"_____ cuts thousands of jobs as it embraces AI": The impact on large businesses from AI is real and meaningful. What about small businesses? Although there are real issues to watch for, I'm seeing AI tools help businesses expand while enabling their live staff to focus on where they are best.
For us it's not AI replacing jobs, it's enabling growth where otherwise our inability to fund a "full head" meant real constraints-- in many ways it's use AI or don't do the project.
For example Claude Code enabled me to take a project from the basic Django dashboard, which is very "database-y", to a presentation that clarifies on how the Product's internal objects relate and helps authors bring their ideas to "ready".
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Claude Code effectively enabled me to hire a Javascript coder who could take wireframe images and bulleted requirements and create a solid implementation. Claude can iterate and evaluate the requirements with me and then on its own navigate the plumbing of form self-coherence. I can focus on business objects, how they should behave, and what will make users enjoy interacting with them.
I could create the form myself. But the opportunity cost is way higher than a Claude subscription. Before Claude, bouts of product design would be followed by wrangling the frameworks and APIs needed, and always having to learn the current flavor of whatever-- in addition to actually coding. When I manage bigger teams, it's always an issue to balance in/out of house coders and also make sure they're keeping up to date.
Claude knows all about all the APIs. I need know only the main framework and its paradigms. Imagine, being able to focus on design and journeys, knowing you've got a talented coding team available-- without having to have a large-company footprint.
All in a context that was fit in the hours or fail. Now we've scaled up our team to achieve our dreams.
This is happening for many small businesses. Offices drowning in paper forms can have them read to spreadsheet. Area of expertise services like Mortgage brokers can have research assistants always on call and quicker to reply.
My hope is that we are on the cusp of a small business renaissance. Good ideas that die in corporate bureaucracy can now be developed, because you won't need a large corporation to get going. Small firms that were at capacity can now help more customers because their back office becomes effectively infinite. I expect to see more ideas flourish even if the resting size of a large company itself becomes smaller.