Brutal. But probably all too common. One of my clients has very suddenly gone all-in on agentic AI and they're in this crazy hurry. (Probably the most annoying part is they want to automate stuff that I built a POC for using GPT-4o, two years ago - at the time they saw no use for it, but now they're all-in on the hype.)

This started literally two weeks ago and a couple of days ago I talked to one of the admin people who wanted an update on the progress I'd made with sanding off some of the rough edges of the very rough implementation that the managing partner had put in place (he bought a Mac Mini, put OpenClaw on it, then gave it admin access to a whole pile of stuff!) I said I needed a couple more days. "Okay," she said, "but I need this quickly, because we're firing people next week."

They have literally gone from no agentic AI, to discovering OpenClaw, to firing people, in a two-week time span.

When economists say that the predicted job losses as a result of AI have not yet shown up in the data, I'm genuinely befuddled. Either we don't have long to wait to start seeing them, or there's something wrong with the data, because you can't tell me what I just described above is an isolated phenomenon.

I also have to say: I've always enjoyed working with this client, but this experience has been a huge turnoff on a number of different levels.

Maybe what they really want her to do is get rid of 50% of her staff and the AI is just an excuse? In that case she should focus on "who can we do without?" rather than "how can we replace people with AI?"

> Her boss mandated that managers replace 50% of the staff with AI within a year

I bet we could replace nearly all the CEOs in the country with chatgpt controlling a [email protected] email and nobody would notice.

They perks and dread of middle management...