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Unlike many of his tech industry peers who have cut thousands of jobs citing the need to restructure to make the most of AI, Robinhood's CEO Vlad Tenev conspicuously made no mention of AI in his note about layoffs.
It appears using AI as a cover story for cutting jobs is fast falling out of fashion.
Unlike many of his tech industry peers who have cut thousands of jobs this year citing the need to restructure their teams to make the most of AI, Robinhood’s CEO Vlad Tenev conspicuously made no mention of AI in his note to employees announcing that the company is letting go 10% of its full-time employees, or about 290 people.
Nor did the company’s regulatory filing announcing the move, which instead framed the cuts as a restructuring exercise.
Still, Tenev did say the company would use “frontier technologies to push our execution even further,” which sounds like a conscious effort to avoid even naming AI. Which isn’t surprising: Sentiment against AI and related infrastructure projects has been trending lower even as a small minority of tech executives make ridiculous bank.
But Tenev did add to the ongoing narrative that it’s now necessary for companies to operate with smaller teams and “flatter organizational structures,” writing: “We cannot default to operating as a heavily-layered organization. We must be a lean, hyper-focused team where every single individual is empowered to make a massive impact.”
We’ve seen companies of various stripes, from Amazon, Block, Coinbase, GitLab, and Intuit employing similar language in their layoff announcements, indicating that large teams, bureaucracy, and siloed departments are now seen as undesirable line items at a time when AI tools promise to significantly improve productivity.