My previous company keeps saying "we need to go even more AI native" while laying off more people when AI milestones are achieved.

Tech company for a very popular app. When I got laid off last year it was in-part because we had a ton of AI workflows and stuff going on, so CTO made a huge cut through the entire QA function (~90% o

Tech company for a very popular app. When I got laid off last year it was in-part because we had a ton of AI workflows and stuff going on, so CTO made a huge cut through the entire QA function (~90% of us all cut) since he believed we were not needed to maintain the workflows and keep quality high, the developers can just pick up the workflows no problem. Yesterday, the company just did another layoff, around 20% of the company, and I still keep in touch with a lot of the people there. So many developers of all backgrounds (mobile, API, firmware) and the remaining QAs were laid off. I found out that a lot of the people who got laid off are also the ones who set up the agentic AI workflows that really increased the velocity of their work. In particular one of the API automation engineers that survived last year's layoff was the one who set up a bunch of AI bots that do code reviews, generate initial API tests which then just need minimal human review, etc. There's a ton of stuff she set up to minimize or remove HITL (human in the loop) as much as possible. Now she's laid off, despite bringing untold amounts of impact to the company. Translation: she automated herself out of a job. She told me "But overall I loved the agents I made, I don’t even remember the time we did all the coding ourselves, simplifies your job so much." - if AI can make your job simpler you inch yourself closer to getting redundant. --- I'm not sure that having AI fluency and knowing how to wrangle AI to make something high quality grants you immunity anymore these days. And having AI experience and system knowledge hasn't helped me in interviews, so it seems AI is really good as an accelerator when you're at a job, but neutral to terrible at getting you hired.