Businesses are about maximizing the revenue versus cost tradeoff. They generate revenue by producing value in a market, and the tech industry, like no other, can do so with much less cost thanks to the close to zero marginal cost of software.

However, markets have a ceiling, and even though software has close to zero marginal costs, your software business might require humans, who are expensive—very expensive. And this is something hyper-growth business models are incompatible with.

Executives at major tech companies have found the perfect tool to work around the problem: AI. "We are AI-first companies," they say. It'll often be used to eliminate human costs, such as support teams. In other cases, like Duolingo, they'll use it to break through the market ceiling. "We need AI to scale learning", they said. What they really meant is that they need AI to dropship slop courses to continue exploiting humans feeling of learning progress because they complete streaks.

If you think you are indispensable in this new mission of AI-first companies, let me tell you something: it is mostly storytelling. You are digging your grave because you are a cost to the company, and your next performance review will be in the hands of LLMs. "Let us know why you can't do this with AI" is the new mantra. This continues with a "don't worry, this is about empowering you" so that you don't wake up from the dream of the company's mission. Once again, the ultimate goal of a company is to maximize profit; the ultimate goal of a hyper-growth company is to do so at all costs, including your empowerment or well-being.

Good luck to those companies that want to create companies where humans are dispensable. The challenges we face require more humans and more collaboration, not less, which only benefits a few. And yes, that means we can't work 24 hours a day, 365 days a year, so what? If this will be the new trend, I'm not on that camp, sorry.

This post is written by a human with its grammar reviewed with Grammarly.