Fired Hundreds, Hired Thousands

According to a recent report by TechCrunch, collaboration software startup ClickUp has laid off 22% of its workforce, a move CEO Zeb Evans frames not as a traditional cost-cutting measure, but as a aggressive pivot toward total AI automation. The company has deployed roughly 3,000 internal AI agents to take over complex tasks, shifting the remaining employees' roles from creators to managers who direct and audit AI output. To incentivize this shift, Evans announced plans to offer "million-dollar salary bands" for human workers who drive outsized impact using AI, promoting a "100x organization" philosophy where those who successfully automate their jobs thrive while those who cannot are phased out. While a recent Gartner survey notes that 80% of companies leveraging autonomous tech have cut jobs without necessarily seeing clear financial returns yet, ClickUp claims its internal productivity gains are tangible, signaling a controversial new era of corporate "tokenmaxxing" and hyper-lean operations.