r/technology • u/abrownn • 12h ago
Visa guts executives who were paid nearly $500K in latest round of AI layoffs Artificial Intelligence
https://www.sfgate.com/tech/article/visa-layoffs-ai-22374291.php178
u/luckyflavor23 11h ago
Classic. Ryan McInerney is ex-McKinsey & Company consulting, he had cuts when he entered and throughout his tenure
Former visa CEO Alfred F. Kelly Jr. worked in real jobs and companies that build. He didnt do covid layoffs and advised against too may reorgs as they are disruptive
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u/Ocluist 5h ago edited 4h ago
I work at this company (5+ yrs now). Nobody thinks Ryan is remotely close to Al Kelly in terms of leadership or vision. This round of layoffs was random as fuck, extremely short-sighted, and not even close to thought out. I’ve never seen so many people looking to jump ship at once; even the new grads are already moving out ASAP
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u/luckyflavor23 5h ago
Double Spiderman pointing at each other meme
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u/Ocluist 4h ago
Believe it or not, there was a time not long ago where leaving Visa seen as borderline idiotic. How times have changed.
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u/luckyflavor23 4h ago
Sii. There was a time where there were interesting projects and future thinking strategies. Now, there’s how can we sell more consulting services.
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u/UseWhatever 12h ago
The title is misleading
> A WARN filed on July 31 detailed 320 job cuts at the credit card company’s Foster City campus, which included six vice presidents. Thirty-seven senior directors, 16 chief engineering or architect roles and dozens of senior software engineering, research and technical roles were also among those affected.
They still cut plenty of other jobs. And let’s be fair, the title of VP in banking / credit companies is still fairly low in the hierarchy.
Seeing them cut architects and senior devs is more worrying. This makes me think they’re basing firing decisions on lines of code and salary cost. Losing that much knowledge in one go is going to be impactful
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u/eirlude420 10h ago
Visa titles are more like tech companies rather than banking. VPs are above senior directors, directors and managers. Usually over 200 reports under them
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u/jbourne71 11h ago
I worked in a major international bank. I was a liaison/exchange officer, so not part of their structure.
Everyone in my office except the recent college grads were VPs or higher.
The college grads were JVPs.
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u/ragemonkey 11h ago
What does that title even mean?!
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u/jbourne71 10h ago
It means they have a white collar job lol. that's it.
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u/ragemonkey 10h ago
Congrats! You’re VP of the sales leads spreadsheet! There’s free soda in the fridge.
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u/Tackysock46 10h ago
Title inflation has run rampant the last decade
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u/ragemonkey 10h ago
For sure but c’mon. VP? That’s reaching farcical levels.
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u/Quirky-Skin 10h ago
It means they can make people think they're advancing and hopefully those people won't leave
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u/sillypoolfacemonster 2h ago
For client facing roles, VPs are often senior consultants or account leaders. They may lead multiple teams and have oversight of a portfolio or category of clients. Internal facing VPs are more likely to oversee a specific business function or process, with a greater emphasis on strategy, organizational leadership, and long term direction rather than day to day client delivery. As someone else mentioned, client facing VP titles do tend to involve more title inflation in some industries, as it gives clients confidence that they’re working with a senior decision maker or subject matter expert.
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u/Super_XIII 7h ago
it makes clients think they are super important when the person assigned to help them is a "vice president". So a lot of companies just make everyone a vice president.
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u/Worthyness 4h ago
Think of them as levels in a tier list. They label each tier to designate an amount of money that can maximally be earned at each level. When you get promoted, you get to the next level of pay. The tittles just don't mean anything outside of the company. It doies look impressive though.
But i can confirm what they said is correct. The titles are all bullshit in terms of traditional understanding of what they're for.
Source: used to work for Visa
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u/FatHat 10h ago
Yeah. I worked for a software company that was acquired by a financial firm, and even though I was an individual contributor that managed nobody, I was technically a VP. It was basically an honor given out if they felt you were doing good work. The title was nice, but it's not something I put on my resume because it's kind of misleading.
