XinCTO/Gen AI improvements, fire people or grow?

Created Fri, 27 February 2026 07:00:00 +0000
516 words 3 min
AI management

Gen AI improvements, fire people or grow?

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Jack lays off 40% of his workforce (we’re talking about 4,000 people), why does he do this?

What are the impacts of such a difficult-to-swallow announcement for its history, this is about drama because he didn’t have to think much beforehand. Removing positions when they are not needed from an economic perspective is quite confusing. I quickly conclude that his goal is not the growth of his company, his solution, or his product, but rather a reduction in staff to cut costs. But then what is the point and is it ultimately the solution?

He announces this by stating that the company is doing well, customers are flocking, sales are increasing, and profitability is rising. And yet Jack, why do you do this? Certainly, he explains to all those who will be laid off that they will have a cool period for the next 20 weeks, but 20 weeks goes very fast, it’s not like in France with its 18 to 24 months of unemployment policy, there you’ll need to move fast for you and your family. Even more, finding a similar job when your previous employer chose a machine over you, knowing that you trained it yourself, I imagine that won’t be easy.

So Jack will use bots and generative AI to replace people in his organization. Not to go faster, not to innovate more, not to solve problems, no, just to fire employees. This man doesn’t seem to like people very much.

Generative AI is a wonderful tool, stumbling (we were learning its basics in school in the 90s), perfectible, but a wonderful tool. It simplifies subjects and allows for repetitive tasks to be completed. These tasks, however, were built by humans, and often the people who execute them know very well how to improve them, at least within their scope. But why not push employees to use these new tools more effectively, with better guidance and training? This will also be the case with all future developments, and there will definitely be more of them. I’ve been dabbling in these subjects for 35 years now and we learn something new every day, sometimes for the better and often for the worse.

So yes to increase production capacity with tools (in this case AI), but no to remove people who could bring complementary value, further train the tools, do control or a multitude of other things. It’s such a chance to be able so simply to add capacity to produce that it would be a shame to miss out on.

I wish my friend Jack won’t need to hire in the future, that could get complicated. But most importantly, I hope his current or future clients won’t hold it against him, for my part it’s a veto, right now.