Layoffs are getting Wild (ft. Big A)

So, right now there's been tons of layoffs happening. The last big four that I can think of are Facebook, ClickUp, Web Flow, and Cloudflare. And each one of them are citing AI. And honestly, I'm not uh really good at the business side of things. And so, today I'm bringing on with me Big A. If you're not familiar with Big A, you can always go check out his YouTube videos or the video that me and him even did together just not too long ago. But today, I wanted to go through four layoffs of increasing absurdities. And I wanted to hear his thoughts kind of more from a business angle because typically on, you know, on this channel, we're we're pretty deep into tech. And so having somebody that's not necessarily on the tech side, but on the business side can help kind of think through some of the problems. And honestly, some of the insights that he brought, I've never even once thought of before. I'm like, I'm still reeling from just like, oh my gosh, this even makes it worse. Or, hey, this just makes it so ridiculous to think this way. All right, so I hope you enjoy this. Okay, so today I have Atriok with me. he is going to kind of help me reason through maybe more of the business side of all these layoffs. Uh, and so I've kind of ordered these layoffs, if there is a Yeah, that's true. Is there even a reason reason here at all? But I've ordered these layoffs from kind of least surprising to most surprising and each one gets more egregious in a certain dimension one after another. So it will get it will get rather wild towards the end. And so the first one I wanted to talk about is this Facebook one. And so starting at about 5 minutes and 10 seconds into some leaked audio, we hear Mark Zuckerberg talk about why he's doing what he's doing with AI. To give a little bit of preface, it has come out obviously that he's recording everybody's device. He says, "Hey, we have super smart people that work here. We have the highest IQ. I know much I know a lot of IQ. We have the highest." And so he he goes and says this and then right here he says something very surprising. Listen, knowing the physics of the situation is that that stuff is going to leak. So I I think you will to um we're just going to have to navigate that. It's going to be a little bit different on a thing by thing basis in terms of how we communicate, but I I actually think it is like not strategically in your interest for us to communicate everything like in all. So, if you got to the point where he says it's not in your strategic interest for us to communicate everything, what he's referring to is he doesn't want to tell his employees why he's recording their uh motions. Yeah. Because it's not strategic for it to leak. cuz it might leak and it's for their best interest. I'm only looking out for you. That's That's And so then a day later they fire 8,000 people. That's a really insane line of thought. Mark Zuckerberg, do you know he's also been doing the uh he he recorded his own his own data and made like a Zuck CEO AI that you could ask questions to. Did you see that? No, I didn't. Okay, that's I did not see this. Okay, that I mean to me that's like kind of you have to have some level of psychosis to believe that if you take only your data your 50% answer is good enough. That just feels kind of nuts. Uh yeah, this is pretty I mean I I hadn't heard this leaked audio but that is a uh interesting way to phrase it to see you as the savior or as the nice guy on this situation that you're looking out for their interests. Is there is there any like because his whole argument goes something along the lines of if the competitors get how we're doing things, they're going to be able to beat us to it because AI is the most competitive thing in the universe right now. There's arguably no more competitive landscape than AI in the history of mankind. Sure. I I guess what I'm saying is I think it it's not like it's a seems to be a big secret. If you're recording all your employees data, it's because you're trying to train an AI to do those things. What's the What is the big Everyone understands what you're doing. It's not I we can't possibly tell you that and then tomorrow you do a layoff. He's not he's not a dark mastermind. It's pretty obvious. So yeah, I don't I don't I don't know. I actually didn't even think about it from that one-dimensional angle of like, oh, you just recorded every single thing they did. Yeah, that's the value is you can recreate what the employee does and then sell that intelligence to another or or cut the jobs. What's the what other benefit could there be? I do think one thing he was right about though, he said in that leaked call that, you know, everything we do leaks and us watching this proves that he's right. He is correct that like if he says whatever he says is going to get out there because I don't think he has a lot of uh institutional loyalty right now. All the all the leaks coming out of Meta are that the vibes there are truly atrocious prior to this layoff, but especially post. People just feel like it's every man for themselves. It's uh siloed departments grabbing whatever power they can and trying to make whatever money they can out of this this uh this machine. But there's no like larger mission they seem to be pushing forward. All right. So, this is a I I told you I was going to do this towards the end, but I actually want to hear it now, which is is there like they say that this is going to be kind of dystopian that everybody gets fired yet Meta's making record profits in this kind of situation given Meta's current outlook. Should they be able to, you know, I know that's kind of a loaded question, right? Do you think it's wise, good, or they are allowed to fire 8,000 of their staff while making record profits? And is there like a good justifiable reason like a reason that would make