AI layoffs came for the independent Fiverr market

Fiverr, the online market for freelancers, has announced that it releases around 250 full-time staff members as part of an effort to transform into “AI-STIF business”. The layoffs will allocate around 30% of the staff of the company and will be part of what CEO Micha Kaufman called “painful reset” in a message to his staff, that he also published on X, although it is certainly more painful for workers who lose their jobs than for him.

Kaufman claims that the layoffs Mark Fiverr return to the “start -up mode” despite a 16 -year -old company. Its objective, according to the memo, is to transform Fiverr into “an IA-STIF company which is leaner, faster, with a modern technological infrastructure focused on AI, a smaller team, each with a substantially larger productivity and much fewer layers of management.” This new version of Fiverr, he says, will not “need so many people to exploit the existing business”.

While a large part of the staff who directs the company is released, Kaufman said that the community of freelancers who count on the platform to win small concerts should not be worried: “Rest assured that your company on Fiverr will not be impacted in any case throughout this transformation. Our commitment to allow you to allow you and democratize access to opportunities remains. ”

Your mileage may vary on the quantity of confidence of this declaration if you are a freelancer counting on a commercial flow of the Fiverr market. A freelancer who sells web design services on Fiverr, for example, was quite irritated by the company who launches his own AI web page manufacturer. Earlier this year, Fiverr has launched a series of AI tools as part of its new Fiverr Go platform, which allows the freelancers to train AI on their own work, to the chagrin of the freelancers who do not already count on a generative AI to respond to work requests. The company also carried out an advertising campaign saying “nobody cares” if the work is finished by a person or an AI.

The writing on the Fiverr staff wall became more obvious in recent months. In May, Kaufman sent an email to the company’s level informing staff: “AI comes for your jobs.” In an interview with CBS, he said he wanted to see workers “double or triple production per unit of time, and the same for quality” and encouraged his staff to try to automate as much their work as possible. “It could raise the question, it will make them replaceable? And my answer is absolutely not,” he told CBS. About 250 people may disagree.

Kaufman was a little more frank in an appearance in June on the Podcast 20VC. In reference to his letter to the staff that AI arrives for their work, the CEO asked for: “Why do you think it is my responsibility to improve you as professionals?” Fuck yourself “and complained that too many people did not want to work and” will be poor or a burden for society “. Looks like a nice guy for which to work.