upvote
Someone should keep track of a public database of CEOs who cut workforce while making huge profits. Name, context, situation and all.
reply
Unfortunately, maintaining an opposite list would probably be easier.
reply
That's basically what you'll see if you open a newspaper to the stock page. That's the idea behind business. It's why you have what you have.
reply
Depends on if it's shortsighted by giving up your intellectual capital for short term profit.
reply
GM just did this in the last 30 days [1], and their sales are likely going to be just fine. In fact the auto industry has repeatedly automated jobs over the last 100 years, and they still make decent sales numbers.

If you decided to boycott every company that replaced staff with automation, you would be forced to exit the economy. Every company does this to some degree and the customers who vote with their wallet do not seem to care about a reduction in force.

[1]: https://arstechnica.com/ai/2026/06/gm-installs-robots-at-fla...

reply
Robots that replace auto industry factory workers exist; the CEO of GM didn't imagine them as part of some sort of business media induced psychotic episode.

The same is not true for the software industry execs.

reply
GM is running 0% interest, no payments until n deals right now.

That’s usually a sign that sales are not “just fine”.

reply
They always are.
reply
The above comment, to which you responded, wrote about CEOs who responded to mass hysteria, not those who automated anything.
reply
> GM just did this in the last 30 days [1], and their sales are likely going to be just fine. In fact the auto industry has repeatedly automated jobs over the last 100 years, and they still make decent sales numbers.

I worked at Verizon during their layoffs last year. Biggest layoffs in the USA.

As someone who’s been laid off before, I knew that it generally boosts the stock price.

I bought VZ because of that. It’s up 15% since the layoffs.

Microsoft, an AI stock, is down 30% in the same timeframe.

reply
This is true, and I'm sure AI cuts will continue, but it's obvious that the ones who went "all in" at AI's mass introduction were drinking a special kind of Kool-Aid reserved for the truly sycophantic Wall Street lap dogs, not the CEOs who think about risk and are cautious about betting the farm on a relatively new and mostly untested technology. GM is over 100 years old, and no doubt released improvements that were well-tested and predictable, because you don't take massive chances with a company that well established. It was a couple years into the mass AI deployment that studies on the minimal overall productivity gains of AI even started to come out(!) This was "get on the bandwagon" thinking at a massive scale, which shows you how many CEOs are not independent thinkers at all, but are really just followers. Yes, use AI, but do it responsibly, never forgetting that your investors aren't your only stakeholders - so are your people.
reply
I'll believe it when I see it, but I would love to see it.
reply