What ClickUp’s mass layoff tells us about the future of work

AI’s biggest champions person argued for immoderate clip that the exertion volition usher successful an epoch of unprecedented productivity gains, richly rewarding workers who harness it portion displacing those who don’t.

Zeb Evans, CEO of the collaboration bundle startup ClickUp, claims that this displacement is imminent. Last Thursday, Evans announced connected X that the company, which was past valued successful 2021 at $4 billion, had laid disconnected 22% of its workforce yet characterized that simplification arsenic not a cost-cutting measure, but alternatively a extremist clasp of AI that volition propel the institution to the adjacent level.

“Most savings from this alteration volition travel straight backmost into the radical who stay. We’ll beryllium introducing million-dollar wage bands. If you make outsized interaction utilizing AI, you’ll beryllium paid extracurricular of accepted bands,” Evans wrote.

ClickUp precocious introduced astir 3,000 interior AI agents to grip a wide scope of analyzable tasks connected behalf of its employees, according to a Fortune article published respective days ago. Instead of performing the enactment themselves, unit members are present expected to nonstop these agents and yet reappraisal the output to guarantee it meets the company’s standards.

Evans’s goal, according to his X post, is for AI to turbocharge ClickUp into a “100x org.”  

ClickUp is not unsocial successful its anticipation that AI agents volition supply monolithic productivity gains.

In fact, according to a caller Gartner survey, astir 80% of companies utilizing autonomous tech person chopped jobs. However, the survey recovered that workforce reductions aren’t needfully translating into meaningful fiscal returns.

While Gartner’s findings suggest immoderate companies usage unproven AI arsenic an excuse to downsize, ClickUp maintains it is not 1 of them.

Evans told TechCrunch via email that the startup is so seeing productivity gains from AI agents. Not lone is ClickUp measuring those efficiencies internally, but it’s besides seemingly gearing up to see them successful a forthcoming merchandise for its customers.   

“Instead of gamifying token cost, we gamify worth created and clip saved,” Evans wrote.

In caller months, a increasing fig of companies person started monitoring worker token consumption, utilizing it arsenic a metric to spot who is really adopting AI tools. But critics argue that “tokenmaxxing”—as this conception is known—is the incorrect metric due to the fact that it simply racks up AI expenses.

“The radical that automate their jobs with AI volition ever person a job,” Evans claimed successful his post. But if AI keeps taking implicit much tasks, ClickUp volition yet request less and less people, eliminating those who neglect to automate their functions well.

Tech circles person agelong theorized astir this scenario.

One utmost illustration of a high-profile startup utilizing AI automation to the max already exists. Polsia, a one-year-old startup that claims to grip each bundle operations for solopreneurs, is tally by conscionable 1 person: its laminitis and CEO, Ben Broca. That ratio is seemingly paying off: Polsia conscionable raised $30 million astatine a $250 cardinal valuation.