looks vibecoded as can be.

andrekandre: > How do they differentiate AI job loss from normal layoffs that companies are pretending are due to AI to get brownie points from shareholders? why the same way we measure productivity gains from ai: mostly vibes (aka self-reporting)

Rekindle8090: How much do you think healthcare premiums are? Employers are not paying your deductible or out of pocket expenses.

nickvec: Site doesn’t load for me, just hangs indefinitely.

jhack: AI is creating jobs, too, so this information isn’t really valuable if you want a clear image of its impact on employment.