If the recent news of Amazon laying off 16,000 workers, Block reducing its workforce by nearly half, Atlassian cutting back 10% of its staff, and Meta considering another big round of layoffs due to AI is overwhelming, you might find some relief in the responses to a recent post by Sam Altman on X.
Sam Altman, the CEO of OpenAI, posted on Tuesday:
“I have so much gratitude to people who wrote extremely complex software character-by-character. It already feels difficult to remember how much effort it really took. Thank you for getting us to this point.”
Altman’s seemingly heartfelt sentiment comes from a company driving the AI wave that’s being used to justify developer layoffs and fewer junior developer jobs. OpenAI’s advancements were built on vast amounts of traditional coding work by the very developers Altman now thanks.
The internet had a lot to say about this. Many responses poked fun at the irony and insensitivity of Altman’s post in light of layoffs. Some of the highlights include mentions of “Sam’s eulogy for software engineers,” nostalgia for a parody account of Sam Altman, a sarcastic thanks for job insecurity, the suggestion of an AI to prevent tone-deaf billionaire tweets, and gratitude for free open-source AI models from China. One comment likened the post to something from a Mayan ceremony.