Klarna CEO Sebastian Siemiatkowski lately advised Bloomberg TV that his firm basically stopped hiring a 12 months in the past and credited generative AI for enabling this huge workforce discount.
However, regardless of Siemiatkowski’s bullishness on AI, the corporate isn’t relying solely on AI to interchange human employees who depart, as open job listings — for extra people — and the corporate’s personal statements affirm.
“We stopped hiring a few 12 months in the past. We have been 4,500, now we’re 3,500,” Siemiatkowski advised Bloomberg TV. “We have a pure attrition, as [does] each tech firm. People keep about 5 years — so 20% depart yearly — and by not hiring, we’re merely shrinking.”
The firm’s CEO additionally stated he believes AI can successfully substitute employees. “I’m of the opinion that AI can already do the entire jobs that we as people do,” stated Siemiatkowski. “We’re gonna give a few of the enhancements [from] the effectivity that AI supplies by rising the tempo at which the salaries of our staff will increase.”
Siemiatkowski typically makes this number of feedback. To begin 2024, the Klarna CEO stated ChatGPT was doing the work of 700 human staff. At one other level, he stated that Klarna was dropping Salesforce as a CRM supplier and changing it with AI, a remark Marc Benioff expressed skepticism about. Just this week, the Klarna CEO made an AI deepfake of himself to report his monetary outcomes, trying to show that even a CEO may be changed by AI.
But in follow, whereas Klarna has considerably lowered its workforce within the final 12 months, the purchase now, pay later firm has not utterly stopped hiring.
Klarna is presently hiring for greater than 50 roles across the globe, in response to the job postings web page on its web site. Furthermore, Klarna’s managers have stated they’re actively hiring or rising their groups not less than half a dozen instances all through 2024, in response to posts on LinkedIn considered by TechCrunch. Klarna additionally employed a number of new staff within the final 12 months to fill roles on its coverage, software program engineering, and world partnerships groups, in response to LinkedIn posts from lately employed Klarna staff.
Klarna’s world press lead, John Craske, tells TechCrunch that Siemiatkowski’s feedback about hiring are directionally true however says the CEO was “simplifying for brevity in a broadcast interview.”
“When you take a look at it traditionally, we have been hiring between one to 1 and a half thousand individuals a 12 months from 2019 to 2022,” stated Craske in an electronic mail. “Now, we’re not actively recruiting to develop the workforce however solely backfilling some important roles, predominantly engineering.”
In different phrases, not each job may be changed with AI right now.
While AI could also be serving to Klarna do extra work with fewer individuals, it’s value noting that Klarna has the identical variety of staff right now than it did in 2021. Like most tech firms, Klarna was hiring quite a bit throughout the pandemic. Many firms, together with Meta and Amazon, have lowered their workforces in the previous couple of years, both by slowing down hiring or having layoffs.
It’s additionally value mentioning that Klarna is seeking to Stock Launch quickly. Siemiatkowski could possibly be making an attempt to persuade traders that his firm is aggressively incorporating generative AI into its workflows and that the advantages are already exhibiting up.
But for many firms lately, AI adoption and implementation are taking place at a a lot slower fee.
