The recent memo from Goldman Sachs detailing job cuts under the guise of an Artificial Intelligence push is not an isolated incident. It is the exact blueprint of the current tech market. We are watching executives confuse cost reduction with value creation. Over the past few years, the industry "overhired" massively. Now, Artificial Intelligence is being deployed as the ultimate corporate smokescreen to justify restructuring, leaving the actual tech workers to pay the heavy price.
Let us be absolutely clear about the financial reality. Firing your engineers to fund algorithmic initiatives does not create new business value. It merely shifts capital from internal payroll directly into the pockets of a few select cloud providers and hardware giants. The workers lose their livelihoods, while the enterprise gains exactly zero competitive advantage. Most companies do not even possess the clean data infrastructure required to utilize these models effectively. They are buying the hype, but only the "Hyperscalers" are taking home the actual profit.
From an architectural perspective, this mass replacement of human capital is a catastrophic compliance failure waiting to happen. If a bank or enterprise replaces its technical workforce with language models, it inherently destroys its human auditing layer. A language model generates syntax, but it cannot take legal responsibility. When executives cut the staff who architect, validate, and secure the output, they are trading human governance for automated liability. Over my eight years of professional experience, I have seen exactly what happens when you remove the governance layer. The entire system collapses under its own weight.
This does not happen overnight. It is a slow and painful process in which those who had the privilege to not be cut have to pick up the work of those who were let go. Over time, those people get overworked and undervalued because they have to do more with fewer people. They are purposefully overlooked until they have no choice other than to leave too, willingly this time.
Do not get me wrong. Artificial Intelligence is not inherently bad. It is a powerful tool. But it is just that: a tool.
It is not a magical solution that fixes broken enterprise architecture or replaces the need for senior oversight. We are still in the early stages of figuring out how to actually integrate these systems without compromising security and digital sovereignty.
Until we understand the operational boundaries of this tool, treating it as a direct replacement for human intellect and experience is just reckless management. Driven by exactly what you would expect: the fear of being left behind, also known as FOMO.
But who actually got left behind?
The people who gave their lives to the companies that just fired them. Some of us will remember the age of so called Artificial Intelligence as the time companies thought that firing under the disguise of AI would go unnoticed.
For those of you who read this far: I hope you see it too. Workers and humans are the ones who lost their livelihoods because a chosen few used the hype they themselves created to get even richer than they already were.
Make no mistake, we are operating inside a massive Artificial Intelligence bubble. But the tide is turning. More and more people are finally catching on to the fact that this unchecked hype has inflated a bubble completely devoid of actual business value. The future of technology belongs to those who govern the systems, not those who blindly trust the generated output. It is time we hold the industry accountable for selling a narrative that profits a few at the expense of the workers who actually built the foundation.
Sources:
Reuters Goldman Sachs eyes job cuts and hiring slowdown amid AI push
https://www.reuters.com/business/world-at-work/goldman-sachs-eyes-job-cuts-hiring-slowdown-amid-ai-push-memo-shows-2025-10-14/
Goldman Sachs Gen AI Too much spend too little benefit
https://www.goldmansachs.com/insights/top-of-mind/gen-ai-too-much-spend-too-little-benefit
Forbes AI Study 2025 Why Enterprises Struggle to Measure AI ROI
https://www.mavvrik.ai/forbes-ai-study-2025/
Gartner Predicts 30 Percent of Generative AI Projects Will Be Abandoned
https://www.gartner.com/en/newsroom/press-releases/2024-07-29-gartner-predicts-30-percent-of-generative-ai-projects-will-be-abandoned-after-proof-of-concept-by-end-of-2025
Layoffs Tracker
https://layoffs.fyi/
ENISA Artificial Intelligence
https://www.enisa.europa.eu/topics/artificial-intelligence
Top comments (2)
Great post Ali. I've been seeing this trend at my old company and it's just not sustainable. They're sacrificing employee morale and stability for some fancy AI buzzwords. It's amazing how quickly 'cost reduction' becomes code for 'layoffs' when no one's paying attention.
Thank you!
That’s exactly how I see it too.