Because it had nothing to do with AI
It was an excuse to slash the workforce with relatively little backlash.
this post was submitted on 12 Jan 2026
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and that's how he achieved 75% profit margin. Let's see him do that twice.
surprised he didn't golden parachute out and reload with another company/
Not hard to fire everyone and net a profit, once.
A company so small it doesn't even have a Wikipedia page. No discernible products.
Any poly market bets on how long this company actually lasts?
a platform for AI-based email automation
the built a ChatGPT wrapper like all the other revolutionary AI companies lol the world needs more automated spam!
Their website barely even works it honestly looks like a scam organisation. I can't find any description of what it is that they actually do which makes me believe that they don't do anything.
Vaughan was surprised to find it was often the technical staff, not marketing or sales, who dug in their heels. They were the “most resistant,” he said, voicing various concerns about what the AI couldn’t do, rather than focusing on what it could. The marketing and salespeople were enthused by the possibilities of working with these new tools, he added.
So the people that had an actual idea of what the implications of using it might be weren't on board? Huh. Weird.
"All the engineers said my "screen door on a submarine" was "stupid" and would "sink the ship", so I fired them and hired new engineers!"
- CEO of now defunct "Screen Door Subs Inc."
speaking of submarines, this is the exact line of thinking that turned an idiot CEO into a paste at the bottom of the ocean
thank you mighty wizard for casting dopamine.
I can not read the word "cast" in any form without remembering this:
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I told AI to build me a submarine out of ~~titanium~~ carbon fiber.
- Stockton Rush (if he were alive today)
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Sales and marketing is often mostly bullshitting anyway. It also has a lot less risk and constraints associated to generated text having issues. Not surprised they were more on board. The tool is more fitting for those use cases anyway.
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Marketing people are known for beliving their own lies.
Like the guy with the carbon fiber submarine. Every engineer told him it couldn't be done, so he kept firing them until he had a staff of young, inexperienced engineers who would do what they were told, and just collect their paychecks.
Now their boss is dead, and there are no more paychecks.
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that writer's name is all you need to know. always look at the writer's name and their previous work to identify industry shills
A recent MIT report indicates that 95% of generative AI pilots fail to deliver measurable returns on investment, highlighting significant challenges in successfully implementing AI in businesses
CEOs:
“When I do it, it will be different.
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“They ruthlessly cut costs, R&D, and employee benefits and then replace existing employees with overseas contractors. Innovation and growth take a back seat to sheer profitability.”
This is the operating manual that explains why IgniteTech’s much-publicized AI purge feels more like a familiar private-equity play.
[...]
IgniteTech is owned by ESW. For anyone who’s watched the ESW orbit, that vagueness is not accidental. ESW’s playbook, summarized in a long explanatory dossier that has circulated inside the industry, is blunt: buy distressed software, strip costs, move work to an hourly contractor model through a unit like Crossover (which has been described in Forbes as a “global software sweatshop”), and squeeze recurring revenue out of an existing customer base rather than invest in new products.
Yeah this is called AI washing. Basically firing people, outsourcing all the jobs, stripping a company till there is nothing left. The goal is to maximize profits till the company is basically dead and then sell the husk. Because it's done under the AI label, customers and other interested parties see it as being innovative and not just money grabbing.
Selling artificial intelligence to natural idiots.
So they could have held paint drying Mondays instead, with the same overall effect
"Every single Monday was called Paint Dry Monday" Vaughan said, with his mandate for staff that they could only watch paint dry. "You couldn't have customer calls; you couldn't work on budgets; you had to only watch paint dry." He said this happened across the board, not just for tech workers, but also for sales, marketing, and everybody else at IgniteTech. "That culture needed to be built. That was the key."
Its HOW pe FIRMS operate.
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Very interesting. I appreciate the additional information. Saying its for AI but moving it to overseas contractors instead of actually moving it to AI that is actually overseas contractors (like that one AI company that was outed as being 700 Indian developers) is honestly kinda funny. AI is enshittification given form, I suppose.
Because AI is Actualy Indians :)
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Probably overhired just after COVID like everyone else in the tech sector and then realized he had no idea what to do with all the extra people because he never really had a plan.
COVID excuse not required. CEOs overhiring is like birds flying south for the winter, the sun rising in the east, water being wet - it's just what they do. 80% is a bit extreme, but he had the AI excuse, so...
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He REALLY hates paying employees and wants their pennies in his treasure horde, we get it.
He will be shocked when he discovers the shareholders don't want to pay him, either. He'll be like "what?!?! AI doing MY job? This is a travesty!" and then they will have robot security drag him out of the building screaming.
Nota bene: Not just laid off, replaced. With other people.
Basically spent a ton of money and talent and business disruption to turn over 80% of his workforce for shits and gigs.
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What the fuck is IgniteTech?
An "enterprise-software powerhouse", allegedly. Basically they bought an AI startup and decided that this was their entire personality now.
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Exactly
The question I put to management is "What do you want me to use AI for?"
I can't get a consistent answer. Lots of stuff unrelated to my job duties. "Well, it's so easy to make Facebook ads!" - "You know that's not a thing I do, right?"
They don't have an answer because they don't know either. They've bought into the idea, and invested trillions, and now they're all hoping to just churn the cream until it turns into something else, but they have no idea what it will be, or how to use it.
They're just hoping some minion finally figures out a profitable model, so they can claim it as their own, give him a nominal raise and a nice office, and they can go make trillions off his idea.
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Did AI build that dogshit website of theirs too?
Wtf it just opened a video in full screen on iOS right away. When I closed it and wanted to scroll down I was suddenly dragging an icon. When tapping this icon it opens some „my personas“ dialog which I don’t even understand what it is supposed to be? What even is this shit ass site?
Edit: page title is „Home V2“ lol
Edit 2: Of course this site is made using Elementor, hence the bad performance and buggy layout.
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If this dickhead is so smart, why does he even need a staff? I’m sure he can go start a company all by himself with just AI to work for him.
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This is a paid promotion. Its one of the ones you pay an extra $1000 and they hide the sponsored tag.
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I wonder how many employees are working on automating the CEO there first
From the article:
Vaughan was surprised to find it was often the technical staff, not marketing or sales, who dug in their heels. They were the “most resistant,” he said, voicing various concerns about what the AI couldn’t do, rather than focusing on what it could. The marketing and salespeople were enthused by the possibilities of working with these new tools, he added.
Not surprising the people with technical skills that aren’t actually replaceable by LLMs would be against forced AI adoption. Good luck maintaining a code base created with vibe coding. Meanwhile the CEO probably looks at ChatGPT and realizes it could basically do everything he already does (write emails and make high level decisions without actually having to worry about their implementation) and then incorrectly thinks it’s the case for everyone else.
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May a large object fall on him. Death is the only solution to these people.
This reads like a very weird AI circlejerk. They repeatedly mention that AI is the solution every company should adopt, but fail to provide a single example of succesful application. And I mean a how not a reult. They say 'company X KPI are this % better thanks to AI', but not how they applied it. Just talk of AI mindset, and 'culture' but I would have liked to understand what exactly it was used for (like agents, chatbots, automation of something in particular). It just reads like a lot of patting in the back and hot air so far, which is a pity because I would be interested in reading about real life cases of successful AI implementaiom
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So business grinds to a halt? That's crazy.
"I am bad at managing my finances, and eventually need to get bailed out by the government, or end up next to the homeless guy I used to make fun of".
- This guy.
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