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You've read the post. A CEO goes on LinkedIn. Hard decision. I own this. Because of AI, we'll come out leaner, faster, stronger.
Max Clark has written one of these. He's also been on the receiving end of one.
In this Playbook, he breaks down what that post actually says — and what it's designed to leave out. Not to indict the people who write them, but to hand you one question: whenever a company or a vendor tells you why they're doing something, who was that explanation written for?
It's the same question whether you're reading a layoff announcement or a renewal proposal. You're about to start asking it everywhere.
What This Episode Answers
Max Clark has written one of these. He's also been on the receiving end of one.
In this Playbook, he breaks down what that post actually says — and what it's designed to leave out. Not to indict the people who write them, but to hand you one question: whenever a company or a vendor tells you why they're doing something, who was that explanation written for?
It's the same question whether you're reading a layoff announcement or a renewal proposal. You're about to start asking it everywhere.
What This Episode Answers
- How do I tell whether "AI" is the real reason behind a decision?
- Why do so many strategic announcements sound exactly the same?
- What other decisions get announced one way but are really doing something else?
- How does this apply to vendor decisions — pricing changes, AI upgrades, licensing restructures?
- What's the one question to ask before accepting any explanation?
What We Get Into
00:00 — The post you've read a hundred times
01:10 — Why the four-part format is worth taking apart
03:30 — Why headcount is always the first thing cut
04:15 — Why "AI" works as an explanation — and when it's actually true
05:47 — RTO, unlimited PTO, keep your laptop — same move, different wrapper
08:00 — What to do if you're on the receiving end
09:20 — The one question that changes how you read any explanation
10:20 — Why this is the same skill as reading a vendor pitch
00:00 — The post you've read a hundred times
01:10 — Why the four-part format is worth taking apart
03:30 — Why headcount is always the first thing cut
04:15 — Why "AI" works as an explanation — and when it's actually true
05:47 — RTO, unlimited PTO, keep your laptop — same move, different wrapper
08:00 — What to do if you're on the receiving end
09:20 — The one question that changes how you read any explanation
10:20 — Why this is the same skill as reading a vendor pitch
Related Reading
Layoff Announcements and Vendor Price Increases Are Built the Same Way. Here's How to Read Both.
Layoff Announcements and Vendor Price Increases Are Built the Same Way. Here's How to Read Both.
About Signed
The IT market is built for sellers, not buyers.
Signed is the podcast for the buyers. Host Max Clark, CEO of ITBroker.com, sits down with CIOs, CFOs, operators, and founders who’ve lived inside real enterprise tech deals — the ones who can tell you what actually determined whether the deal worked, not what the deck promised.
New episodes weekly. An ITBroker.com podcast.
Full Transcript
Creators and Guests
What is Signed?
The IT market is built for sellers, not buyers.
That's why 80% of tech buyers regret their last major purchase. Deals take longer than they should. Teams get locked into platforms that don't fit, contracts they can't escape, and vendors they wouldn't choose again. The pitches, demos, and analyst reports are built to close deals, not help buyers make the right one.
Signed is the podcast for the buyers. Host Max Clark, CEO of ITBroker.com, talks with CIOs, CFOs, operators, and founders who've lived inside real enterprise tech deals — the ones who can explain what actually determined whether the deal worked.
Plus weekly Playbooks breaking down the moments that matter most: renewals, M&A, compliance mandates, office moves, budget cuts, and the specific plays that separate buyers who get it right from those who regret it.
If you're responsible for choosing, negotiating, or living with the consequences of enterprise technology, this show is for you.
New episodes weekly. An ITBroker.com podcast.
Max Clark (00:00)
The cut is the constant. AI is the jacket it's wearing this year. And if you think this is just an AI thing, it isn't. The wrapper changes, the move doesn't. Once you see the pattern, you see it everywhere.
I'm Max Clark. This is Signed, the show for buyers and a market build for sellers. Usually sellers mean vendors. Today it means something closer to home, the stories companies tell about their own decisions and how to read them.
You've seen this post. A CEO goes on LinkedIn. I want to share a hard decision. They apologize, then they take ownership. This one's on me, no one else. Then comes the reason. AI. We're rethinking what it takes to run this company. And that means saying goodbye to some incredibly talented people. And then the turn. We'll come out of this leaner, faster, and stronger. You've read some version of this post a hundred times.
I've sat on both sides of this. I've had to make the cut, I've also been the one cut. Neither feels good, and I'm not going to pretend otherwise.
But if you want to understand what's really happening when a company does this, you have to separate, the lever from the language.
Start with the format because it's the same every time. Four parts. The apology. This is hard, I'm sorry. Two, the ownership. This is my decision. It's on me. Three, the cause. Because of AI, we're rethinking the business. Four, the future. We'll be stronger for it. And here's the thing: that's good communication. I'm not mocking it. Apology, ownership, cause, future. It's clean. It gives people something to root for at the end. It's been tested in public over and over and it lands.
So this isn't an episode about a bad CEO writing a bad post. Most of these posts are well written. That's exactly why they're worth taking apart. The better the wrapper, the more it's worth asking what's inside it. Here's what the post doesn't say, and none of this is exotic, none of it is a scandal, it's just how companies worked.
Left unchecked, every company overhires. Growth feels like hiring. When money's cheap and the charts going up, you add people, because adding people feels like progress. Nobody's a villain in that story. It's gravity. A lot of that hiring was never about the work. In tech, we've done defensive hiring for decades. You hire the engineer partly so a competitor can't. That's where Rest Invest comes from. Bodies in the roster that were a strategic move, not a staffing need. Most companies are carrying weight they could put down.