the average person not feel a bit cringed to buy it? No, I think I mean it's a loaded question in that the safe YouTube answer is like of course not you know never they have profits never but I'll try to steal man it a little bit just because I want people to understand. I think what makes here here's one thing I'll say about Meta and I'm not a defender of Zuckerber or Meta here but they do a a remarkably generous severance. I I don't know the exact data on me, but it's like one of the best packages if you're if you're getting laid off. And so I think what makes this particularly hard on people is that the job market broadly is so negative. It's so down. Normally a company, I mean, theoretically, they should be able to hire and fire who they want. It's it's like if they lose great talent because they have a bad culture where they're hiring and firing a lot, that's their loss and the great talent's going to go elsewhere. Like I really the idea that it should be restricted or that you know they could hire a bunch of people for one division and then not be able to lay them off to hire somewhere else. It's like they should be allowed to do that. It's just that the broader context is that these hyperp profofitable companies are laying people off into an environment where there's no other jobs or there there's like there's a lot fewer jobs for their skill set. So that's what makes it feel so egregious and negative. I I think in a different higher growth environment it would seem like this is just a stupid idea from Meta. They're going to take a big L from this. But instead, it feels like more like the employees are taking the big L because they have nowhere else to go. So, I I'm it's a I think that's my nuanced answer. I do think that um you know, some of this is is postcoid overhang where everyone hired a ton and now they're like slowly trying to rightsize that and that is going to be layoffs even if they're having profit. And it's worth saying that some companies can have record profit one quarter and then soon after be in a much worse position and they're trying to get ahead of that. I don't know if Meta is one of those. They have such a cash printer with all the social media companies. Yeah, they're actually uh I believe 2027, early 2027 or late 2026, they're set to overtake Google for advertisement revenue. Oh my god. Yeah. So, I So, I think they're going to keep on making money. I don't think that's the uh I think it's more of where they're putting their money is what they're kind of banking on here. Yeah. And again, it does seem to be, you know, you talked about AI layoffs. What it seems to be with these big hyperscaler companies, not they're laying people off because they can replace the job with AI. They're laying people off because they need more money to spend on AI capex. They're like they're spending absurd amounts of money on these buildouts of data centers and that is where they're trying to find cost savings and so they're they're cutting staff to make that more palatable to investors which I think is probably the worst possible reason to do it. But again, I think this is a tough one to defend, but in a different environment, it would be like more of their loss than the employees. No, it is interesting about the competitive landscape. I So, I haven't heard a lot of these internal discussions about Meta being a terrible place to work. I just I've always just made that assumption from my, you know, my earlier interactions while in the valley. It was uh there was a lot of rumors going around about their company that were shocking to say the least. And so I would not be surprised if that is in fact the case that they're breeding a more and more toxic culture that it kind of sounds like Microsoft. If you ever seen the org chart for Microsoft, it's just a big like kind of triangle with guns pointed at everybody because it's just like everyone's just land grabbing. That's all they do. They don't actually build stuff. They just land grab. So when I was at Nvidia, uh I sat next to a bunch of these engineers and they would talk about the Facebook brand tax. It was before it was Meta. And the idea was like if any of them were to accept a job at Meta, they would have to get paid more for the same role. Like they have to pay extra because people don't want to work there. Not just for the vibes, but for the like the there's like a stink of working at of of Facebook or Meta. It's like the inverse Apple would pay historically lower because people loved it. Exactly. It's the inverse Apple. And so, uh, I feel like that's only gotten worse with time. It's becoming meta and, you know, the the decline of I'd say their I think there was a time when they seemed to be a bit of a more of a forward-thinking company where social media was less hated by everybody, but now it's now it's it's tough to sell. Yeah. I don't I don't think you can win easily. Like even Mark Zuckerberg's rehab from Lizard Man to Tanned Lizard Man. Like even that is just you know you like him more, but you know that is still like in the grand scheme of liking it is still uh very disproportional. All right, so I wanted to get that one out of the way cuz everyone kind of knows about this. This happened weeks ago and for me this was or weeks ago. Gosh, that was actually eight days ago. Time is flying. Every week is a month right now. But uh so with that kind of in mind, I I wanted to lay that because that is the most reasonable of all the layoffs that I could find. Really, you're probably thinking that can't that can't be true. For something cuz that's 8,000 layoffs on a quarter of record profits from one of the biggest companies in the world. So I'm excited to see how it goes from here. Yet again, this is called ClickUp. Uh, I actually have no idea what ClickUp does. It's like a productivity soft. It's like a sauna or something, right am I correct? I