#ai

The Data & AI organization has been in steady decline since Kat H left, and it worsened under Ronke’s leadership. Key talent was laid off without strategic foresight, institutional knowledge was lost, and execution quality collapsed.

For 18 months there has been no clear vision, no strong cadence, and no accountability. After the JC merger, politics and power dynamics overtook delivery.

The team focuses on frameworks and ingestion optics while lacking fundamental data understanding, quality discipline, and business alignment.

There is hope new leadership restores clarity, accountability, and real data leadership — because what we have today is not working.

https://seekingalpha.com/news/4556964-citigroup-forms-team-to-finance-ai-infrastructure-bo-m

Lend money to companies that make no money. What could go wrong?

Block’s layoff news today is pretty fascinating.

Jack Dorsey just cut nearly half the company — over 4,000 employees. Headcount goes from 10k+ to under 6k.
Stock? Up 25% in a day.

And here’s the interesting part:
They’re not losing money. Q4 earnings beat expectations.

The reason given:
“AI and intelligent tools are fundamentally changing how companies are built and how work gets done.”

That feels like a real regime shift.

For the last decade, growth meant hiring.
Now growth might mean replacing org charts with AI leverage.

What makes it ironic is that Dorsey, as Twitter’s co-founder, left behind a famously bloated structure.
When Elon Musk took over, he cut roughly 80% of staff — about 6,000 people — and the platform kept running.

History has a sense of humor.

If fintech is cutting this aggressively in the name of AI efficiency, does that mean traditional big banks will accelerate layoffs too?

Feels like we’re entering the era of “AI + ruthless efficiency.”
Curious how durable this model really is.

I'm not sure that AI washing can really explain this at this point. Seems extreme. Will this be another klarna moment where they are calling people back in 3 months?

https://www.wsj.com/business/jack-dorseys-block-to-lay-off-4-000-employees-in-ai-remake-28f0d869

Jack Dorsey’s Block to Lay Off 40% of Its Workforce in AI Remake
Parent of Square and Cash App says intelligence tools have changed how to run a company

By Angel Au-Yeung
Feb. 26, 2026 5:04 pm ET

Jack Dorsey, CEO of Twitter and co-founder & CEO of Square, at the Bitcoin 2021 Convention.
Jack Dorsey at a convention in Miami in 2021. Marco Bello/AFP/Getty Images
Block XYZ 4.99%increase; green up pointing triangle, the payments company founded by Jack Dorsey that includes Square and Cash App, said Thursday that it plans to lay off 40% of its workforce, or more than 4,000 employees.

Dorsey alluded to artificial-intelligence tools as the reason for the cuts in a letter to shareholders.

“The core thesis is simple,” wrote Dorsey. “Intelligence tools have changed what it means to build and run a company.”

The company said the plan would cost it $450 million to $500 million in expenses and severance. Shares rallied more than 20% in after-hours trading.

Big companies have already been laying off thousands of white collar workers over the past year, in some cases pointing to increased efficiency created by AI. Salesforce cut roughly 4,000 customer-support roles last year because of AI advancements. Pinterest, meanwhile, has said it is laying off nearly 15% of its workforce as part of a plan to focus more of the company’s resources on AI-related roles.

And the fear AI would shrink jobs and replace the functions of whole companies sparked a market rout earlier this week after a research report imaged a dystopian future for the U.S. economy.

Analysts and economists have pushed back against the scenarios laid out in the report, but Block’s drastic job cuts will likely stoke up those fears.

The company said most of the layoffs would occur in the first quarter of this year and be completed by the second quarter.

“I don’t think we’re early to this realization. I think most companies are late,” Dorsey wrote. “Within the next year, I believe the majority of companies will reach the same conclusion and make similar structural changes.”

AI WILL REPLACE FCC SWITCH REPORTABLES. Regulated AI.

Once certian projects are finished they will lay off the rest of that department and let L T I take over. Congrulations on working yourself out of a job. HR will mostly be replaced by a computer. Get used to talking to a machine.

Middle management will be gutted.

They won't be needed since LTI has their own management in place. Projects will be downsized further and support groups dismantled and/or gone. Operations you aren't safe. They are looking at you. Anyone who is of retirement age will be next. If you have several complaints in your file you will also be gone. There won't be anyone left at cpchem except for a few in corporate.

