Honesty in the Age of Automation
An open letter to CEOs using AI as a convenient layoff excuse from the Partners at ProductMind
Dear CEOs and tech leaders,
As we reflect on the dizzying headlines from this year, there’s one thing we need to get off our chest.
We need to talk about the stories you tell about AI and layoffs because, frankly, they aren’t believable.
But before we continue, our publisher is offering a holiday discount on our book, Building Rocketships: Product Management for High-Growth Companies, throughout December. And with gifting 🎁 season upon us, the book makes a great pick for a colleague, friend, or anyone interested in product leadership.
If you’ve already read the book, we’d be grateful if you could take a moment to leave a review on Amazon. It truly helps us.
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We are also hosting our first ProductMind AMA this coming Wednesday. We are so grateful for this community and we’d love to meet with you, so please join us (and bring a friend if you’d like). Details at the bottom of this post.
Thank you for your support, now let’s dive in…
At ProductMind, we work with organizations in real transformation. Business models shift. Technology accelerates. Leaders make choices that shape companies and cultures. We understand how heavy those choices feel because markets are restless and investors want efficiency. And we all know AI is changing how work gets done.
Layoffs can be necessary. Sometimes they are part of responsible, long term strategy and we advise leaders through these transitions every day.
What worries us is the one note claim that AI alone caused this year’s reductions. AI is a factor but it is not the whole story. That oversimplification harms trust inside your company and across the industry.
Call it what it is
When you present AI as the single reason for layoffs, you tell Wall Street a clean efficiency story. You also frighten the very workforce you need to adopt AI well. That is a poor trade.
Amazon fires 30,000 people
The headlines say AI automation but inside accounts point to GPU shortages that constrained AWS revenue and the finance teams needed margin relief so labor expense reductions filled the gap. GPUs needed to go to where they would generate the most revenue. This is not AI replacing people; this is corporate finance under supply pressure.
Meta fires 600 AI engineers
Meta had been bullish on AI until Llama became a base for international models, including DeepSeek. All of the sudden, Meta’s huge expenditures were more about funding its competitors than building the “open source” moat that it lacked. This is not AI replacing people; this is a strategy pivot.
What the studies actually measure
Given how early we are in the AI adoption curve everyone was excited to see actual studies come out about “results.” You saw the MIT study that found most leaders do not yet see positive P+L impact from generative AI. You also saw the Wharton study that found most executives expect or already see positive outcomes.
These apparent contradictions can both be true at once because they measure different things:
MIT looked for hard P+L movement. Minutes saved only count if they change staffing or throughput.
Wharton measured perceived outcomes mostly among senior leaders aka confidence in the trajectory.
Neither justifies claiming that AI alone replaced tens of thousands of jobs.
Words matter
Leaders juggle demands from markets, boards, and employees and we respect that. But overstating AI’s role in layoffs wins a headline today but loses trust tomorrow that you will need that trust for real adoption. If there is anything we have learned about technology change it is that cultural barriers overwhelm all other issues.
Employees hear that AI took the jobs and question their future. This will make future candidates hesitate to join. Worse, your customers grow wary. None of that helps you scale AI inside your company.
The honest alternative
“We are reorganizing to align with strategy. Supply constraints or market position or portfolio focus created margin pressure. AI is reshaping workflows and we are capitalizing on that, but our strength remains our people and our culture. Here is how we will help our most valuable resource transition to new roles.”
Clarity strengthens leadership and invites participation instead of fear instead of creating a people vs AI culture.
Three acts of stewardship
Honest framing
Name the broader drivers that drive cuts as your teams deserve clarity and Wall Street can handle complexity.Visible reinvestment
Pair efficiency gains with investment in learning, internal mobility, and new roles. Show the math and make it concrete.Empowerment over extraction
Treat AI as an enabler of judgment and creativity and involve employees early to build trust but also to get the best ideas. Invite experiments and reward learning.
A national opportunity
The United States relies on private enterprise to drive AI absorption. That is a challenge and an opportunity. Responsible adoption across manufacturing, healthcare, education, logistics, and government will strengthen both companies and the economy.
Compare that to China which has laid out a government driven plan for AI by 2035. Our strength in the US has never been top down driving change alone, it has been mobilizing our workforce and our people as we did to answer the call in 1941 - government, private enterprise, and our workforce combining to achieve the goal.
Our shared charge
The story we tell about AI will shape its reception for years. If the story is about replacement and efficiency, we will get resistance and distrust. If the story is partnership and empowerment, we will get productivity and innovation.
Our invitation is simple: Communicate with precision. Lead with honesty. Build a narrative that fosters engagement, learning, and shared progress.
AI will not decide the future of work. We will.
With respect and urgency,
Oji, Ted, and Ezinne
ProductMind
If you are wrestling with these questions and need help, let’s talk. We do not have every answer but we are working with teams who are figuring it out with clarity and without the empty headlines.
On that note, we invite you to bring your questions directly to us! To thank you for your support, we are hosting an end-of-year AMA. Join us, Wednesday December 17th at 11 am CST, to connect, reflect, and get practical career and product advice to help you start the new year with confidence.
Please submit your questions when you register using the button below so we can focus on what matters most to you.
We hope to see you there -bring a friend if you think they would enjoy the AMA.
Outstanding framing! The Amazon GPU constraint example exposes how financial enginering gets mislabeled as automation progress. The real risk is that oversimplifying layof narratives poisons future AI adoption, emplyees who see colleagues cut "because of AI" are way less likely to experiment with tools that could actually boost thier productivity.