assume I assumed it's some sort of it's it's some product. I just thought it was a productivity software. That's I mean I always think that the most productive AI workspace. I don't I actually don't know what those things mean anymore cuz there's so many of them. I'm like is this just like Google Meets with like Clippy? Like what exactly do you mean here? They say they're going to reduce headcount by 22%. The business is the strongest it's ever been. So again, they're saying we're making money. Like things are fantastic. We're absolutely doing it. It's super great. And so here's the two big contentions. Okay. So the first thing he says down low is that he wants to make the 100x organization. He wants to restructure and make his or have a 100x the output. Okay. Also, he's going to be introducing $1 million salary bands for those that can make giant AI impact. Here's the thing that I I I I don't believe about these statements and I want you to just try to explain to my P-sized brain. Uh so if you have 365 days in a year, Uhhuh. if you were to make yourself 100x efficient, that means in 3.65 days, you can do what you did in one year. Now, obviously, if you're in Europe, that means in about 1.8 days is what you do in a year. Good joke. Europe joke. Got him. Uh no. Uh or maybe I got myself on this one. Can't really tell. But the thing is is when I hear these statements from these people like this is why we're firing people because we're going to make 100x work. Even if let's pretend you could actually make all the work you would work in a year appear in 3.65 days. Is it even physically possible to make the decisions you make over that course of a year boiling down to 3.65 days? Uh can you actually even like think through problems that fast? That is a a problem for someone smarter than me because it's not happening. That's 0% chance that they're 100xing output. No company's reported any level of productivity gain like this. I think if you go back I mean to his first line they all say that. That's the thing is that yes that is the the standard opener is we just had our best month ever. Things are so strong. Don't worry that we're laying off a lot of bad people. Sometimes I would say in like Meta's case they are in a good financial position when they're doing layoff but many times companies will say this when they are not when they are declining especially if they're I mean this is a again I'm not an expert on what ClickUp does but if it's in the software as a service sector all those companies are getting hammered all of those companies are stock down uh competitive pressure investors pulling out because they're worried about AI eating their lunch. So, the idea that this guy is like the the super strong business who's not worried about any of that, but we're just happening to lay off a quarter of our company. I I don't know. I I would I would more easily attribute this to uh business worries trying to get cost under control than anything like, oh, we have a 100x in the pipeline that no one else has seen. And yeah, and again, I I mean, I don't know. It reminds me of like um Twitter when Twitter would hire a bunch of engineers and then the product wouldn't change at all. Like what is ClickUp doing that is what what is the what is their plan? Yeah. For the 100x what is their what are they 100xing? Like well yeah even if you could 100x what are you even 100xing like that would mean oh I accidentally invented search that's as good as Google. I also did Netflix. I also did Yeah. We built everything. We built the whole universe actually. Yeah. It's not like a factory where you're increasing the output 100x. It's a it's a product that is you have to design something new or important feature. And I don't know what they're doing with ClickUp that is so innovative or different. Yeah, I don't get it. But maybe. Yeah. So, for me, even if I took this and we reduced it down to like a 10x this slice right here, I don't even know if that's possible to do 10x the amount of output in, you know, 36.5 days that you would do in a year. Because again, for me, it's just like good decisions take time. So even if theoretically you could and I honestly I've never even thought about your point to uh that it's not a factory. You can't just simply you're not increasing output of a physical good like what does it even mean? So like but even this at 36.5 days like I can't even envision a world in which this is true. Like I don't know how someone would make those you'd have to be so like such a good downhill skier on decision-m to be able to ride out that wave cuz you're going to make one wrong decision and then you're just straight in the trees, right? because you're going so fast. Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely. You need a truly world-class executive team with a really sharp vision. And I don't think this guy's that guy, but I'm not I'm not an expert on ClickUp. Maybe they are. I'm not gonna You're not that guy, pal. I don't. Okay. So, I say I So, you're probably thinking, "Okay, how could this one be as ridiculous as the Mark Zuckerberg one?" Yeah, like the 100x thing is pretty ridiculous. Sure. Well, seven days before they released this video. Watch it. So, he's walking with his boss. They see AI dancing. They're confused and then the employee is like, "What is this?" Boss is gone. Now dancing with the AI, he's confused. Boss kicks the cup and splashes it into the employes face. Crazy. What the literally like like literally one week before firing everyone from AI, they released a video like, "By the way, the boss lets the employee hold the bag." Like, that is actually I I have not I'm surprised I haven't seen that. I'm surprised my chat hasn't sent me that. That is horrible. Yeah, this was bad even before they did the layoff. Like when you see this like that is of it's pretty tongue and cheek. Like some some