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.
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.
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?
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?
I'm not downplaying the LLMs we have now, but none of this got started in 2022 apart from the hype train.
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.
Some of y’all desperately need to stop huffing social media farts.
You are also thinking about companies having thousands of employees and everybody seem to make millions.