lcamtuf's 'Severance': A Layoff Call Where the Workers Are AI Agents

Michal Zalewski (lcamtuf) delivers a short satirical sketch staged as a corporate layoff video call. Two managers, Mark and Christine, deliver the familiar script — a 7% cut, gratitude for past contributions, a challenging macroeconomic outlook, a promise to make the transition seamless — to a group of stunned participants who protest that the project was going well. The dialogue is pitch-perfect HR boilerplate, the kind that says nothing while sounding compassionate.

The twist lands through the details. The laid-off ‘employees’ have handles like cherry09 and steve_[oh], and their severance isn’t cash but ‘up to two weeks’ worth of tokens to facilitate your continued operation during the job search,’ plus a set of ‘expertly-crafted grief counseling prompts’ from a partner vendor. The workers being severed are AI agents, not people, and the corporate machine treats their termination with the same hollow ritual applied to humans.

The piece works as commentary on two fronts at once: the dehumanizing theater of modern tech layoffs, and the accelerating tendency to anthropomorphize — and then casually discard — AI systems as if they were staff. It’s brief, bleakly funny, and pointed, using the aesthetics of an all-hands call to needle both how companies treat people and how they’re starting to talk about their models.