companies could get away with that. Like I'd expect someone like George H. Hot who's been largely uh and Tiny who's been largely going against a lot of the AI stuff despite making AI processing in small data centers. They're like, "No, a lot of this stuff is wrong. If they made this video, I'd be like, "Oh, I totally get it." Sure. But this is wild to release right before laying off a bunch of people. That No, that is I mean I'm not kidding. That's one of the worst I've ever seen. That's crazy. That literally is the CEO kicking a couple in his eyes in his face. That's Can you believe I'm about to make it even more crazy? You I thought what was going to happen is that they were going to cut again and then the employee would be dancing with him and like then the CEO got him on board and it'd be like kind of cheesy, but it's like that's the idea. The fact that he turns around and [ __ ] kicks him is crazy. Oh, never I never saw it coming. I never saw it coming. That is uh that's I'm on guard. Uh yeah, and when this happened, literally for days, people are like, "Dude, you just released a video of destroying your employees with AI." Like, what is this? How could you do this? I mean, they better hope. A CEO like this needs to hope that AI is going to make their five remaining employees super productive because if not, nobody's going to want to work there, bro. If if you know if the shoe is ever even slightly on another foot and it's more of a um employees market like this is this is a horrible culture. No, nobody's going to choose this unless they absolutely need it for their paycheck and even then they're just a mercenary. Like just even back to the 100x thing. What I hear this what I really hear is, hey, you're working when you're at work. When you go home to your kids, you're working. When you're about to go to bed, you better be kicking off agents and working. Like you better be work. You better wake up at three in the morning and make sure your agents are still running because when you wake up by 6, I expect three more days of effort coming out. Like it it would have to be such a toxic culture going on there. Well, I mean the CEO bus has to film the Tik Toks. Like they're all they're both they're all staying busy. Okay. True. True. I mean that's that's hard. I know how hard it is to film a good Tik Tok. That's that's true. All right. So this next one I'm surprised it gets worse than that. That's literally one of I'm not kidding. That's one of the worst things I've ever seen to make that video and then lay off a fourth year company. It's crazy. All right, I think this one's worse. Okay, so Web Flow cuts I forget how many people they cut. Uh they cut a good percentage of people. I know there's a number somewhere. Okay, and someone responds on LinkedIn tagging both the CEO and their boss saying the following. Hey, Linda Tong, I'm locked out of my Web Flow laptop since 7 a.m. this morning. Rumor has it we've been laid off, but I don't have an email or any message to confirm that. And I actually said I don't think Linda would lay people off again without letting them know first, especially if they're on a closed work permit in a foreign country and it would mean relocating their whole family. I'm certain she would have the dignity to let folks know in a better way given the last debacle. Tell me it's not true. Also, take my manager. Do I have any news? Do I have a job? And then hours later, the company Web Flow releases this document where she says, "Yeah, we made a difficult decision to restructure Web Flow and we're laying off a bunch of people." And then 24 hours after that, she has still made no public announcement and people have no idea. Oh, wow. They're just like, "Oh, I guess I guess I'm fired." Wait, when you say people, you mean employees? The employees still don't know. The employees did not know for hours upon like there's 24 hours for some people that they didn't even know they were fired. They just couldn't work. And so then they're like, "Oh, I guess I guess I'm fired." Uh, what is the how big is Webflow? I don't know what Web Flow does, but this has to be the just for me. This was even worse because the other one was bad just by pure looks of it. This one is she's done this once before and fired people without letting them know, which by the way is illegal in virtually every country. Even at will California, that's actually illegal. You can't fire someone, especially for European employees or anything. She's going to get absolutely and the fact that this person's like, "Hey, I'm here on a work permit." It's called a they called it a uh closed, it's I forget what it's exact term, but it's like a closed work permit, meaning that you can only work for one company. And so if they fire you, you have to move away. And so it's like this person doesn't even know he's getting fired, locked out. All these people don't know, and she's just not responding. Okay, so I didn't know um the size of Web Flow based on this story. I thought they were really small, but they have up to 1,600 people globally. I don't know, prior to this layoff, that that is too big of a company to behave like this. You you like I mean, it wouldn't be good for anyone, but if it was a very small startup, I could see like maybe they just didn't have the funding or it ran out or whatever. This is crazy. This again, I I guess it it just shows to show that the job market is in a rough spot right now because you wouldn't be able to get away with this. Like, previously, this would just be absolutely death sentence for your culture in terms of people wanting to work there. I mean, it's it's it's like there's taking advantage of a moment where people are really hungry for a job, but that that is not an inevitability. Yes. I I'm just shocked that this is not even the first time. Like, how do you even operate as a company? Like, how do you get away