“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.”
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?
Their website barely even works it honestly looks like a scam organisation. I can’t find any description of what it is that they actually do which makes me believe that they don’t do anything.
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.
He can have AI replace him too.
Incredibly punchable face
“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.Yeah this is called AI washing. Basically firing people, outsourcing all the jobs, stripping a company till there is nothing left. The goal is to maximize profits till the company is basically dead and then sell the husk. Because it’s done under the AI label, customers and other interested parties see it as being innovative and not just money grabbing.
Selling artificial intelligence to natural idiots.
Because it had nothing to do with AI
It was an excuse to slash the workforce with relatively little backlash.
