‘You can’t compel people to change, especially if they don’t believe’
IgniteTech chief executive Eric Vaughan is defending a decision to replace nearly 80% of his workforce after a company‑wide push to adopt artificial intelligence met stiff resistance, calling the shift essential to the firm’s survival.
Vaughan told Fortune that in early 2023, he concluded that generative AI marked an “existential” transformation, first for tech companies and then others. “In early 2023, we saw the light,” he said, arguing that organisations that fail to adapt to AI risk being left “toast” by the pace of change.
He maintains that mass layoffs were not the starting point. IgniteTech first tried to reskill its existing workforce with an intensive learning program. The company reimbursed staff for AI tools and prompt‑engineering classes, brought in outside experts and reorganised work around weekly “AI Mondays.”
“Every single Monday was called ‘AI Monday,’” Vaughan told Fortune. “You couldn’t have customer calls; you couldn’t work on budgets; you had to only work on AI projects.” He framed this as a benefit for staff: “We’re going to give a gift to each of you. And that gift is tremendous investment of time, tools, education, projects … to give you a new skill.”
From reskilling to recruitment drive for AI
According to Vaughan, roughly 20% of payroll was redirected into AI learning and experimentation. Despite that, he reported “mass resistance,” including employees who simply refused to participate. “In those early days, we did get resistance, we got flat‑out ‘Yeah, I’m not going to do this’ resistance,” he said in the article. “And so we said goodbye to those people.”
After concluding that “changing minds was harder than adding skills,” IgniteTech shifted from retraining to rebuilding. The company launched a global recruitment campaign for “AI innovation specialists” across sales, finance, marketing, engineering and support, looking specifically for people already committed to working with AI.
Vaughan also told Fortune that he led a “somewhat unusual” reorganisation, placing every division under a central AI organisation to reduce duplicated efforts and enforce knowledge‑sharing. “The culture needed to be built,” he later said. “Ultimately, we ended up having to go out and recruit and hire people that were already of the same mind.”
AI and automation are having a limited impact on hiring, according to a previous report. Specifically, only 1% of survey respondents cite AI and automation as a reason for reduced hiring over the past year.
Layoffs for AI: 'extremely difficult'
Vaughan told Fortune that the nine‑figure‑revenue company finished the year at “near 75% EBITDA” and claimed teams can now build customer‑ready products in as little as four days.
While he does not recommend other employers copy his decision to replace 80% of staff, calling it “extremely difficult," Vaughan continues to warn that “the pace of change in AI is relentless” and that “you can’t compel people to change, especially if they don’t believe.”
Here are some employers that are said to be laying off workers amid the rise of AI:
Recently, Jamie Dimon, CEO of JPMorgan Chase, told Canadian HR Reporter that the deployment of AI could “go too fast for society” and trigger serious social disruption if not carefully managed.
