“Every single Monday was called ‘AI Monday,’” Vaughan said, with his mandate for staff that they could work only on AI. “You couldn’t have customer calls; you couldn’t work on budgets; you had to only work on AI projects.” He said this happened across the board, not just for tech workers, but also for sales, marketing, and everybody else at IgniteTech. “That culture needed to be built. That was the key.”
“They ruthlessly cut costs, R&D, and employee benefits and then replace existing employees with overseas contractors. Innovation and growth take a back seat to sheer profitability.”
This is the operating manual that explains why IgniteTech’s much-publicized AI purge feels more like a familiar private-equity play.
[…]
IgniteTech is owned by ESW. For anyone who’s watched the ESW orbit, that vagueness is not accidental. ESW’s playbook, summarized in a long explanatory dossier that has circulated inside the industry, is blunt: buy distressed software, strip costs, move work to an hourly contractor model through a unit like Crossover (which has been described in Forbes as a “global software sweatshop”), and squeeze recurring revenue out of an existing customer base rather than invest in new products.Very interesting. I appreciate the additional information. Saying its for AI but moving it to overseas contractors instead of actually moving it to AI that is actually overseas contractors (like that one AI company that was outed as being 700 Indian developers) is honestly kinda funny. AI is enshittification given form, I suppose.
Because AI is Actualy Indians :)
I mean they have added a chatbot to their website and I’m sure they have replaced overseas first line support in many products with chatbots as well to encourage their customers to give up on getting support (and ensure that the customers that prevails and get sent to a human coworker are sufficiently pissed off).
The AI part is that the drug riddled CEO asked AI leading questions. The AI wholeheartedly agreed the company should speed run late stage capitalism. What more confirmation is needed that AI is the future?
This is the relevant context to this puff-piece, this should be stickied right at the top.
Nota bene: Not just laid off, replaced. With other people.
Basically spent a ton of money and talent and business disruption to turn over 80% of his workforce for shits and gigs.
Probably overhired just after COVID like everyone else in the tech sector and then realized he had no idea what to do with all the extra people because he never really had a plan.
COVID excuse not required. CEOs overhiring is like birds flying south for the winter, the sun rising in the east, water being wet - it’s just what they do. 80% is a bit extreme, but he had the AI excuse, so…
Eh I’ve only been in the software industry for 6 years and change. The post-covid hiring boom was for me the first time I’d seen it done en masse and then the subsequent layoffs were the first time I’d seen that en masse, but neither affected me personally luckily.
I have no idea what was going on before that because I had no real reason to care, nobody wanted to hire me anyway before I got my first job in the industry lol
It’s not just the software industry. Fully 1/2 of CEOs I have worked under get their hands on some money and an idea that they’re going to grow the business - really fast - poised for growth - ready to capitalize on the opportunities when they arise - and 6-18 months later their idea doesn’t pan out and they’ve got all these people who are costing more than the company is bringing in in sales revenue, so…
Did AI build that dogshit website of theirs too?
Does it load exceptionally slow for you too?
So Mondays are days off?
A company so small it doesn’t even have a Wikipedia page. No discernible products.
Any poly market bets on how long this company actually lasts?
a platform for AI-based email automation
the built a ChatGPT wrapper like all the other revolutionary AI companies lol the world needs more automated spam!
Ignitetech or Initech
What the fuck is IgniteTech?
Exactly
The question I put to management is “What do you want me to use AI for?”
I can’t get a consistent answer. Lots of stuff unrelated to my job duties. “Well, it’s so easy to make Facebook ads!” - “You know that’s not a thing I do, right?”
Yeah, my boss told he’s under pressure from upper management and customers to add AI in our app. His answer is always “to do what?”. So far, nobody has provided an answer, but whenever we get one we’ll be happy to implement it.
He REALLY hates paying employees and wants their pennies in his treasure horde, we get it.
He will be shocked when he discovers the shareholders don’t want to pay him, either. He’ll be like “what?!?! AI doing MY job? This is a travesty!” and then they will have robot security drag him out of the building screaming.
“I am bad at managing my finances, and eventually need to get bailed out by the government, or end up next to the homeless guy I used to make fun of”.
- This guy.
that writer’s name is all you need to know. always look at the writer’s name and their previous work to identify industry shills
I wonder how many employees are working on automating the CEO there first
From the article:
Vaughan was surprised to find it was often the technical staff, not marketing or sales, who dug in their heels. They were the “most resistant,” he said, voicing various concerns about what the AI couldn’t do, rather than focusing on what it could. The marketing and salespeople were enthused by the possibilities of working with these new tools, he added.
Not surprising the people with technical skills that aren’t actually replaceable by LLMs would be against forced AI adoption. Good luck maintaining a code base created with vibe coding. Meanwhile the CEO probably looks at ChatGPT and realizes it could basically do everything he already does (write emails and make high level decisions without actually having to worry about their implementation) and then incorrectly thinks it’s the case for everyone else.
I deal with this at work. Two engineers love AI, myself and the other engineer hate it. We’re mechanical. It’s funny when a material standard doesn’t exist…
Prediction markets have outperformed CEOs for decades and still haven’t replaced them, for the same reason WfH hasn’t replaced offices. Everything is a monopoly or oligopoly now, with no need to efficiently maximize profits. It’s entirely a matter of control.
“That culture needed to be built. That was the key.”
“Like, I’m not gonna be able to replace these losers if they don’t fix this piece of shit tech for me, will I?”
When all of this is over, if this ever ends, I want psychologists to study this AI obsession CEOs have now. I want to see how they can look at AI and insist that everyone be forced to use something that hinders them rather than help.
Greed and lack of empathy?
I heard someone mention that AI sycophathy is a result of renforcement learning techniques used (people rated honeyed words higher, no shock really).
People with big egos tend to like sycophants because they reenforce their narratives they have about themselves. Big egos also tend to take up the majority of cheif type roles, either because privlidge gives advantages to both and some because a big ego makes risks seem smaller them.
Its like we made the perfect machine to suck money from them. The sleezyst sales person with no ego. Just endless text telling you what you want to belive.
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Board/shareholders want company to do AI because everyone is doing AI so you can’t possibly be maxing shareholder value without doing enough AI
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CEO has to be able to show metrics about everyone doing AI
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???
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Not profit, that’s for sure, everyone downstream from the CEO suffers, long term profitability is hindered, but at least while the bubble is still ongoing, share prices are temporarily higher because AI
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There is so much science to be done once the madness is over.