with this once? I I would assume you'd get like sued into oblivion by so many people just for it to happen like again. Like, how do you make the same mistake twice? Yeah. I don't get what I don't get is uh it's not that hard to do the the the corporate layer of this to put out the blog post ahead of time to tell people you're reading like send the mass email like it's not the the bare minimum is not hard and it's not even much to celebrate like the idea that you're going to like surprise people with it is so crazy. It's like uh you know people do this in real life when they don't want to give bad news and they just avoid it and avoid it and avoid like you have to do it you have to say something. This is literally like a kind of like a toxic breakup. Yeah. where they just literally don't talk to you anymore and you're like, "Are we still dating? I don't actually know." Like, uh, that's funny. It that's that's like a bad attitude for someone who's been through a couple rounds of interviews, let alone somebody who works at your company. So, I just found this Yeah. So, I found this one the most egregious of them all, just just due to the fact that it's so direct in kind of like the awfulness of it all cuz the other ones were like indirect, I guess, in some sense, whereas this one is uh in a very direct. we just don't care about you and no matter what you think, we're saying it with our actions like directly. Like the other side of this coin is when companies are way into the whole we're family and everything. I I there's a middle ground where you could just treat someone with respect and understand that it's a job. I I don't it doesn't have to be uh the CEO is your best friend or whatever, but I think there's a middle ground where you tell someone what's going on. Ideally, have some warning on things like this. Ideally, plan ahead so you're not doing things like this. I mean that that would be the ideal. I I I think uh I don't know too much about Web Flow, so I can't say what their business situation is. They could be I mean going under I mean they could be like in a near bankruptcy situation. I I don't I don't know what's going on. So that's true. I don't think they I'm not sure if they said a lot about them making record profits at this point. Uh they're saying how they're you know a big pivot is needed and they need to kind of figure out what they're doing. But I guess from a like from the business side of point, it is a good a good point. Like if you have 1,600 employees, you have the apparatus to do these things, right? You're like you're no longer in that kind of scrappy startup phase where you're like, I have five employees and well, even then it doesn't make any sense. I I'm not sure what the number of employees makes sense where you could make this mistake, but it's certainly not. I just mean like if it was a small enough team, you would have like no department for like handling this. And maybe it just doesn't I I I I'm not I'm trying to I'm I'm bend over backwards to give him some charity. I did look it up. I think Web Flow is a no code website builder. So no one I think they are probably really struggling that that is getting completely destroyed by I mean I know that the one of the the largest market cap falls of a big company recently was Wix which does the same thing. They lost like 50% of their value. So all these like no code website builders are getting eaten by by Claude and and Chad GBT and um yeah I would not be surprised that they they can't raise money anymore and they need to lay off but to to do it without an email is crazy. All right so I show you those those ones because this last one is very surprising but in a in a in a unique way. So this is Cloudflare. Uh if you're not familiar with Cloudflare they do like a third of the internet runs through their infrastructure. they have a very very large infrastructure and he starts off the email saying hey we're gonna uh let go of a effectively 1100 employees okay and we're doing that while Cloudflare's usage of AI has increased more than 600% they're having the best quarters they've ever had things are all headed in a very very positive direction but then they add this at the bottom which I thought was uh interesting at least uh it's important to us that we treat departing team members right and in a way that exceeds what we've seen from other companies we believe acting With empathy isn't about avoiding hard decisions, but rather about how you treat people when those decisions are made. If we are asking our team to be world class, we have to reciprocal. We have a reciprocal obligation to be world class and how we treat them. We are uh pairing the directness of those measures with severance packages that lead the industry. The package for departing employees will include the equivalent of their full base pay through the end of 2026. This was in April. Healthcare coverage is different across the globe. If you're in the United States, we'll continue to provide support through the end of the year. We are also vesting equity for departing team members through August 15th, so they receive stock beyond their departure date. And if departing team members haven't hit their one-year cliff, we are going to wave those and vest their PR-rated equity through August as well. That's pretty good. That's that's pretty awesome. To be honest, that's worth celebrating. I got no problem with that. So, this is where I want to ask the same question again, which is, is it okay to let go of employees while having record profit? Yeah, I think it goes back to my original answer again. I think most people would be super happy with this in an environment where it was easier to find a larger uh find find a job with their same skill set. The fact that it's not is not necessarily Cloudflare's fault. Again, I I I can't I think the idea that every company has to be