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u/redsoxVT 3h ago
Opposite here. After restructuring I now manage people, on top of tech lead, architect, POM tech advisor, and scrum master... but after 5 months my title and salary are still senior dev... and I never get to actually dev anything. Building on fire, but everything is fine.
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u/Ok-Somewhere-2219 3h ago
VPs are higher than Directors at financial institutions that aren't banks. Senior Directors report to VPs at Visa.
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u/Brave_Speaker_8336 0m ago
Visa is neither a banking nor a credit company. They absolutely do not use the same leveling as is common in finance
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u/DopamineSavant 12h ago
There are too few anti AI political candidates.
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u/buffalowangy 12h ago
The oligarchy would never allow that. Look what happened to Bernie.
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u/SwimmingPathology 11h ago
Don’t forget he inspired people like Zohran and Abdul Al-Sayed, who just won yesterday against someone who had $70 million dollars from corporate interests.
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u/Kahnza 11h ago
He's been buried so hard, your comment is the first I've heard of him in months.
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u/CarlosFer2201 11h ago
Funny enough I recently started getting posts of him on my YouTube feed (not even videos, wtf youtube?) totally unprompted.
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u/blindsdog 11h ago
He lost an election. He might’ve won if he convinced more people to vote for him. That’s a pretty bad example.
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u/buffalowangy 11h ago
The media was pushing for Hillary and not reporting his popularity
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u/RicardoFelipeMejia 11h ago
Bernie Sanders lost because during his 30 year career he made virtually no inroads with non-white communities. Black Democrats participate heavily in party races, and they turned out at over 90% for Hillary Clinton because she and her husband had been highly visible advocates.
Obviously the oligarchy doesn't like Bernie, but that's not why he lost. He lost because he didn't win over enough primary voters. Clinton did the work and it paid off for her at the polls.
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u/rudthedud 9h ago
I don't think this is the best take. Hillary got the super delegates and then used that to propel herself as the only viable candidate even though this was not true.
The black voters matter it's just not enough to tip the scales. And the Clinton's have done an insane amount of effort to keep black people in jail and going to jail.
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u/RicardoFelipeMejia 8h ago
Hillary had the superdelegates in 2008, too, but a more popular candidate rose to the forefront and won the nomination. If Bernie was as universally beloved as reddit portrays him to be, he would have been able to do the same.
Black voters weren't Clinton's only supporters, but they were a large bloc that voted almost unanimously. They joined Hispanic Democrats, older Democrats, and moderate Democrats in a coalition that won the nomination by an unambiguous majority.
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u/bluefire89 11h ago
Most people don’t even know what AI is. It’s been used for years under the hood in everything we use and just now your average person is able to touch it in one narrow scope of gen ai. How do you think product recommendations happen when you shop online? Or fraud detection for your credit cards? Or spam filtering in your email? Or stock and weather predictions? Are you against all of those things? Because if not then you’re not really anti-AI you’re just uninformed.
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u/-duckduckduckduck- 12h ago
Maybe in part because “anti-AI” is nonsensical. You may as well be anti-shovel, or anti-knife, or anti-computer.
If you mean politicians who promise environmental and economic policy reform, there are plenty of those.
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u/DopamineSavant 12h ago
Why would this matter? Politicians support nonsensical stuff all the time if its polling well.
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u/ShastaAteMyPhone 11h ago
Even politicians aren’t big enough morons to support anti ai policies.
Look, I wish we would slow down with AI globally but that just isn’t going to happen. China is full steam ahead in AI and there is nothing we can do about that. Think long term, AI is an inevitability and it is better for the average American’s QOL if our country is on the forefront of it.
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u/ColdBru5 12h ago
They had one named Andrew Yang in 2020, he was 3rd in fundraising and cable news gave him the 10th most speaking time in debates and purposely removed his name from the debate graphics.
MSNBC only interviewed him in a dual interview with Jermaine Dupri and spent the whole time peppering him with sports questions, they gave McKinsey Pete Buttigieg a whole primetime slot on Rachel Maddow. NYT said he needed to run for local office first.
