SaaS outfit ClickUp promises seven-figure salaries for survivors of 22 percent staff purge

Summary

SaaS SaaS outfit ClickUp promises seven-figure salaries for survivors of 22 percent staff purge CEO jumps on the ‘We must be fit for the AI future’ bandwagon The CEO of SaaS-y productivity tools outfit ClickUp has announced 22 percent of the company’s workers will lose their jobs, but promised the savings will allow the company to offer some survivors seven-figure salaries.CEO Zeb Evans made that pledge late last week in a Xeet that opens “Today we reduced headcount by 22 percent. The business is the strongest it's ever been” and then tries to explain the dichotomy of those two ideas by adding “I did it because the way to operate at the highest level of productivity is changing, and to win the future, ClickUp needs to change with it.”What follows may now be familiar to readers who have followed our coverage of layoffs at Cisco, Workday, Cloudflare, and even the government of New Zealand: In 2026, AI is no longer optional, so organizations need to hire people who are good at using it to make themselves and their employers more productive. Evans said the layoffs at ClickUp are not about cutting costs. “Most savings from this change will flow directly back into the people who stay. We'll be introducing million-dollar salary bands. If you create outsized impact using AI, you'll be paid outside of traditional band,” he wrote.Another reason for the changes is Evans’ ambition to restructure ClickUp into what he describes as a “100x org”. “The goal is 100x output. The roles required to build at the highest level are fundamentally different than they were a year ago,” he wrote.“Incremental improvements to existing systems won't get us there. We need new ones. That means creating enough disruption to rebuild rather than iterate on what's already broken.”And that disruption means hiring “10x people that have embraced and adopted new ways of working.” AI makes the best engineers wildly more productive, and everyone else using AI slows these engineers down Evans offered the exam...