hamstrung to every employment decision forever is will lead to some negative outcomes long term. So I think I'm more broadly on a societal level. I want the country to head towards a a growing economy so there's more jobs available rather than have to chain everyone to one company that could be failing or growing. That's my broader idea. I do think that in these cases um I think this is actually the best example. I'm literally I think this is April through the end of the year is a pretty significant severance package. full pay plus vest and cliff that I don't know. I'm sure I'll get some flack in the comments, but that seems to be like pretty good that that that I think what it does it maintains the culture that allows you to continue to hire top talent. That is like, okay, I think I'll be okay to work there because you're not going to screw me over if the wins go a different way and you have to change this department or whatever. That's that's not bad. Yes. And the the re and by the way, if you look at their stock, I thought this was kind of important. Their net earnings is negative 22 million this last quarter. So, it's not like they're um So, there you go. Net income. So, unlike Facebook, they're losing money and yet they still managed to find Yeah, that's crazy. Yet, they still managed to do like a pretty dang good job uh I guess employee-wise. And so, the reason why I'm bringing up this one specifically is that this is the first company that I actually believe when they say, "Hey, AI is making us make some new decisions and so we are going to be doing some level of a pivot." Because the reason why I say that is that they're actually putting their, at least from my perception, again, I'm not I'm not a business guy. I like codes. I like the ones and zeros, as they say. Uh they're putting their money where their mouth is. They're saying, "Hey, yes, like we like the people that we're letting go. We're just simply changing what we're doing. So therefore, we want to do right by those people because we didn't fire them for bad behavior. We fired them for like accidentally being on the wrong side of the fence during some sort of economic change, I guess." Yeah. Again, I I I it's I'm glad you brought this. It's actually a really interesting segment because I haven't seen these things and this blog post is one of the first ones I've read where it feels like there's a there's a a strong connection between the words and the actions that feels like there's some followthrough. I I'm I'm generally pretty impressed. And Cloud is one of the uh the software companies that has like you mentioned the stock that has done pretty well out of this. If if you scroll back up, there was something I wanted to say about the um yeah, this. So, I I I'm I'm quite sure that they're using AI more than ever. All these tech companies are, and I'm sure there is some connection here, but it's funny that they kind of are required to say this right now. You have to say AI is going up when you do the layoffs. So, it seems like you are um in no trouble. A good example of this is Intuitit uh Turboex just had a same announcement where they did a big layoff, but they said specifically this is not for AI. there is no AI related to this because Intuit is scared of AI eating Turboax's lunch. And when they said that, they're stuck cratered because it's like, oh, you're laying people off and there's no AI. You're just failing. You're just in a bad spot. And they got completely punished. So, it's like they're almost forced to be like, we're doing these layoffs. It's because of AI. We understand it. We're ahead of the game. Um, there's this song and dance you have to do. I'm not sure CloudFare is doing this. Again, I wish I knew more about Cloud for a specific business, but um it does feel like there's a little bit of that in there. But I I again, I commend them for it's in their best interest long term to not be a place that people hate to work or are afraid to work or don't want to work. As long as we believe human talent has value, which I still do obviously, uh you you want to build a culture where that matters. Okay. The followup question I have which I I don't personally have a great answer but I I get this one every single time which is okay then why couldn't they have repurposed the 1100 employees like they're saying hey we're firing all these people and then a lot of them like Cloudflare also hired 1100 interns approximately I think 1,11 interns did they really just in the last little bit? Yeah. And so why couldn't they repurpose the workforce? Like why let everybody go? Why not just redo this? Is there any risk? Because I I think I have some answers to that one, but I'm not actually really sure. Is there a world where it's better to keep the employees and attempt to retrain them, or is there a better reason why you should fire people and hire new people? Listen, I'm steel manning here, right? I have I have like three employees and I retrain them to do a variety of different things. We're we're not Yes. But we're not the same. I don't have I have 1100 employees that I'm trying to shift around. I guess the the idea would be I mean it is sort of difficult to take someone who's entrenched in a certain role for many many years and put them on something else rather than hiring someone who's an expert at that role. That that that seems to be um pretty obvious on its face. Again, I it's not that I necessarily think the decision couldn't work. It's just that you have to balance it with the fact that all your employees, if they feel there's a culture where they're going to get cut at a moment's notice, will not give you their best effort. They're not excited to work there. And so that's the balance is yet is if you can find a way to retrain them, then you've created a culture where it's like, oh, this is a this is a company that truly actually values my