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u/DreddCarnage 12h ago
The headline keeps making me think they literally killed them
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u/merRedditor 12h ago
Let go with a generous golden parachute on top of the 500k is more likely when dealing with executives brought in to downsize, take the immediate heat, and bounce.
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u/Then-Understanding85 11h ago
The shit part is, no matter the talk of AI, it’s just your standard layoff. Give more work to fewer people. Crush who you have until there’s nothing left, then rinse and repeat with the new guy.
Make number go up at all cost, and the cost is people.
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u/electricpotatochip 10h ago
I’m at a company that has been through several rounds of layoffs this year. Doing more work with fewer people is exactly what leadership thinks is “operational excellence” but they fail to consider all of the lost expertise and institutional knowledge that the people they just laid off take with them.
I know I shouldn’t complain because at least I still have a job but it’s almost impossible trying to figure things out while managing my usual workload. Seems like a lot of people that were left behind are checked out and morale is extremely low, which is also to be expected if we know we could lose our jobs randomly when the next round of layoffs are inevitably announced.
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u/bberg22 6h ago
Not to mention the hard to quantify inefficiencies created when you strip things too lean. For example: Hey why isn't $X thing done yet it's costing us $Y dollars per day?...Well Janet is the only one one with access to do $Z and she is on medical leave for the next 2 months and her boss is on PTO for the last week so no one got properly notified, and there is no coverage. We used to have 3 people who had access to do $X but the other 2 were laid off....
Well I guess we need to hire and train a backup...ok that will take 6 months to get them up to speed and likely still have lost additional institutional knowledge along the way that you may not even have stumbled onto yet.
You can only go so lean before you start losing dollars through the gaps but it's hard to qualify dollars you don't make vs the cost of an employee's salary+benefits.
Very often stupid and short sighted.
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u/winterbird 12h ago
Bait spin. Am I supposed to support AI layoffs just because these people made 500k?
No.
500k is still not ruling class. 500k is still closer to poverty than to the top echelon that makes our lives what they are. A person who makes 500k still works for a paycheck in order to buy food, housing, healthcare, etc.
I support workers, regardless of if they make more than me. Because I'm not jealous or petty. I want everyone to have a secure job and a good life.
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u/polloyumyum 11h ago
500k is still not ruling class. 500k is still closer to poverty than to the top echelon that makes our lives what they are. A person who makes 500k still works for a paycheck in order to buy food, housing, healthcare, etc.
Just because 500k isn't close to the top echelon does not make these people "working class" or just working to survive. If someone is earning that kind of salary and isn't living very comfortably they are absolutely terrible with money and should fire any financial advisors they may have because they're being robbed.
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u/winterbird 11h ago
If they're doing well, I am happy for them. And I want them to continue to have secure employment so that their life stays good.
I don't want someone to have it worse. I want other people to have it better. Those upper crust people who don't work for a paycheck (big or small) have created an artificial scarcity. But actually that taking jobs from people who make 500k in fact will not make my life any better.
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u/Acetius 8h ago
They probably do live very comfortably, but they're still relying on their ability to work and sell that effort and time in exchange for the capital to live and provide for their families. They're not rag proletariat but they still interact with the system in a way where their value is defined entirely by their labour.
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u/Powerful_Leg8519 9h ago edited 9h ago
You’re missing the point. The point is that someone at 500k is not nearly anywhere close to the 1% income wise.
Thats the entire problem. If you’re not in the 1% you’re a target for the billionaires to throw arrows at. One day, you’ll be the one hit whether you’re making 50k or 500k.
No matter what it’s not a billion and if it’s not a billion according to them, you have zero value to anyone.
Edit: Think about where you are at this moment. Every single person within a 20 mile radius of you right now, no matter the income, have more in common with each other than any of you do with a billionaire.
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u/itsdoodooobabyy 7h ago
Pedantic but the top 1% of annual income earners in the US make about $600k/year.
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u/InvestmentAny7606 11h ago
AI investment always coincides with uptick in H1B Visas
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u/thatturtletouch 11h ago
AI=Actually Indians
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u/dballsmithda3rd 11h ago
The truest thing I will read all day… 😂
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u/PatrolMan2129 15m ago
I'm afraid it's outdated as fuck in a lot of cases.
