NEW DELHI — U.S.-based software company ClickUp has laid off 22% of its workforce as part of an operational restructuring aimed at shifting the company toward more AI-driven roles and higher productivity.
ClickUp founder and CEO Zeb Evans said the decision was made while the business was in a strong position, adding that the company plans to redirect much of the savings toward remaining employees and higher pay for workers who deliver significant impact using artificial intelligence.
“Today we reduced headcount by 22 per cent. The business is the strongest it’s ever been. I made this decision and I own it. I did it because the way to operate at the highest level of productivity is changing,” Evans said in a post on X.
Evans said employees affected by the layoffs will receive severance packages intended to honor their contributions and help ease the transition.
The company also plans to introduce salary bands of up to $1 million in cash per year for employees who produce what Evans described as “100x impact.”
Evans outlined a new operating model in which top engineers and product leaders do more than write code. Instead, he said, they will increasingly direct, manage and review AI agents, allowing them to multiply their output.
“The common narrative is that AI makes everyone more productive. It doesn’t. Many of the workflows of today, if left unchanged, create bottlenecks in AI systems,” Evans said.
He said that when a company’s best engineers spend time reviewing code written by other employees, it can create inefficiencies. Those engineers, he said, can review code generated by their own AI agents much faster than they can review human-written code.
“Ironically, the people that automate their jobs with AI will always have a job. They become owners of the AI systems – agent managers,” Evans said.
The cuts come as major technology companies continue to reshape their workforces around artificial intelligence. Meta, the parent company of Facebook, earlier this week began laying off 10% of its global workforce as part of its broader AI push.
Global technology layoffs have accelerated in 2026, with more than 100,000 jobs already cut and total losses expected to exceed 300,000 this year, according to reports. Companies including Oracle, Amazon and Meta have been among those reducing headcount. (Source: IANS)