• Major firms announcing AI linked job cuts include Nike, Amazon, Meta, Dow, HP, Allianz, Telstra, WiseTech, Pinterest, Autodesk, MercadoLibre, SEB, British American Tobacco, and Agora.

• Goldman Sachs warns that accelerating AI adoption could raise US unemployment, estimating AI caused 5,000 to 10,000 monthly net job losses in highly exposed industries last year and accounted for 7% of planned layoffs in January.

• Companies across sectors including technology, finance, manufacturing, telecoms, and consumer goods are restructuring to prioritize AI, automation, and digital transformation.

• Workforce reductions range from hundreds to several thousand roles, with some companies cutting up to one third of staff as they redirect investment toward AI systems, cloud platforms, and efficiency programs.

• The trend signals a broader shift in corporate strategy, as businesses reallocate capital toward AI driven productivity gains, raising concerns among investors and economists about structural labor market disruption.

https://www.reuters.com/business/world-at-work/companies-cutting-jobs-investments-shift-toward-ai-2026-02-25/

Will AI make AI team redundant ?

Does anyone know what we can expect from Agentic AI in PayPal in the next 12 to 24 months in terms of it's capabilities? I understand Lores is fully focused on Agentic AI and will likely use it to reduce the workforce like he has done at HP.

I'm not interested in what you've read from AI regarding Agentic AI as I've done that myself. If possible, I would like to hear from someone within the company who has been working with Agentic AI at PayPal or who knows what the general plans are? For example, will it handle 40% of disputes/limitations/fraud claims in 12 months.

Really curious as Lloyds bank announced this month they will be using Agentic AI for complex fraud and complaints reviews. With the advancement of Agentic AI, PayPal's desire for lightning fast changes and Lores's enthusiasm for Agentic AI and cuts, big changes could be on the way very soon. gulp

@b2+1kjbbze82 Makes a great point. These creeps are putting our pictures in Gemini, putting in our personal and work information and god knows what else. This needs to stop!!

Oracle isn’t going to do more with less when their competition is doing more with more.

Everyone has AI agents now. You will only weaken your position if you lay people off and lean into those agents. Your competition doesn’t have to follow the same logic. Your competition will do more with more. Anything you do with less will lose footing.

That’s not even including smaller companies competing with Oracle now that they have AI agents. The drive for more software will increase with AI agents. Even more players are going to want a slice of that market share.

Let’s break even more stuff by depending on AI for coding and everything else. Nothing like wrong answers.

The company is already training AI agents to work directly with techs in the field to configure routers and diagnose troubles without an engineer. Tech chats with a bot directly to configure, test and turn up a router. Whole teams will probably be gone in next two years.

No surprises here, we all knew it. The cat is outside the box!

References -
https://www.gurufocus.com/news/8651387/sap-faces-skepticism-over-ai-tool-joule
https://www.cio.com/article/4086426/companies-still-unfamiliar-with-sap-joule.html

Many more articles online

Leadership is STILL going all-in on this insane, stupid idea that AI needs to be a part of every product in this company. That every engineering team needs to be shoving resource intensive LLMs into their application no matter if the use-case of AI is.. useful. Otherwise they lose out on funding.

The critical, cognitive defect of these re--rds is astounding. Engineers who do actual work are either fleeing en masse, quiet quitting, or burning themselves out as they struggle to keep pace with the level of stupidity from their leaders.

I have NEVER in my time here seen something so astoundingly fu--ing stupid, and there's been a lot of astoundingly stupid things from our braindead leaders. As much as they gray-haired boomers liked to bring up buzzwords like ML, blockchain, etc. I never recall an initiative that EVERY team needs to be working with ML, or arbitrarily shove blockchain into their application.

It'd be one thing if they were simply asking engineers to use AI in some way, i.e. Copilot, ChatGPT, etc. It's another thing to have them invest actual time, resources, and FUNDING into throwing chatbots uselessly into their apps.

This is insanely disastrous and has gone on long enough from our negligent leaders. This DOES NOT "better serve our customers," in fact it does quite the opposite. This is a malevolent use of funding.

Replace the first levels with AI.

The U.S. National debt is -

(Currently) $38.7 Trillion (and rising) per U.S. usdebtclock.

AI will take away (most) computer dependent jobs in the future (not all) but enough for the Unemployment rate to spike significantly thus reducing Tax revenue.

