• Software veteran Steve Yegge wrote the book “Vibe Coding.”
• Now, he thinks AI will lead Big Tech companies to cut 50% of engineers, he told The Pragmatic Engineer newsletter.
• Yegge said engineers shouldn’t despair: There are still jobs, just for those willing to be inventive and defect to a startup.

He worked in Big Tech. Now, he fears half of its software engineers are on the chopping block.

Steve Yegge worked with Jeff Bezos in Amazon’s early years. Then he went to Google, where he worked for over 12 years and earned the title of senior staff software engineer. He also knows a thing or two about AI engineering, having written a book on the topic titled “Vibe Coding.”

On “The Pragmatic Engineer” podcast and newsletter, Yegge described an imaginary dial of the percentage of engineering staff a company can lay off, ranging from zero to 100. He said he believes the dial is being set at 50 in the age of AI.

“You’re going to have to get rid of half of them to make the other half maximally productive,” Yegge said. “We’re going to lose around half the engineers from big companies, which is scary”.

There’s a capital-to-labor tradeoff happening in tech. Companies are paying vast sums for tokens and enterprise AI licenses, GPUs, and computing capacity. That money needs to come from somewhere — and for some, it could come from labor costs.

Yegge pointed to this tradeoff as the reason for his forecast of 50% cuts becoming the norm. Companies will lay off some engineers to help pay for the others to have adequate access to AI, he said.

Host Gergely Orosz said that 50% cuts would be more than during the COVID-19 pandemic, when tech went through an intense layoff cycle.

“It’s going to be way bigger,” Yegge said. “It’s going to be awful.”

They aren’t the only ones referencing the pandemic. In a popular X article, HyperWrite CEO Matt Shumer wrote that AI’s impact on work would be “much, much bigger than Covid.”

In recent years, the question of AI-driven layoffs has haunted workers at Big Tech companies, many of which went on a hiring spree during the pandemic. While it’s often impossible to boil job loss down a single reason, many suspect productivity gains from AI and ballooning capex spending are fueling the cuts. Some business leaders have also explicitly cited AI when announcing layoffs.

Meanwhile, tech leaders describe smaller teams working more efficiently. On a recent earnings call, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg said one engineer could now do the work of a whole team, thanks to AI.

As AI productivity grows, so have complaints of AI fatigue. Software engineer Siddhant Khare penned a lengthy essay about growing more productive, but also feeling more drained than ever. He told Business Insider that he felt like a “reviewer” as opposed to an engineer.

Yegge said it’s not all bad news for the engineers — just those who want to work at a big company. Engineers who have “seen the light” are now getting together, leaving their companies, and creating startups that outpace the industry’s giants, he said.

“We’ve got this mad rush of innovation coming up, bottom up,” he said. “And we’ve got knowledge workers being laid off by big companies because clearly big businesses are not the right size anymore.”

• Bad Bunny’s Super Bowl shirt has led to lookalikes appearing on resale sites such as eBay and Vinted.
• Some of the Zara-designed shirts are being listed for thousands of dollars.
• The shirts were reportedly given to employees at Zara’s parent company and weren’t intended for sale.

Shirts inspired by Bad Bunny’s Super Bowl outfit are fetching high price tags on resale sites.

The Puerto Rican singer wore an ensemble designed by retail giant Zara during his Super Bowl LX performance on Sunday. In the days following the show, similar T-shirts have popped up on resale platforms such as eBay and Vinted.

They’ve appeared in listings that feature a thank-you card from Bad Bunny, whose name is Benito Antonio Martínez Ocasio, and tags that state that the garment is not intended for sale.

A limited number of the tops were given to some employees at Zara’s parent company, Inditex, to commemorate the performance, multiple outlets reported. In the thank-you note, the pop star praised the time, talent, and heart that went into the project.

Zara and Inditex did not immediately respond to requests for comment by Business Insider.

As of Tuesday afternoon, the shirts were being listed for between 500 euros ($595) and thousands of dollars on eBay and Vinted, with at least one Vinted post asking for nearly $10,000.

Some of the cheaper options came without the thank-you note.

“This garment has been created as a special gift from Benito to Puerto Rico,” read the tag on one shirt, which was listed without the thank-you note.

The jersey features the name Ocasio across the back and the number 64, in honor of his late uncle, representatives for Bad Bunny told Complex.

• Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick said on Tuesday that he had lunch on Epstein’s island in 2012.
• He earlier suggested he cut off ties with Epstein in 2005.
• Lutnick has faced calls to resign after his name appeared in the latest releases of Epstein files.

Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick told senators on Tuesday that he had lunch on Jeffrey Epstein’s private island in 2012. In October, Lutnick was quoted in the New York Post saying he’d decided to cut ties with Epstein in 2005.

Lutnick told the Senate Appropriations subcommittee that he had lunch with Epstein on Little Saint James, Epstein’s private island in the US Virgin Islands, during a boat trip with his family.

