Windsurf's co-founders really screwed over their people. They got $2.4bn - half of which went to investors - to go to Google, sold the IP and staff to Cognition, who are now laying them off or offering buyouts. Layoffs from an AI company are a pale horse unto themselves
Billy Mack is a detective down in Texas🎶
Lmao. From acquihire to acquilayoff. Insanity!
Sounds like the severance and layoffs are a blessing. If I worked for a boss that expected that, I'd end up in prison.
Honestly 9 months of severance for employees who don’t have to put up with a draconian work culture is the best use of VC money (but also f Windsurf founders for screwing over their employees)
"We are a terrible place to work," announced CEO, "Would you like to take the next 2/3rds of the year off?"
Not saying that Cognition isn’t evil (especially with those working hours, for fuck’s sake) but nine months is significantly better severance than most have got in recent layoffs. Better to take it now than work yourself to death and get laid off anyway.
Also, cognition to my knowledge doesn't make any real revenue. I can find one deal with Goldman Sachs from this year of a few hundred seats? Maybe they bought Windsurf so they'd have revenue. Very strange stuff
Also, insulting people as you lay them off — just another thing that we all knew was a sign of low character, now elevated by a certain set of people into their best practices.
This whole country is a fucking scam
I imagine working for an AI company at a level below "Upper Management" right now is like having the sword of Damocles over your head.
Ponzi after ponzi after ponzi ....
Seems like a buyout to prevent competition. Not uncommon.
Grumbles in Cognitive Psychologist. Calling your AI company Cognition is like calling this cat a genius.
But Ed if we assume they'll have “first month after we bought a thing that makes money” money 11 more times every year forever they’re doing great! I’m an AI revenue reporter and I’m very smart to think this, what the fuck is recurring revenue
Such CEO-brain to brag about your employees not getting sleep or seeing their family. Measure work by what you achieve (in his company's case, lose a lot of money), not how much time you waste getting it done.
“we can’t help but overwork our employees, which is why we actually need to have even fewer of them” - cool business strats from great people this sucks ! fuck them
Typical Silicon Valley: Work BS amounts of time for an app that may or (most likely) not pay off only to get fooked in the bum at the end. AI isn’t even “Hot Dog, Not Hot Dog” It’s Nip Alert 2.0
VCs always order the champagne but we pay the tab.
Only the US celebrates toxic tech-bro "company-before-everything-else" culture like this. It's sickening (speaking as someone working 60hr weeks on his own business).
Maybe if you spend 80 hours a week sitting at a desk, you're just bad at your job.
Stripping it for parts? Gosh I've never heard of anybody doing that...
Intriguing, thank you very much for sharing!
Since when have any of these people cared?
In an apparent race for the future, why would *any* AI-focused companies laying people off? Meta, Microsoft, Google — surely, if AI is an existential threat it'd be all-hands on deck, right? And yes, they did layoff people useful in the 'war': engineers, content designers, product designers, PMs.
Still, nobody can define an AI “product” or service that anyone will pay for.
I hate to say it, but the smartest AI founders are selling their companies right now. This is what happens when one of them knows what time it is.
What are these employees doing though They got screwed over by owners but they willingly participated in this. If you are working 80 hours a week your employer doesn’t care about you at all so why be surprised when they enter a deal that leaves you out
Nine months is a decent offer no? If what you guys are saying is true might be a blessing in disguise for many of them.
Yes but not when you where promised upside through equity You got out but you where lied to and manipulated to working 80+ hours a week
Gotcha man, I’m not in this biz and admittedly don’t know much about what these companies do.
Damn really sucks for all the rank and file employees who were basically equally amoral but not smart enough to recognize they were first in line to get fucked
STEPHEN A: Skip I want to ADDRESS this issue. [BAYLESS nods] You KNOW I am sensitive to a bunch of amoral shitheads losing their jobs because they were taken advantage of by even more amoral shitheads BAYLESS: Absolutely STEPHEN A: BUT!
AI will destroy these companies. They make major mistakes in algorithms and judgment.
This is just resource consolidation
that, and a possible incitement to workplace sabotage on the way out
I’m an outsider in all of this but layoffs have been a part of mergers/acquisitions for longer than anyone of us has been alive. It sucks but why is this any different?
V excited for this because I had coworkers that swore by windsurf even though their code was half-cooked spaghetti
Euu. Half cooked spaghetti.
