AI didn't lay me off - it set me free

Today, Amazon announced one of its largest workforce reductions ever—over 16,000 corporate positions (see: Reuters News).

Coincidentally, last night, I watched Axios CEO Jim VandeHei describe AI as a “force multiplier” for talent and capability (see: Youtube).

I think that he’s right, but not only in the way he thinks.

A year ago, I was grinding hard at a job I respected, working with people I admired. I felt incredible pressure to perform against challenging targets with the headwinds of accelerating RTO policies, increased global collaboration across time zones, organizational changes, and the specter of AI. After a few bad months, my health collapsed and I needed to take a leave of absence.

That’s when I realized something: AI didn’t only make me more productive for my employer. It might make it possible to leave my employer entirely. During my leave, I retreated into a passion project — digital tinkering with Claude AI that I’d been fooling around with for a few months. At first, it was just therapy, something to focus on while I recovered.

But I was discovering something profound: AI wasn’t just a tool to make me work faster. It was enabling me to do work I couldn’t do before alone. I mean I could do it… I’d spent years as a graphic and interaction designer, as an application developer, as an information architect, and as a product manager. The only problem was that I couldn’t be all those things at the same time. Not without some kind of “force multiplier”, right?

The penny dropped. The same “force multiplier” that companies are using to justify downsizing their workforces can also multiply what one person could build independently.

I faced a choice: Wait to see if AI would take my job or use AI to free myself from needing that job at all. I chose freedom. I quit before they could lay me off.

Now, as I watch 16,000 Amazon employees join the hundreds of thousands laid off in the past 18 months, I feel compelled to contemplate that choice further. What will all those displaced engineers do? Will they scramble back to identical jobs, hoping their next employer won’t also realize they can “multiply force” with AI and fewer people? Or will some of them make a different choice?

The executives call AI a “force multiplier” — and they’re using it to consolidate resources and reduce costs - as one would certainly and very reasonably expect. But the same technology that enables one company to do the work of five could enable one person to do the work of a team. The question isn’t whether AI will displace jobs. It’s what we DO with that displacement.

I don’t know if AI-enabled independence is sustainable yet. That’s what I’m testing. I’ve spent the past three months building sistnt—privacy-first apps that solve real problems without surveillance capitalism. I’m hoping to document what works, what doesn’t, and whether a person can earn a living this way.

It’s hard. It’s uncertain. But it’s mine.

If I succeed, I hope to find a path between corporate employment and gig-economy precarity. If I fail, at least I’ll document why, so others can learn from my cautionary tale.

Either way, I wasn’t motivated to wait to see if AI takes my job. I used it to take my career back.

If you’re one of those 16,000, or you’re wondering if you’re next — you’re obviously not alone. Let’s figure this out together.

Photo by Ivan Dostál on Unsplash