My company just laid off about 200 workers after telling us there would be no lay-offs back in December. Those that were on my team included my own manager, who was struggling to explain to my coworkers and I had to begin competing to use AI more and more in the workplace, to the point we had a lead-board! If a team used more than 1000 requests on average in a month, then they got premium accounts with more requests. Now the picture is clearer, the ones who did not use AI were let go and replaced by those of us who used it more. I am starting to realize that AI was never about some silly Terminator end of the world, it was about my job being replaced. I have barely been in this company, mind you. Our new manager, who is supposed to lead the Quality Assurance of our products, now focuses on rate of return, telling coworkers to focus on quantity and focus on quality later.
We have no union because we’re in software sadly, so the only thing keeping my mind together is Communism and Revolutionary Optimism! Every little thing I see here, every person that is let go, every lie that is told over and over again, is like coal being thrown into a forge, where my resolve is being hammered into Bolshevism! I have never felt more enraged with urgency that when I realized my fire is but one of many voices seeping in ire, and that thousands of workers have faced the same fate. As capitalism rots, this will only increase.