“My wife was with me, as were my four children and nannies,” Lutnick said. “I had another couple with— they were there as well. with their children.”

Lutnick said the lunch only lasted “for an hour.”

“We were on family vacation,” Lutnick added. “To suggest there was anything untoward about that, in 2012, I don’t… I don’t recall why we did it.”

The comments came after Lutnick was asked about recent disclosures from the Department of Justice’s ongoing release of the Epstein files, which indicated that the commerce secretary had contact with Epstein after 2008, when the financier pleaded guilty to procuring a minor for prostitution and soliciting a prostitute.

The two had several calls and meetings over drinks scheduled in 2011, the emails show.

Email exchanges in the files show Lutnick planning to visit the island with his family and friends in December 2012.

“We are landing in St. Thomas early Saturday afternoon and planning to head over to St. Bart’s/Anguilla on Monday at some point,” Lutnick wrote to Epstein in an email. “Where are you located (what is exact location for my captain)? Does Sunday evening for dinner sound good?”

Both Epstein and Lutnick purchased shares of a now-closed advertising technology company later that month, according to records that were originally reported by CBS News.

In an interview with the New York Post published in October, Lutnick said that he decided to cut off ties with Epstein in 2005 after visiting his Manhattan home and being shown his massage table. The two men were neighbors at the time.

“My wife and I decided that I will never be in the room with that disgusting person ever again,” Lutnick told the Post. “So I was never in the room with him socially, for business, or even philanthropy. If that guy was there, I wasn’t going, ’cause he’s gross.”

A Commerce Department spokesperson said in a statement that “Mr. and Mrs. Lutnick met Jeffrey Epstein in 2005 and had very limited interactions with him over the next 14 years.”

“This is nothing more than a failing attempt by the legacy media to distract from the administration’s accomplishments including securing Trillions of dollars in investment, delivering historic trade deals and fighting for the American worker,” the spokesperson said in an email.

Asked about the testimony later on Tuesday, White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said that Lutnick “remains a very important member of President Trump’s team, and the president fully supports the secretary.”

Lutnick has faced calls to resign from lawmakers on Capitol Hill over the revelations of his association with Epstein.

While most of those calls have come from Democrats, Republican Rep. Thomas Massie of Kentucky has also said Lutnick should go.

“He should just resign,” Massie said in a CNN interview.

• Monica Aksamit is a 35-year-old Olympian who won bronze for fencing in 2016.
• Her mom, her coaches, and her prize funded her passion at the start.
• When she made the USA Olympic team in 2016, she was paid $300 a month and fell into credit card debt.

This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with Monica Aksamit. It has been edited for length and clarity.

When I ask people how much they thought I earned as a US Olympian, they always guess an amount far above what I actually got paid.

During the years I was part of the US fencing team from 2016 to 2021, I made $300 a month. This was the pinnacle of my fencing career, and yet I wasn’t making enough to cover my living expenses.

But this had always been my dream, and I had to pursue it at all costs.

I started fencing as a child

I’d been fencing since I was about 8. My mom, a Polish immigrant, had signed me up after a client of hers suggested she bring me along to a practice. He said there was a scholarship opportunity if I did well, and my mom was hooked.

Fencing was a great outlet for me during my parents’ divorce. Most kids get yelled at for hitting other kids — I was being applauded for it.

My mom financially supported my fencing. She put herself into credit card debt to ensure we could pay for equipment, travel, practices, and tournaments.

I remember her once telling one of my coaches that she couldn’t afford to bring me to practices anymore. The coach told her to just pay what she could. He wanted me to chase this dream and saw potential. My road to the Olympics wouldn’t have been possible without him.

I wanted to compete in the Olympics

As I got a bit older, I started winning competitions, and with that came prize money. My mom’s sacrifice, the coach’s generosity, and the prize money kept me pushing forward.

After watching the 2004 Olympics in Greece, I became fixated on the idea of one day competing on the US Olympic fencing team. It was the first Olympic Games that my event, the women’s saber, was added. Nowadays, they’re a lot more lenient with adding events — but it wasn’t like that then — it was a big deal.

That year, I sat on my grandparents’ couch in Poland and watched, telling them one day, I’d become an Olympian. It was a crazy dream, and that time, my mom didn’t necessarily think I’d achieve it, but she kept paving the way for me to get there.

I had to fund my Olympic dream myself

When I graduated from college in 2012, my main goal was to get to the Olympics. But now, I was an adult and had to fund it myself.

I alone had to pay for a big portion of the competitions, travel, and all of my own living expenses. I stayed at home because there was no way I could afford to pursue my dream while paying rent.

I worked endlessly as a fencing coach and a referee at tournaments. I handed out flyers for companies and took low-end modelling gigs.

My fencing club and those who contributed to my GoFundMe continued to financially support me along the way, helping fund my dream.

