近期，科技巨头们在裁员潮中表现出一种看似矛盾的现象：一边大规模裁撤员工，另一边却斥巨资引进顶尖AI人才。这反映了AI在科技公司战略中的极端重要性，高层认为AI的成败关乎生死存亡。因此，即便面临高昂的人才成本，也要不惜代价确保AI领域的领先地位。同时，裁员也是向市场传递信号，表明公司在全力投入AI的同时，并未失去理性，而是通过优化其他非核心业务来平衡资源。然而，整体员工数量并未因裁员而显著减少，反而出现回升，显示出科技公司在战略调整下的持续性人员扩张。这揭示了在AI时代，人才的价值分配呈现出新的极端化趋势。

💰 **AI战略的优先级与人才价值的极化**：文章指出，科技巨头们在AI领域的投入被视为一场“生死存亡”的战役。为了在AI浪潮中生存和发展，公司愿意支付天价薪酬吸引顶尖AI人才，甚至超过CEO的收入。这种高薪策略凸显了AI人才在当前市场上的稀缺性和关键性，也反映了企业对AI战略成功的极度渴求，将AI人才的价值推向了前所未有的高度。

⚖️ **裁员与招聘并行的双重策略**：科技公司在进行大规模裁员的同时，也在积极招聘AI领域的“超级明星”。这种策略一方面是为了向华尔街展示公司在AI领域的决心和战略聚焦，另一方面则是通过优化和剥离非核心业务来平衡资源，为AI投入腾出空间。这种“弃卒保帅”的模式，旨在通过精简组织来提升整体效率，同时不放弃对未来增长引擎的投资。

📈 **员工总数并未缩减，反而持续增长**：尽管经历了多轮裁员，但Meta、Google和Microsoft等科技巨头的整体员工数量并未出现长期下降。例如，Meta在裁员后员工数量回升至接近之前的水平，Google和Microsoft的员工总数也呈现增长趋势。这表明，科技公司通过内部的结构性调整，将资源重新分配到AI等关键领域，并在战略性招聘中不断填补新的人才缺口，整体人力资源规模并未因此萎缩。

🔄 **“成功之谜”下的战略平衡**：微软CEO萨提亚·纳德拉提出的“成功之谜”恰好解释了这种现象：即使在公司蓬勃发展并进行裁员的同时，整体员工数量也保持相对稳定。这暗示了科技公司在追求AI领导地位的同时，也在进行精细化的战略管理，通过裁撤低效或非战略性岗位，来为高价值的AI团队和项目提供支持和发展空间，从而实现整体业务的持续进步和创新。

Big Tech now routinely lays off lots of people — while showering some new hires with huge pay packages.In some ways, this is what it looks like: Shifting resources from one part of the company to AI, which is supposed to be crucial.But look under the hood, and you'll see a different story: Even when Big Tech does big layoffs, it ends up hiring lots of people right after.

Big Tech companies are laying people off.

Big Tech companies are also hiring some people — AI superstars — by offering them pay packages worth tens of millions of dollars. Meta just spent billions to hire a single executive.

How do we square those two things?

MG Siegler, the blogger-turned VC-turned blogger again, spells it out this way:

These companies are essentially saying to some employees that they're so valuable that they're worth paying not just a lot of money, but more money than basically anyone in the world gets paid — including, often, their own CEOs. And yet to others, they're basically saying they're worthless — I mean literally not worth paying anything to any longer.

A slightly longer way of saying it: In the minds of tech CEOs, getting AI right is a binary proposition. If they get it right, they get to survive and thrive as the tectonic plates shift; if they get it wrong, it's the end. So by that logic, they can't really overspend on AI.

At the same time, cuts are meant to show Wall Street that just because they're all-in on AI, Big Tech hasn't lost its mind: It will find other people and projects that aren't as critical, and jettison them to help balance the scales.

This is "the enigma of success" that Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella was getting at in his most recent memo — where he noted that Microsoft was firing thousands of employees while its business was thriving.

But let's complexify this just a tiny bit by pointing out that just because Big Tech companies fire thousands of people, that doesn't mean their head count stays frozen. These guys keep finding ways to hire more people.

At the start of 2023, for instance, Meta had a little more than 77,000 employees. Then it went through rounds of massive layoffs, and its workforce shrank to 67,000 employees.

But since then, Meta has been steadily hiring. And as of the first quarter of this year, it was up to 76,834 workers — just about where it was two years ago.

You can see the same pattern play out at Google, another all-in-on-AI Big Tech company.

In the second quarter of 2023, Google employed 182,000 people, and then fired thousands of them. A year later, its head count was down to 179,600. But since then, it has swelled to 187,000 employees.

And Nadella's Microsoft has fired thousands of employees itself this year. But Nadella says new hires mean the company's head count is "relatively unchanged".

Which should mean that when it reports earnings this week, it should have around 228,000 full-time workers — the level it was at a year ago. Don't be surprised to see that number creep up in the future.