The AI Layoff Bill Is Coming Due, And CTOs Are Going To Pay It Twice
>We keep talking about vibe coding and AI adoption as if the only question is whether developers will be replaced. That framing misses the story. The story is that a specific kind of executive, the one who needs a progressive headline every quarter, has been running an uncontrolled experiment on your workforce. The data on that experiment is now in, and it is not flattering.
https://www.forbes.com/councils/forbestechcouncil/2026/05/14/the-ai-layoff-bill-is-coming-due-and-ctos-are-going-to-pay-it-twice/
@artificial_intel
The leaders still standing in 2030 will be the ones honest enough to put the rehiring cost in the business case before the ink dries on the layoff letter
Here’s a wild idea, how about not firing people over AI if you’re just going to re-hire new inexperienced people one year later because shit hit the fan with a garbage AI codebase?
“AI hangover” feels like the right term. They went on an AI bender, shit out a massive unmaintainable code base nobody understands (and anyone who could have was laid off or fired months ago) then suddenly SHTF and they need to hire real humans to maintain it because Claude hiked their token multiplier by a factor of 9X.
I’ve heard of companies hiring interns and junior devs again to do the ditch digging work that’s suddenly too expensive for AI to do with token price increases.
What is AI for then? We already know it can’t do the work of a senior developer…
@iocase it does help developers ship faster… So much faster that attention slips away from what needs to be shipped… And the story develops as we speak.
There’s a revelation about coding that all programmers realize relatively early in their careers: code is read far more than it’s written.
You write something once and someone is going to need to read it and understand it for years or decades.
Managers never understand this if they don’t need to touch code…
Yes, you can ship product faster. In the coding world we call these “footguns” meaning something ideally suited for removing your foot, sometimes including your entire leg.
I’ve seen AI produced code bases and they’re unmaintainable. I’m not exaggerating… AI is great at narrowly scoped problems but it can’t see the full project context at once to architect a solution like a senior engineer can. It can’t wrap its head around it fully for a large project. You end up with hundreds or thousands of files (where a dozen or less would suffice for a human made version) and insane amounts of duplication and wasteful code.
AI is amazing at making rube Goldberg machines in the shape of a code base…
What AI is phenomenal at is making unit tests and well defined integration tests for your code. Sometimes even regression tests. That is a superpower that can dramatically speed up a programmer.
I firmly believe AI is a tool, not a replacement for programmers. It doesn’t have the ability to replace them yet (not even mythos. Which is going to be more expensive to run than a senior dev who is more reliable in their output.)
Low code solutions always cause layoffs and then a mad scramble to hire devs back, often on the terms of developers. The pendulum has always swung back…
>Here is what makes this worse than a normal bad tech bet. Most of these decisions were not made by people who understood the limits of the technology. Visier’s head of research, Andrea Derler, put the problem bluntly, noting that senior executives have not taken the time to understand what AI can and cannot do, according to PeopleMatters. IBM’s CEO survey confirmed it. 64% said the fear of falling behind drives them to invest in technologies before they understand the value.
>I am not anti-AI. I build and ship AI products every day. What I object to is the pattern where a CTO wins applause in Q1 for bold AI-driven headcount cuts, and then in Q4 is quietly rehiring those same roles through an offshore agency while attributing the reversal to “integration challenges.” That is not progress. That is a career arc dressed up as transformation. And it is costing shareholders, employees and customers at the same time.
@artificial_intelThe impression I get is that these CTOs only care about the short term and making themselves look good and creating a big impact. This isn’t just an AI issue.
I’ve seen it so many times with new managers, they come in and feel they have to make their mark. They don’t observe or understand how things are going, they just want to make drastic changes.
In the situation where they get rid of people and slowly rehire, I guess they are just hindering pay growth within the industry? I imagine they rehire people at a cheaper rate than before.
@Schal330 I guess it differs case by case, but generally in IT it is a well known fact that changing jobs is a faster way to get a pay rise. Combined with the fact that rehires happen in a context of urgency, I’d make a guess that people re-enter at a better rate. Of course that’s quite optimistic and supposes that employees are good at negotiating.
The link you posted is unreachable
@inari I think it’s a masto-piefed federation issue. Here it is again https://www.forbes.com/councils/forbestechcouncil/2026/05/14/the-ai-layoff-bill-is-coming-due-and-ctos-are-going-to-pay-it-twice/
Thanks. Do you not get a 404 from the link in your previous comment? That’s what I got