In 2016, I qualified for the US Olympic team. Team USA started covering all of my tournaments, training camps, and travel. But I was only given a monthly salary of $300.

There wasn’t any way I could take on another job because what employer was going to let me take several weeks off throughout the year to train and compete?

I took on credit card debt

My only option was to take out credit cards to fund what I needed to achieve my dream — car insurance, train travel into the city to train, food, bills, and any extras I did. It was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, and I didn’t want money to be the reason I couldn’t achieve what I had worked so long for.

People are shocked when I tell them how much I made each month as an Olympian and how I went into debt to represent the US on an international stage.

It did eventually pay off. I took home a bronze medal at Rio in 2016, but I’m still paying off my credit cards from those years of training and competing with Team USA.

After Rio, I put on a fundraiser to cover the costs of getting to Tokyo 2020, and people generously donated enough to go over my goal — it was the only way to fund my Olympic dreams as someone who didn’t come from money.

• Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff made jokes about ICE during an employee event, internal messages show.
• Some employees took to Slack to express anger and disappointment.
• The comments came during Salesforce’s employee-only “Company Kickoff.”

Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff angered some employees by making jokes about Immigration and Customs Enforcement during a company event, according to internal messages viewed by Business Insider.

Salesforce’s employee-only “Company Kickoff” is happening this week in Las Vegas. The event is also livestreamed internally. Business Insider did not view the livestream.

Salesforce did not immediately reply to requests for comment from Business Insider.

Dozens of Slack messages show that Benioff made “multiple” jokes about ICE agents, including about ICE surveilling employee travel.

“A joke about ICE surveilling employees’ travel, when there are literally employees afraid to travel for work due to current situation,” one employee wrote, according to a screenshot viewed by Business Insider.

“It’s hard to believe this company still has values when you make completely off-base jokes about ICE in your opening keynote,” another employee wrote. That’s unacceptable.”

“I’m deeply disappointed and uncomfortable that two jokes about ICE were made in the first few minutes of Marc’s opening keynote,” a third employee wrote. “The fact that the first was made after welcoming our teammates who traveled from outside the US? Even worse. We have many great things to be proud of and stand behind at this company, but these tasteless, insensitive jokes have made it hard to focus on that message. I’m going to have to take a break from watching to regroup.”

Benioff previously suggested that President Donald Trump should deploy the National Guard to San Francisco ahead of the company’s Dreamforce conference. Benioff later apologized.

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• The CEO of StackBlitz says the software development startup has “gone all in” on AI agents.
• Eric Simons told Business Insider he’s aiming to have more AI agents than humans working for him this year.
• He envisions a future where your AI agent talks to other people’s agents on your behalf.

StackBlitz CEO Eric Simons aims to have more AI agents than human employees working at the startup this year, a milestone he sees as emblematic of a broader shift underway across the software industry.

Speaking in an interview with Business Insider, Simons said StackBlitz has “gone all in on agents,” deploying internally built AI systems across business intelligence, coding, product development, customer support, and outbound sales.

AI has become increasingly good at writing software code, to the point where the technology is beginning to change how companies are run. OpenClaw, an open-source AI assistant that works inside platforms like WhatsApp, Slack, and iMessage, is an early example of digital agents communicating and coordinating with one another without direct human involvement.

“To me, this is a crystal ball into the wildness of the inevitable future,” Simons told Business Insider. “Your AI agents will talk to other people’s agents on your behalf, negotiating pricing for a product you want to buy, inquiring about availability for a restaurant, arguing your political viewpoints.”

“Agents are an extension of yourself,” he added. “People will generally trust their agents with whatever they recommend them to buy, reserve, believe, or otherwise.”

Software sell-off

Simons’s comments come as software and SaaS stocks have slumped in recent weeks, a move he attributes to growing investor recognition that AI can now build software autonomously. As AI tools become more capable, he said, long-standing competitive moats based on specialized knowledge are eroding.

He compared the shift to the transformation of manufacturing over the past century. Craft knowledge once protected businesses, he said, but automation and digital design ultimately displaced many incumbents. “Today, it’s a CAD file you can 3D print,” Simons said.

“While every individual does not use these profound new powers directly (like 3D printing a chair), there’s an entire new generation of companies that do — and they have replaced the previous era of companies,” Simons explained. “They disrupted those incumbents by leveraging automation that made it far cheaper and at a massive scale not possible previously when moats were just knowledge and bare hands.”

For businesses, the implications are stark. Even traditionally “safe” enterprise software may be vulnerable if AI agents can migrate or rebuild systems rapidly.

“What does it mean when all of software can be written, rewritten, migrated, or otherwise, 100x or 10,000x faster than it could’ve ever been done before, by a workforce that does not sleep, and can be parallelized near infinitely?” Simons said. “It’s daunting and mind-bending, and I think the repricing of SaaS in public markets more accurately reflects this today.”

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