So Income Tax, and Corporate Tax will (need) to be Increased (especially) on Corporations, and the wealthy; to be able to cover it.

Reality is, even with the Trump Import tariffs that were nullified ($200.0 Billion a year with refunds of $125.0+ Billion in process back to Corporations-businesses) by the Supreme Court it wouldn't even faze the (current) $990.0 Billion (and rising) a year in Interest paid by U.S. taxpayers to outside Investors that finance the U.S. National debt.

These are the facts.

Each time they say AI or India, take a sip. Too bad it's a webcast, would be funny to all give a "wow" emoji reaction each time.

Your leaders are training AI to replace them.

Nike's motto is "Just do it". Today we learned that Sabre's new motto is "Just AI it". Perfect.

How are we supposed to get the work done after you laid off all the people who could do the work.

Just AI it.

Have you ever used AI to do anything that needed to not onky be done but also done correctly without AI slop hallucinations?

Just AI it.

Just 10x it by using AI

Just agenticly AI it

Just vibe code it

Hey how do we get the stock price back up to $20?

Just AI it?

I can tell you what, AI could replace you and your ivory tower AI fantasies.

For those of us living in the real world, no we cannot just AI it.

WIP: Machine learning + Code + AI - in flight - optimizing refinery scheduling, crude blending... logistics + maintenance sequencing. Now calculate # of jobs lost and $$$ in someone else's pockets

The positive side with Ai. Now I can pretend work with useless Ai trainings. I am working with fake POC with Ai. Ask ai for some dummy implementation and call it as my poc.
I can watch Netflix whole day and still get good performance review, because everything now must have Ai, regardless if is useful or not.

It’s a complete joke. My boss is doing the exact same thing. I genuinely don’t think he’s read anything longer than a text message in his life. At this point, it’s no surprise that intellectual laziness has become a full-blown pandemic in America.

Apparently this, combined with tariff garbage, spooked the market. It is a long read but it helps explain some of investor sentiment right now. It seems like the markets are exceedingly twitchy.

https://www.citriniresearch.com/p/2028gic

And for those wondering about the credibility of Cintrini as a source of financial information, the piece got coverage in its very own front page segment in the WSJ today.

What are your thoughts on our partnership with NVDIA? does this have a potential to put is in a position where we finally get some growth. Honestly , I think the most of our problems stem from the fact that our growth is su-ky and maybe we can catch some of this ai pixie dust to help with that...

thoughts?????

IBM (IBM) plunged 12.5% after investors reacted to Anthropic's new AI tool that threatens its COBOL services, significantly outpacing the tech sector's 1.5% decline.

Wall Street is down today because of this speculation about AI's economic effects. It's well worth reading:

https://www.citriniresearch.com/p/2028gic

My team lead, a nice guy but not the sharpest, decided to do my appraisal this morning. As usual, everything was “fine.” Lots of fluff and no real substance, except for one thing. He kept stumbling over words and mispronouncing them.

It was obvious he had no idea what he was saying. It sounded like a seven-year-old reading their first chapter book, except the words were not even difficult. It was honestly embarrassing to sit there and deal with him.

At that point, it became clear that he did not get the position based on performance.

It was pathetic. I understand using AI to clean up grammar or help organize your thoughts, but having it actually write the whole thing for you? No.

If anything, AI will replace low-level managers before it replaces the people actually doing the work. That is crystal clear to me now.

Do they bring in a lot of money? The total comp without stocks is going for 200$k+ for AI roles [i8 and above]

I'm thinking of internally applying but can't seem to shake the feeling there's a catch I'm missing.

Is this department prone to layoffs ? Any thoughts ?

Wells Fargo Workforce Transformation (2020–2026)
Since 2020, Wells Fargo has executed a dual-track workforce strategy: aggressively reducing its domestic footprint while scaling up high-end engineering hubs in India. Under CEO Charlie Scharf, the bank has shifted from a growth-at-all-costs model to one defined by AI-driven efficiency and "Global Capability Centers" (GCCs).

The Domestic vs. Global Shift
While the total global headcount has dropped by roughly 25%, the impact on the American workforce is significantly more severe due to simultaneous offshore expansion:

Global Headcount: Dropped from ~275,000 in 2020 to ~205,000 today (a loss of 70,000 total roles).

India Workforce: Tripled from ~12,000 to over 36,000 employees.

U.S. Workforce: Fell from ~258,000 to approximately 164,000.