In my experience, a typical company could remove 10 to 20% of headcount without damaging the business. That's not a knock on the people. It's a knock on the planning that hired ahead of the work. This used to have a name, stack ranking. The whole idea was to prune a slice every year on purpose, so it never had to happen all at once. Most companies don't do it, so instead of an annual trim, the pressure builds and gets released in one brutal event with a press release attached.
People are a top three cost at almost every company. Salaries, benefits, the whole comp line. For most businesses, it's one of the biggest numbers on the page. And this is the one that matters. A reduction in force is the single fastest, biggest lever an executive can pull to change the financials. Faster than growing revenue, faster than raising prices, faster than renegotiating contracts. Cutting hard costs takes cross team priority and months of coordinated work. Cutting headcount takes an afternoon and a spreadsheet.
That's the asymmetry. When a leader needs the numbers to move and needs them to move now, this is the lever that's always within reach. So if the cut is normal, why does everyone suddenly say AI? Because every announcement has two audiences, and AI is the only word that works on both. Audience one is the investors. Watch the difference. We overhired and now we're correcting. That reads as an omission. Management got it wrong. We're restructuring the company around AI, reads a strategy.
Management sees the future, same exact cut, opposite signal. One can ding the stock, the other can lift it. If you're the CEO, that's not a hard choice. Audience two is the public. Blaming a technology shift is socially survivable in a way that almost nothing else is. We bet too big and we have to walk it back invites pylons. Or betting on AI invites invites nods. It gives everyone, the company, the press, even the people leaving, a narrative that doesn't require anyone to look bad.
And look, sometimes AI genuinely is part of it. I'm not saying it's never real. I'm saying notice that even the people covering these layoffs can't agree on the cause. Half call it AI replacing roles, half call it the overdue correction to pandemic overhiring. When the explanation is that contestant and one version happens to be the flattering one, you can guess which one ends up in the post.
The cut is the constant. AI is the jacket it's wearing this year. And if you think this is just an AI thing, it isn't. The wrapper changes, the move doesn't. Once you see the pattern, you see it everywhere. Return to office, aka RTO. So does productivity and collaboration, but every executive knows that a hard RTO mandate means a percentage of people quit instead of complying. It's the cheapest layoff there is. No severance, no warrant notice, no headline, no LinkedIn post.
People just leave on their own. Yahoo ran the textbook version back in 2013. The policy didn't fully make sense until you understood that attrition was a feature, not a side effect. Unlimited PTO. Sold as a generous perk. In practice, people take less time off when there's no defined number. There's no balance to use up, so they underuse it. And here's the part nobody mentions: it wipes the accrued PTO liability clean off the balance sheet. Think about what you're actually being offered.
California now mandates five paid six days. Would you rather have a defined bank of weeks that the company owes you and has to pay out, or unlimited, which quietly nets you fewer days and the company zero liability? Keep your laptop. Sold as a parting gift. The reality is that reclaiming, securely wiping, and reprovisioning thousands of devices is a logistical and security nightmare. It's far cheaper and cleaner to fire off a remote wipe through your device management, take the write-off, and move on. The gift is also the efficient accounting decision.
Both things are true at once. That's the pattern. The stated reason is the one that sounds good. The operative reason is on the balance sheet every time.
Now let me be just as honest about the other direction, because none of the above means this stuff is fine. First, a genuinely good thing: severance has actually gotten better. Most organizations have made their packages more generous over the last couple years. That's real and it's worth saying out loud because it's one of the few parts of this that's moved in the right direction.
But money doesn't make it not hurt. There is no way to end somebody's job that feels good to them afterward. None. That's not a process problem you can design around. It's just true. You want to know how hard that problem is. Companies have literally tried paying people to quit. Zappos and Amazon both ran versions of the offer. Here's a check, no questions, walk away. And the reason is telling, a voluntary exit is the only kind that doesn't leave a wound. They couldn't find a way to make the involuntary f kind of feel okay.
So they try to convert it into the voluntary kind. That's how intractable the human side of this is.
So here's what I want the person on the receiving end of one of these to hear, because I've been that person. The bloat wasn't yours, the overhiring decision wasn't yours, you got hired into a plan, you did your job, and the plan changed above your head for reasons that had nothing to do with your work. The fact that the mechanics are normal does not make the cost too fair, and it absolutely does not make it your fault. Both things are true. The lever is ordinary, the pain is real. Don't let anyone, including the the well-written post, talk you out of either one.
So here's the actual playbook, the thing you can use on Monday. Whenever a company tells you why it's doing something, a layoff, an RTO, a new perk, a strategic pivot, ask one question first. Who is this explanation for? If the answer is investors or the internet, you're looking at the wrapper. Set it down and find the lever. What line in the financials does this move? Follow it there. That's where the real reason lives. And if that sounds familiar, it should. It's the exact same muscle this whole show is about.
When a vendor tells you their product will transform your business, the real story is on their revenue line. When a CEO says because of AI, the real story is on the comp line. Stated reason versus operative reason. Read past the one that's designed to make you feel good and find the one that's designed to make the numbers work. That's the skill. It's the same whether you're buying software or reading a headline about your own industry.
Read the lever, respect the cost, both at once. That's the playbook. Next time one of these posts crosses your feed, read past the apology and find the lever. The reason it sounds good is for someone else. The real one is on the balance sheet.
I'm Max Clark. This has been signed. If this was useful, follow the show and send it to someone staring at one of these announcements right now, on either side of it. Buy tech without regret. I'll see you next time.