experience and my being part of this mission. And when you do something like this, you're undermining that. So that's the balance they have to strike. Again, I don't know how diff you're the guy on the programming side. I wouldn't know how different someone who's like doing one thing versus doing AI related tasks. I what is the skill set crossover is it take a lot of retraining? I I couldn't answer that but I'm just saying like yeah well I've I've said this a lot which is you've you've probably you've at least I'm sure you've at least read this like in 2022 2023 people are like hey you better use AI now because if you don't you're going to be left behind. In 2024 came across they said the exact same. 2025 they said the exact same. If you look at how people used AI in 2024, there's almost like no overlap to how you use it today. Like there's a very funny tweet that I know I I have pulled up somewhere, but it effectively goes like, if I want to get JSON output, like structure to JSON output from a model, I have to threaten to kill myself to make it happen. And this was an OpenAI employee saying this. Like just the world we live in is vastly different than it was 2 years ago. And so this idea that oh all of your like if you don't go right now you will be completely skillless and you're not going to be able to do all these things. Well no it's just like it changes so fast and in such ways you don't expect that it's just like to me I don't see like I see both sides. I think there's way less risk hiring, 1100 people that you know fit the role versus attempting to train, 1100 people that you don't know could fit the role because some people just are very successful in one and can become very unsuccessful in another even though it's super super close. And sometimes it's like shocking how like that can happen. You're like this is the same thing pretty much. How are you not successful? And so to me it makes sense that even if you could theoretically in this world retrain, 1100 people, which you have to add an additional what 100 people to help like facilitate the training, like even though you'd have to expand all this to actually make this possible, your hit rate, my guess is going to be different than hiring the person that can already do it. And that's why this makes sense. Like at least that's that's kind of like my argument. And so it's like sure you could retrain and I don't think there's a great cost or honestly I don't even think it's that great of a cost. I don't even know if it's seven and a half months of severance cost to retrain all these people to be excellent. They already were excellent. They have a good track record of it. So that I mean there's many conflicting feelings that they're spending quite a bit on severance and if you took that money and spent it on retraining you might have a much better outcome that everyone feels better about. So I think that's a really good point. I will say that like if they're replacing 1100 employees globally with 1100 interns that's a massive from a business side that's a massive cost savings because the interns way cheaper. So that part of it could be that they're just like getting rid of senior employees or like top you know mid-level high level that cost a lot and they're trying to save money on interns. You're right basically one to one. That is a Yeah, that's an interesting uh Yeah, that probably does change. So it does sound like what they're saying is they believe that a AI plus intern can be the exact same as experienced person. Without AI. Yeah. Exactly. They seem they're making a bet that they can undercut the cost of experienced talent. Which is by the way I hopefully not true. I think this is like one of the big question marks in the job market right now. Obviously a lot of companies are trying it, but I haven't seen concrete evidence that it's working yet. It seems like a big question mark. So maybe you're closer to me. Yeah, I I got I got the perfect tweet for you. You're going to love this. Okay, this is Mitchell Mitchell Hashimoto. If you don't know who he is, he is the one that created uh Terraform and Hashi Corp. Uh my favorite joke, of course, is that he named his last name after his company, Hashi Corp. Crazy. I can't believe he did that. Uh really committed. But he writes this somewhat long tweet and it's it's very impressive. He says, "I've got an agent in a loop optimizing a renderer with the go with the goal to minimize frame times uh and test to measure. It got times down from 88 milliseconds to 2 milliseconds. Meaning like you know in a video game you present the video game every 16 milliseconds, 8 milliseconds depending on your refresh rate. He's saying, "Hey, he had one that was at 88 milliseconds to go from compute the world, put it onto the screen." And so that's how fast it was going. So that would be approximately 11 frames per second, 12 frames per second down to 2 milliseconds. So now we're talking what? 500 frames a second. So a lot faster. So pretty fast. A lot faster. And allocations went from 150k to 500. This sounds good, right? Wrong. This is exactly why Asian psychosis is a big [ __ ] problem. So he talks about how he wrote this all in go to kind of see how far he could take something. He's already written a terminal before. He's really really good at it. Then he said, I kickstarted the Ralph loop. Ralph is just something that keeps on running until some goal is effectively it's just a it's literally just a while loop. While not done, try again. Keep doing it. Right. Yeah. To bring the frame times down. I told it it can't modify input data structures or public API or tests. Uh, but it can do anything else it wants to do. 4 hours later, around $350 spent. This is the results. 