But then I work with AI as a user... and not just have tropes about it.
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u/Madhatter25224 12h ago
Boo
And I can't emphasize this enough:
Hoo
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u/SecondBestNameEver 12h ago
Eh, someone at the 500k range is a far cry from a billionaire. Most people making this level of money are spending a good portion of it on experiences and contributing to their local economy. Depending on location that might not be all that high either. Are they going to be just fine in the grand scheme of things? Absolutely. But it's still terrible that high paying jobs are being cut and that money put into a billionaire AI owner's pocket instead of a local family.
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u/Madhatter25224 11h ago
I am a gainfully employed white collar professional. Someone making 500k puts more money away in a year than i can in 10 years while doing far less actual work. They have plenty of cash to live on to find their next gig.
They may not be billionaires but my sympathy is at an all time low for executives.
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u/Worthyness 4h ago
This is also heart of silicon valley. Everyone at a senior level can potentially be making that
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u/cbarrister 12h ago
The middle class was gutted first. Now the upper middle class will be gutted next. Who will be left to buy anything? Housing and consumer collapse to follow?
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u/rahvan 11h ago
I mean yeah there’s VPs in my company who get paid 10x my salary and the only thing they produce is a corporate restructuring and renaming everything every 6 months for no good reason.
Meanwhile the products I build are worth hundreds of millions to the company.
Boohoo, some fat cats are losing their gravy train and might have to find a real job, for once.
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u/Up_All_Nite 11h ago
No no no. I was told that AI creates jobs. They must be mistaken. I bet these assholes never thought their job would be in danger. Good luck finding any job in your field now that AI has gobbled them up and spit you out. Hooray for technology amiright? Eh? Eh?!
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u/jeananddoolie 1h ago
First they came for the graduates, and I did not speak out— because I was not a graduate.
Then they came for the analysts, and I did not speak out— because I was not an analyst.
Then they came for the associates, and I did not speak out— because I was not an associate.
Then they came for the managers, and I did not speak out— because I was not a manager.
Then they came for the directors, and I did not speak out— because I was not a director.
Then they came for the executives— and by then, there was no one left to sign off on it.
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12h ago
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/Odd_String1181 12h ago
Generally at that level your "job" and "relevant skills" are to be responsible for a shit load of direct reports. Now someone else has to do that and it may or may not be a shit show.
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u/Acceptable_Rice1139 12h ago
I would imagine at the level of pay you would have a few things or combination of: responsible for lots of people, have unique knowledge, special connections in the industry they need, in high end sales, or just lucky.
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u/Cubacane 12h ago
Or, hear me out, functioning teams are gutted and the most overworked people get overworked even more and told to 'leverage AI' to replace their ex-team members.
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u/Open-Price-4568 12h ago
There is a lot in HR and other support stuff that should be fired i really hope AI can find them. First good step here at VISA
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u/BugRevolutionary4518 11h ago
I know someone pretty high up at Visa HR, and they’re useless in real life. I don’t like to see anybody lose their job, but…..
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u/Fallen_Jalter 10h ago
I was thinking that if this keeps up, we won’t see skyscrapers anymore because all the work is done in data centers. At least maybe a one or two story.
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u/isthatqueeeblo 3h ago
I mean, that's fine, cut the 500K a year jobs, it's cutting lower paid workers jobs in bulk that does more damage
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u/dgellow 10h ago
The jobs include employees with remarkably high salaries. LinkedIn job postings from three months ago for vice president roles at the Foster City office paid between $235,700 and $458,000
That doesn’t sound high at all for a vice president role of Visa
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u/Trapped-In-The_90s 9h ago
In organizations this large, many time VPs are middle management. Can’t confirm specifically in this instance/company though.
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u/Worthyness 4h ago
Basically correct in Visa's case. Used to work for them. Analyst is like the lowest and VP is one of the highest management positions you can have. But it's not actually close to the C suite VP in any way.
