This. Better to tell markets "we can now downsize our workforce due to incredible efficiencies achieved by our AI initiative" than "we hired too many people, grew slower than expected and now we're making cuts"

And Brian Armstrong at Coinbase

I'm in a small growing tech company and I can say as a matter of fact that in a world without AI we would have made several hires in the past 18 months. Because of LLMs and agents my team doesn't have the need to bring more people in. It's as simple as that.

> Salesforce forecast third-quarter revenue below Wall Street estimates on Wednesday, signaling lagging monetization for its highly-touted artificial intelligence agent platform as clients dial back spending due to macroeconomic uncertainty.

> The cloud software provider also announced a $20 billion increase to its existing share buyback program, but that was unable to allay investors' concerns, sending Salesforce's shares down over 5% in extended trading.

Salesforce reduced their headcount in 2023 by 8-10%. Another reduction by 5% attributed solely to AI could be a half truth and the reality could simply be Salesforce driving an efficiency agenda.

Personally, I believe it will take a few more years for systems to be built. Once those systems are in place, then headcount reductions are going to come fast and wide. Or putting it simply think of it as exponential growth. Currently AI job displacements are small, but it's growing, and will continue accelerating in its growth.