On May 27, Zeb Evans, CEO of collaboration software startup ClickUp, announced a shocking personnel decision on X last Thursday: the company is laying off 22% of its workforce. However, Evans insisted this is "not a cost-cutting measure" but an organizational revolution to "aggressively embrace AI." The company, valued at $4 billion in 2021, is using a brutal experiment to validate the cruelest proposition of the workplace in the AI era—it's not AI replacing people, but people who can use AI replacing those who cannot.
The Ambition of a "100x Organization": 3,000 AI Agents vs. Laid-Off Employees
ClickUp's AI transformation is no empty slogan—it comes with substantial investment. According to Fortune, the company has recently introduced approximately 3,000 internal AI Agents to handle a wide range of complex tasks, from code writing to customer support. Employees no longer perform the work themselves but instead shift to "directing" these Agents and ultimately reviewing outputs to ensure they meet company standards.
Evans's goal is blunt and radical: to transform ClickUp into a "100x organization"—one where AI-enabled productivity reaches 100 times that of traditional organizations. He wrote on X: "Most of the savings from this change will flow directly back to those who stay. We're introducing a million-dollar pay bracket. If you create outsized impact with AI, your compensation will break through traditional job-level constraints."
The Numbers Speak: 80% of Companies Using Autonomous Tech Have Already Laid Off Staff
ClickUp is not alone. The latest Gartner survey shows that approximately 80% of companies using autonomous technologies have implemented layoffs. However, the research also found that layoffs have not necessarily translated into meaningful financial returns—some companies are simply using unproven AI as a pretext for job cuts.
Evans emphasized to TechCrunch that ClickUp falls into the "true AI transformation" camp rather than "fake AI layoffs." The company is internally measuring the efficiency gains from AI Agents and plans to package these capabilities into upcoming customer-facing products. "We don't gamify token costs—we gamify the value created and the time saved."
The "Tokenmaxxing" Trap: The Chasm Between "Using AI" and "Using AI Well"
In recent months, a growing number of companies have begun monitoring employees' token consumption as a metric for AI tool adoption. But critics point out that this practice, dubbed "Tokenmaxxing," is misguided—it merely accumulates AI spending rather than creating genuine value.
Evans's response is even more callous: "People who use AI to automate their own jobs will always have work." But the subtext is clear: if AI continues to take over more tasks, ClickUp will ultimately need fewer and fewer people, and those who fail to successfully automate their own functions will be weeded out.
An Extreme Case: Polsia—A One-Person Unicorn
The tech world's most extreme vision of this scenario has already materialized. Polsia, a startup founded just one year ago, claims to handle all software operations for solo entrepreneurs with only one person on the payroll: founder and CEO Ben Cera. This extreme efficiency has evidently impressed investors—Polsia has just raised $30 million at a $250 million valuation.
The "Darwinian" Workplace in the AI Era
ClickUp's layoff experiment reveals the brutal truth of the AI-era workplace: "embracing AI" is not a choice but a survival imperative. Evans's "million-dollar pay bracket" promise may seem generous on the surface, but it essentially pushes employees into a zero-sum game—either become a "commander" of AI and command top-tier compensation, or become a "replaceable" casualty shown the door.
The deeper paradox lies in this: when 3,000 AI Agents can handle the work of 22% of employees, are those who remain truly safe? Evans says "people who use AI to automate their own jobs will always have work"—but if AI's automation capabilities double every quarter, could today's "commander" role be taken over by a more advanced AI tomorrow?
ClickUp's "100x organization" vision may be Silicon Valley's most honest AI narrative—it doesn't disguise replacement or sugarcoat brutality, but instead openly institutionalizes workplace Darwinism. When Gartner's data shows that 80% of autonomous tech companies have already laid off staff, yet financial returns have yet to materialize, we must remain vigilant: this "AI transformation" may not be a productivity leap, but rather a large-scale human capital restructuring waged in the name of technology. Between the 22% of employees shown the door and the "AI commanders" pocketing million-dollar paychecks—who are the real winners in the AI era? The answer may have to wait until ClickUp's next earnings season to be revealed.