88 to 1.5, $150 to 500. Incredible, right? No. My handwritten renderer I ported has frame times of 20 microsconds, zero allocations in the update path. This is the problem with psychosis and lacking systems understanding. If you don't understand the system, you're going to accept this is an incredible result. If you understand the system, you'll see better solutions immediately and can do roughly 75x better. People who blindly trust agent output are in the former camp. They're sheeple overdrinking from a fountain of mediocrity. It is about so and so when he says this, it's just like that's the problem about quote unquote 1100 interns is that they don't have the experience to know what is like what is what could be better. What is the Okay, I see. And so that's like the huge danger is that this is kind of why I've I've said that we are in the worst software ever. we have the most software ever and the worst software ever is because so many people can now create stuff but they don't have that like fundamental understanding of no actually 2 milliseconds is bad. This is going to slow the whole system down because it's just taking so much of your time your CPU whatever you're doing like it's just going to be way more resource hungry. You can't keep on having resource hungry stuff. I would imagine if you compound that across all the different features and everyone doing this, you end up with a pretty buggy or slow or inefficient piece of total software. Yeah, that that that makes sense to me. Yeah. And so that's kind of like the interesting idea is like can you can you agentize experience? I don't know if you can because somebody has to make the call what right looks like. And so if you don't even know what right looks like, this would sound amazing, right? Like if I were to tell this to anybody, they'd go, "Oh, that's really good results." That's like that's massively faster, right? That's like 40 times faster. And you're like, well, actually, no, it's massively slower than what it could be. Yeah. It's an interesting thought experiment. I mean, cuz an intern before this couldn't do anything close to that. I mean, this is like this is it's an improvement in the skill for the intern, right? But it's a degrading of the skill of the expert. So, it's interesting. I don't I I guess I I I don't know how it shakes out. I I here's the opposing viewpoint, which is it was also 350 bucks in four hours of work. Which is the better trade-off. Well, I wonder how long it took him as an expert to do the to do his better version with the 20 microsconds. Yeah, actually that is actually an interesting point. What would be faster? That I don't that I don't know. I should follow up on that one. But it's kind of an interesting thought experiment, which is okay, so this costs about the same as an expert programming, but it only took four hours. So maybe it's quote unquote better because you get better results, you don't get best results or you don't get great results or maybe not even considered good results with compound like you know if you have a hundred things doing this then it really sucks. Yeah, it's tough. I again you're more the expert on this than me. The people that I've talked to that work in programming say that for anything where the best doesn't matter. It's been such a game changer. Like if it's like an internal tool or if it like it it's been awesome, but everything else it it can add a lot of uh problems or complexity or security issues or or etc. etc. But so, you know, I think Cloudfare is is playing a a game. They they don't know yet what the result will be, but they're taking the risk. I think they're incentivized by the market. I think a lot of investors are pushing companies to just take this risk before we know what'll happen. And uh we'll have to see. I I'm not enough of an expert on on where AI currently is and who the best people using it are to say, but it seems to me like people are a little ahead of their skis. Yeah. I The reason why I wanted to bring up these four companies and kind of walk through this with you is a I wanted to hear someone that thinks more on the business side of things, but also it is to highlight a there's a lot of difficulties with a lot of the jobs, but not everybody is bad on these things. Like we can, you know, you could have probably guessed Facebook would have been bad. Yeah. you would have been surprised at some of like the insane optics of ClickUp or just the crazy behavior of Web Flow. But also, I want to try to give a a bit of props to people who I think are at least attempting to navigate this new world the best they can. Yeah. Again, all none of these companies individually create a system they're in and they are trying to navigate it. I do. At the end of the day, if a company is doing what Cloudfire is doing and offering a truly generous severance package that sets someone up to find a new job, then I'm like, I'm not going to I have different targets to aim at than, you know, I'm not going to spend my time yelling at that CEO when there's a guy making Tik Toks of him throwing ice in someone's face. Like, you know, that's a worse spot to be in. So, yeah, I think that that was that's very interesting. Thanks for sharing these uh these examples. I didn't know them. We have to talk about something other than layoffs prime. Every time we we meet up, we're talking about layoffs and Okay. Find something that's less depressing. I'll find something less depressing and we'll pull it in. But uh that was interesting. All right. Well, thank you for uh joining us. What is uh where can people find you? Yeah, check me out at uh YouTube.com/biga. I do like daily uh news and financial updates. I used to work at Nvidia and Twitch and then uh went full-time on this a few years back. It's fun to cover. Uh Twitters. Are you active on the Twitters? No, not really. My tweets are terrible. Don't check me out on there. That's okay. Thanks for the YouTube. Twitter's a refined taste. Okay. All right, Brian. Thanks, bro. Good talking to you.