Tech CEOsâ recent AI memos to staff have come under scrutiny in the last weeks. In some cases, that has gone as far as calls for boycotts. Plenty has already been said about these companiesâ strategies of embracing AI in the workplace, so what I want to focus on is tone.
I strongly believe in giving people the benefit of the doubt, BUT the choice of tone for these letters feels so out of touch with the concerns many people have about AI and their jobs.
One month ago, Shopify CEO Tobias LĂźtke shared screenshots of his internal email in an undiplomatic post on X that accused his staff of leaking the memo.
The memo illustrates a sink-or-swim workplace through its inclusion of phrases like âif youâre not climbing, youâre slidingâ and âyou have to keep running, just to stay stillâ, before commenting that even that doesnât âsound terribly ambitious to me anymore.â Employees have much less autonomy than CEOs. These phrases put a ton of pressure on people who have much less margin for control. Whatâs worse: they likely already have a lot of anxiety about being replaced by AI.
One might argue that this memo should work like a wake-up call, but one can do that in far more compassionate ways. Triggering peopleâs stress response is counter-productive. Read the room. Youâre sending this to people just weeks after Salesforce announced it will be laying off 1,000 people, Meta announced cutting 5% of its staff, with many other companies doing similar cuts among tech staff.
A good example of better wording is a similar memo shared with Duolingo staff, though it, too, introduced unnecessary uncertainty, which Iâll discuss further down.
Radical candor
In a post on X by Fiverr CEO Micha Kaufman, he shares his own AI memo, which starts by saying he despises people who sugar-coat reality. Instead of posting it and owning it, Kaufman, too, chooses to preemptively accuse staff of leaking it and acts like his hand is forced by adding the words: âBefore it gets out somewhere else.â
Despite some of the practical advice being valuable, itâs filled with lots of stressors, which may actually prevent people from being able to take in the important parts.
After saying he despises people who opt for different social strategies, the Fiverr CEO goes on to declare that âAI is coming for your jobsâ and even âAI is coming for youâ. He continues:
âIf you do not become an exceptional talent at what you do, a master, you will face the need for a career change in a matter of months. I am not trying to scare you. I am not talking about your job at Fiverr. I am talking about your ability to stay in your profession in the industry.â
Since weâre not sugar-coating, I can offer some âradical candorâ of my own: it sounds exactly like you are trying to scare your staff straight. You even say this email is intended as a wake-up call. So, including that line feels disingenuous and undermines any attempt to offer job security. That promise feels hollow, as itâs immediately followed by saying people wonât even be able to stay in the industry. The conditional âIf you do notâ at the start of the paragraph sets this whole part up to read like a threat.
âAre we all doomed? Not all of us, but those who will not wake up and understand the new reality are, unfortunately, doomed.â
There are better ways to phrase this. Iâve even taken the advice to employ AI and asked Claude for help, which suggests something more along these lines: âThose who recognize this shift and adapt will find new opportunities, while those who resist change may face challenges ahead. Our success depends on our willingness to evolveâand I'm committed to helping our team navigate this transformation together.â
Empathy
Musk recently called empathy a âfundamental weakness of western civilization.â Itâs an understandable viewpoint for him to espouse, as it will be easier for King Ketamine to increase his power when people with strong moral principles get sidelined in a game of divide and conquer. We already live in trying times in which a lot of people are anxious about todayâs and tomorrowâs challenges. Letâs practice compassion towards each other and stave off further disempowerment and a global burnout.
Artificial intelligenceâs emergence is an important development to consider, and one thing the aforementioned CEOs are right about is that it should be proactively explored. So, how do you put that to your employees?
Lead with compassion. Understand your staffâs anxieties, and that stress works differently for people lower on the ladder.
Offer security amid uncertainty. Acknowledge uncertainty without fueling fear, and follow that up by offering clarity where you can.
Use inclusive language. The above letters read a bit like every-person-for-themselves. Shift the tone away from individualism and more towards âweâre in this together.â Donât make it disingenuous. Your employees will be able to tell and if you canât follow it up and betray their trust, youâll have a hard time regaining it.
Back words up with action. Itâs not enough to say, âIâll clear my calendarâ or âgo learn from a top performer.â If there ever was a time to show leadership, itâs now. Lay out clear ways in which you are going to support the organisation.
Emphasise shared values that have broad buy-in. A lot of organisations set their values top-down. The risk with that is that these values may come across more as corporate expectations rather than moral drivers that people subscribe to. Focus on the values that clearly have a lot of buy-in.
But in the most simple terms: just put yourself in the shoes of the recipient. Donât write what you yourself would need to hear. Most people are not going to be like you. And if you piss off the ones that are like you, then you risk them getting disgruntled, quitting, and starting a competitor that, who knows, leverages AI better than you.
Out of all the letters Iâve seen, I think Luis von Ahn, co-founder and CEO of Duolingo, almost got it right. I say almost, because his letter still creates unnecessary ambiguity for contractors (âweâll gradually stop using contractors to do work that AI can handleâ). They took the step to post it to their companyâs LinkedIn account, rather than the type of âleaking employees are forcing my handâ type posts by Fiverrâs and Shopifyâs CEOs, which is commendable.
Then thereâs one last thingâŚ
I have been outspoken about the selective outrage concerning AIâs environmental impact. And as much as I would encourage individuals to be curious about these tools, I would also implore companies to be very clear about what this means for their sustainability targets. Unfortunately, none of the letters acknowledge that topic, while itâs exactly these CEOs that can have an outsized impact by communicating clear policy here. A commitment to a world we, and future generations, can live in is a value shared by everyone, surely.
(- âż- ) For your ears
Ambient & techno producer Endless Ritual dropped a rhythmically stunning 3-track release called Tension of Opposites on Mumbai-based label Sonic Perception. Hypnotic and energising.
(ââżââż) For your eyes
Iâve recently come across the work of Yui Sakamoto, who unfortunately passed away in 2024. His work fuses Mexican mysticism with techniques and inspirations from his native Japan.
Thanks so much for this Bas; super useful as a "how not to do it" guide. Feeling that techno EP too - that's right up my street!