Should AI be your boss or your executioner?

Tech giants have turned firing into an art form – unfortunately, it’s abstract, dehumanizing, and tone-deaf.

Is it safe to assume that insecurity over jobs has settled down since the pandemic?

Apparently not, as online payments company Stripe found out to its peril. When making 300 staff redundant last week, the recipients opened their inboxes to see a picture of a duck attached and an incorrect termination date.

It is unclear whether AI generated the image, but what is certain is that no corrective action or follow-up email would make amends for such an absurd and foolish blunder.

As we look on with a sense of bewilderment, how do you think those employees feel?

Stripe is not alone in committing such a faux pas, as tech workers have been on the receiving end of some awkward treatment.

The wildest layoff fails in tech

CEO of online mortgage lender Better.com, Vishal Garg, infamously laid off 900 employees on a Zoom call in December 2021, then criticized the staff for “stealing from our customers” in an anonymous blog post, on the professional network Blind.

The video of the Zoom call, which is still available to watch, is particularly strange, as it came from a position of ego. Garg referred to the previous time he had to lay off staff, which had brought him to tears.

He then posted content criticizing staff for 'quiet quitting,' sparking a massive backlash that led the board of directors to mandate a lengthy leave of absence for Garg.

Another scandalous howler was the pagerduty.com CEO, Jennifer Tajeda in January 2023, who wrote the lengthiest email known to mankind, when she quoted Martin Luther King Jr. in her email laying off 7% of the workforce.

What’s even worse is how she slotted it in as a bullet point amongst an ambivalent email that blew hot and cold in a wind of confusion.

Occasionally, big tech companies like Amazon or Google have infamously deactivated their employees’ passes so they’re unable to access the office that day. Then a follow-up email is sent to wield the axe. You’re practically being ghosted by your company, in a sterile and dehumanizing move.

Tone-deaf firings

Automating processes is nothing new, and we shouldn't be surprised that layoffs are part of the business landscape. Prioritizing speed and efficiency is understandable, but these blind spots, like receiving a Californian duck, seem pretty dire.

Why not automate the process and then do a final human proofread? Companies may see redundancies as a drop in the ocean, however, and such robust reputations in big tech simply bulldoze over these human concerns.

It’s a form of corporate tone deafness and it’s not only happening at the top:

As The Guardian recently reported, gig workers like delivery drivers are getting screwed over too. For example, there’s no logical reason regarding who gets what job, whether it's random allocation, or better GPS location that’s going to grant you the privilege of delivering someone a pizza.

Add to that being logged off the platform for no apparent reason and wild salary fluctuations of 45% either side for a single delivery, and confusion abounds.

Besides being on the receiving end of a digital whip, these workers are not getting any explanation from a human. Waiting outside McDonalds in the car park and then getting ghosted sounds depressing.

Empathy vs efficiency

The gig economy presents the perfect situation for companies to release staff, as no money has to be paid out for layoffs like normally.

A month's severance pay is costly, and a swift switch-off of a contract can save the company the hassle of human interaction and the accountant totting it up on the calculator.

Slimming down the workforce is not always about panic. Microsoft and Meta have announced redundancies ahead of time, in 2025, citing under-performance as the main reason.

On paper, this seems more palatable than mass firings, providing the metrics of performance are transparent.

If AI were responsible for productivity, task completion, and coding efficiency, it could point to a more holistic approach to the layoff process, as well as a human spot-check at the very least.

360 feedback and human oversight should be the way to refine the layoff process, especially with massive global workforces. Microsoft and Meta are certainly capable of scaling this process effectively.

If a human manages to oversee the process with an eye of empathy, then maybe the process with AI can work harmoniously, so the staff aren’t left wondering “What the duck just happened?” However it’s only another blunder away.