Total U.S. Impact: A net loss of roughly 94,000 American jobs, representing a 36% reduction in the domestic workforce.

Key Strategic Drivers
The AI Efficiency Multiplier: Leadership confirmed in late 2025 that AI-native coding tools have increased developer productivity by 30–35%. This allows the bank to maintain its output while reducing domestic headcount through "natural attrition" and targeted layoffs.

India as an Engineering Hub: The bank has transitioned India from a "back-office support" region to its primary engineering center. The Tower 4 campus in Hyderabad (1.2M sq. ft.) now serves as the global heartbeat for software development and data science.

Domestic Consolidation: U.S. cuts have been driven by the closure of over 1,000 physical branches and the "flattening" of middle-management layers to reduce bureaucracy.

Financial Reallocation: In Q4 2025 alone, the bank spent $612 million on severance to facilitate the exit of roughly 5,600 workers, clearing the way for a leaner, more offshore-centric 2026.

Critical Sources
SEC Filings (10-K): Annual reporting of total headcount from 2020–2025.

Investor Conferences: CEO Charlie Scharf's commentary at the Goldman Sachs Financial Services Conference (Dec 2025).

Regional Reports: The New Indian Express and HR Katha regarding the expansion of the Hyderabad/Bengaluru hubs.

WARN Notices: Public filings in Iowa, North Carolina, and Arizona documenting formal layoff rounds in early 2026.

Most of their cases are general inquiries with zero technical complexity and could be easily handled by AI. Every new ticket opened is nothing but a CAPEX/OPEX to Cisco.

Lifted this from another comment on this site. It gets to the heart of the matter bigly. Sad but true that this is happening to this once great company before our eyes.

It's the only AI software that Chevron has. I am guessing that the LT is planning on celebrating this tool as a means of leveraging AI to cut operational costs. The entirety of AI within CVX has been oversold to the board and the executive team. They have been pumping money into the "dream" software for years and the BoD wants to see results. The money saved over cutting headcount from eavesdropping on emails and text messages will never match the promised returns of AI sold to the board. There is a critical OC gap with regards to AI and the datasets are a mess. It will take years to harvest energy production related returns from AI within Chevron. MW is on the $32M hook to show costs cuts has cut critical headcounts and is now recreating a low cost workforce in India and eliminating the costly US workforce in an attempt to realize the savings that AI might have provided. This is a one-to-two-year trick pony because it's not a sustainable YoY strategy. Once the sham starts falls apart in a year or two, MW (who is already cashing out) will depart. In the meantime, Chevron will lose more talented people since it is fairly evident there is no long-term career to be had here. This is a prime example of how short-sighted corporate leadership with a shallow technological understanding can destroy a once great company. The workforce tension and the desperation of management is palpable, and the first cracks are starting to appear.

Hi, about to Join ATT as a developer, what Ai tools does ATT allow?

I heard copilot, is that via VSCODE?

The O9 system is a complete piece of sh-t. The high-and-mighty leaders spent several million dollars on this system every year. thinking it would replace Excel and reduce the workload for planners. In reality, every planner now has double the workloads. Leaders now hope AI can take all over.

Oracle ran up hard into late 2024 on AI and cloud optimism, pushing valuation well above its historical range. As rates stay higher for longer, the market is rotating out of expensive AI-adjacent names and back toward near-term cash flow certainty.

At the same time, Oracle's cloud growth narrative is under scrutiny. OCI is growing, but not fast enough to justify premium multiples versus hyperscalers like AWS and Azure. Any hint of slower bookings, margin pressure from data center spend, or conservative guidance has been enough to trigger derisking.

What Ai tools does AT&T allow for developers?

I don't see any value add for Business analyst, scrum masters in tech groups. Specially in AI era, these positions are redundant and can be completely eliminated.

There’s a growing misconception that AI "does the entire work. employees are sitting and watching". In reality, AI is helper not full-performer. Still lots of development requires human efforts. Management is pushing towards AI. The problem is once work is done, you will be first one to be thrown out.

Implementation got hit today. Got the dreaded ping this morning. Do they think that they will have AI up and running by October to handle peak? Will welcome calls be a thing of the past and handled by a chatbot? AI may be cheaper, but human connection is priceless. I missed my family during Thanksgiving and Christmas, but that's the beauty of AI, they don't have families, right, Dave?