In the words of the great Bobby Ball...
..."Stands back in amazement!".
AI layoffs backfire as cutting staff doesn't cut it, firms warned
Bosses betting on AI to slash headcount and boost margins are discovering an uncomfortable truth: the strategy isn't working. New research from Gartner lays out the problem in stark terms. The analyst firm surveyed 350 global businesses - all with annual revenues above $1 billion, all piloting or deploying intelligent automation …
-
-
This post has been deleted by its author
-
Wednesday 6th May 2026 18:41 GMT AndrueC
Re: Explains the new Register design
I had to check my settings and they are still set to 'Image Lite'. Lol. I dread to think how it renders without that setting. 90% images perhaps?
And why are the articles only using the middle 50% of my screen? Has The Register bought shares in The Colour WhiteTM?
-
-
-
Thursday 7th May 2026 08:37 GMT NiteDragon
Re: They won't listen
Thing is, AI and staff layoffs still mean shareprice hikes, and while that's true - even exec who know this is all a sham will do it anyway if "line goes up" now and there's plausible deniability for a possible crash. The loss of a lot of expertise (or the entire company) is a "little-person problem".
It helps that if you gamble away little-person jobs and then jump the company out of it's spiral just before everyone else when the bubble bursts, that you look like you increased company value and then 'saved it' even though it was you that risked it in the first place which looks great on the CV and helps you go on to potentially ruin/risk bigger companies later.
-
-
Thursday 7th May 2026 03:45 GMT coredump
Re: "Many CEOs turn to layoffs to demonstrate quick AI returns"
Thing is, I'd wager some (many? most?) of these CEO types probably know so-called AI probably isn't the path to big returns, at least not directly or on its own.
But that doesn't actually matter. AI is the hype fueling the momentum of the stock market, it's the reason (read: excuse) for the tech supply chain enormous price hikes (especially storage and memory), and it's a lever (read: crutch) they can use to cut even more headcount than they normally would.
What's that? Product quality is suffering? Schedules are slipping? So what, they say, it's cheaper now. I'm reminded of Dick Jones from _Robocop_: "Who *cares* if it works!!"
Cutting costs is pretty much always something the executives will seize upon, if for no more obvious reason than it takes encumbered expenses off the books. They might not (almost certainly do not) understand the tech, but they understand slashing jobs and payroll.
-
-
Thursday 7th May 2026 05:49 GMT Bebu sa Ware
agentic AI, robotics, advanced automation - designed, eventually, to run themselves.
Sounds like one of those historical rhymes.
"New inventions and processes were introduced with extraordinary rapidity, and in agriculture as well as in industry the real costs of production in terms of human labour were rapidly cut down.There was a great saving of labour through the more intensive mechanisation of industry ; and a new word " rationalisation " was coined in order to find a name for what was felt to be a new phase in the history of the world economic system."
— The Intelligent Man's Guide Through the World Crisis, G D H Cole, Gollanz 1932 p18.
I seem to recall that all worked out rather well.
-
Thursday 7th May 2026 10:04 GMT pimppetgaeghsr
It's simply white shirts conveniently finding another reason to flog workers and boast their positions and incompetence. Nothing new. So what if they told the company to cut its workforce in half and spend billions on tokens. No one white shirt can ever be held accountable for the wider corporate group-think, there's safety in numbers. If they job hop often enough too they are never there when the poo hits the fan and aren't at a company long enough to be accountable for the previous poor decisions.
