Manager fired for not mentioning AI in his weekly report

 

Bheni Khoni (name changed for privacy reasons), a Group Manager in a large tech company, was fired because he did not mention AI in his weekly report to higher management.

“Real techies can’t go ten sentences without using the word AI — unless you’ve been living in an off-grid cave for the last five years,” said the company’s Vice President, before instructing HR to use the company’s AI software to generate the termination letter.

The HR head, demonstrating compliance with the order, nodded and said,
“Absolutely. The system will also auto-generate the empathy paragraph.”

His Team’s opinion:

Meanwhile, project leads who reported to Bheni were spotted quietly chuckling with ChatGPT, since they couldn’t express their happiness openly.

When they met outside for a cigarette, one of them, BS (name changed), told TT,
“We suggested to him many times not to forget the word AI. But he always insisted, ‘When I’m using ChatGPT to make the weekly report, what’s the point in mentioning AI again?’”

Another project leader, DK (name changed) — who smiled for the first time in two years because he had never been on good terms with Bheni — told us,
“The VP doesn’t understand a word about our project, but he randomly throws in fillers like, ‘Why don’t you apply AI here?’ and someone in the meeting immediately supports him: ‘Yes, AI can definitely add value here.’

To avoid such embarrassment, it’s important to sprinkle AI randomly before someone else does. We’re trained so often to be proactive, so we might as well be proactive in mentioning AI wherever possible. But he never listened to me.”

The state of the Industry:

A new study (definitely conducted by AI) found that 84% of professionals now insert the word ‘AI’ in their emails purely for survival.
The remaining 16% are on performance improvement plans.

In another related development, McDinsey has been given a multi-million-dollar contract by a major HR firm to finalize the figures for ‘AI density per paragraph,’ which is going to be a new key performance indicator.