Feeling that “do more, with less” yet? Came across this article from The Wall Street Journal along today and it’s no surprise. Candidly, I’m not 100% convinced AI has more to do with this than layoffs. Why?

In my experience with downturns in tech, which tend to spray out into the B2B space at large, this is pretty common.

-> Workloads are forever increasing
-> People get laid off to preserve runway or cash
-> Their workload gets moved to the survivors
-> Continue cycle until new hires can be made

LLMs and other AI tools can be a massive force-multiplier for both individual contributors and teams, absolutely.

But giving awesome new “productivity” tools to someone already overloaded with work? Sure, many will see marginal productivity gains.

Many will also burn out and throw in the towel.

I think AI was just convenient timing covering for the VC/PE winter caused by the end of yield starvation and crazy “bet on literally anything” funding that was happening as interest rates were near zero.

With rates closer to 5%, funds can be a lot more selective in:

-> who they invest in
-> how much cash they give them
-> how much cash comes in each tranche
-> what milestones are needed for more cash
-> how much can be spent on talent

…etc. This trickles down from the board to leadership to management to people.

Until tech returns to hiring mode (as an industry we’ve been shedding jobs for 3 years or so now), I expect this to continue:

You can’t pass off your workload until there’s teammates or underlings to pass the work off to. So you’re stuck with it.

And you can’t get headcount until there’s money for it, so you’re stuck with the way things are.

And you can’t complain, because there’s a ten-mile long lineup of unemployed professionals who would take your job in a heartbeat for less pay and with zero regard to the working conditions because they have kids to feed.

So, you do more with less.

And if you don’t like it? I’d suggest staying quiet about it unless you’re very confident in your ability to find your next gig.

It’ll pass, every cycle does. But I don’t blame AI for the “do more with less” squeeze… that’s been in place for a while now. Actually kind of grateful AI dropped into our laps when it did otherwise things might be a lot tougher.