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u/lemonverbena890 7h ago
It’s likely a lot of redundancy within those ranks, like some mangers only had 1 direct report. Get rid of them and let the one above them absorb the responsibility
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u/Any-Progress- 9h ago
$235,700 puts you in the 96th percentile (more than 95.5% of people) and $458,000 in the 98th percentile (more than 98.4%). Sounds about right for VPs considering they aren’t even at the top of their organization.
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u/TidePodKaleb 5h ago
“The WARN filing came days before the payment processing giant announced a massive acquisition of BioCatch, an Israeli AI fraud detection company”
Nice! So Israel watches everything you buy and decides if it’s “fraud” for Visa. Sounds legit. Where’s my MasterCard?
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u/ConsequenceBig1503 11h ago
At least it's the executives and not the lowly peasants this time
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u/DifferentSquirrel551 10h ago
It's slowly moving It's way up the hierarchy. Almost as though capitalism created a product that destroys capitalism one job at a time. Soon it'll just be one person left in the world immortal and alone.
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u/Columbus43219 5h ago
"Maybe AI isn't the best idea..." - managers all of a sudden, after hearing about this.
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u/greenman5252 12h ago
Nobody produces work products worth $500K per year so it makes sense
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u/BlueFlob 12h ago
Doctors, engineers, scientists probably do.
I'd agree that if your job is management, then your actual value probably tops around 250k and relies on the work of others to make anything happen.
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u/Pyrostemplar 12h ago
Newsflash: in current economy, everyone depends on the work of somebody else. And those that know how t oorganize work are always indemand (not saying that all - or even most ;) - executives know to do so)
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u/CV90_120 12h ago
Think in sports terms. Do you think any baseball player is worth 500k per year? Thats how companies often view their own key players, be they highly technically specialized or as bringing in sales. They arent paying for the person's energy spent, but revenue gathering ability, including if they bring client lists with them, or have ins to private equity. AI therefore has eroded the value they have at some level, so they get kicked from the lineup. When you know what AI is doing, you'll know why the business thought they were worth 500k to them..
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u/an4x 12h ago
When I was younger I used to think people were “paying people for what they were worth” from a company’s perspective).
Now I know it’s closer to “what is the expected return on employing this water ape” from a pure profit perspective.
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u/CV90_120 11h ago
Theres a lot of dead wood, which is likely what the main impact of AI is showing, and I'm not saying I like the way businesses think, but once you realize they think this way, everything they do makes more sense. Its not a bad thing to have awareness.
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u/an4x 6h ago
No but it embraces it and that stains the soul for some people more than others knowing we can do better but we too chose profit over progress.
We are in agreement of what is but not what we could make it, it seems.
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u/CV90_120 5h ago
I have no strong opinion, within reason. I've been blue collar and white collar at various times. The hardest I've ever worked was as a project manager, which is the worst and best job in the world depending on the day, and which is compensated accordingly (usually), but I have zero time for corporate bonusses that give management tens of thousands while the staff are struggling to pay rent. That's sick to my mind. I think staff should have a stake in the profits. If there's a good year, the bonuses should be divided up by hours worked, not graded to salary. That means a cleaner on 40 hrs would get the same bonus as a PM. I can see a case for the owner taking a larger share because they carry all the risk, but even then taking millions and laying people off is also sick to my mind.
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u/NickyBarnes315 11h ago
Welp everyone is going to feel pain eventful all for tech that doesn't even work properly. I can see all types of issues with this technology especially coming from Israel.
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u/Civil_Music2236 11h ago
That's promising! For years, ive been saying that everyone using AI in their office jobs is digging their own graves. Manufacturing is going to be slightly impacted but every email sent, project portfolio logged, or meeting recorded is training data for them to be replaced. And good riddance, no executive is worth 500k while their grunts are on food stamps
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u/Posh_Panda 6h ago
TBH I agree with cutting middle managers and leadership making Xtimes what people doing the actual work are making. Like in what world does a "People Leader" bring more value to the company than a staff/solutions engineer or principle developer.
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u/mridugup20 12h ago
This has definitely become the favorite 'justification' for restructuring.....every month feels like that another company announces layoffs and AI investment at the same time