Startup accelerator Y Combinator pulled the demo video following intense backlash on X.
Following intense backlash, startup accelerator Y Combinator quietly pulled a video from its X account demonstrating a brand new startup’s AI-powered employee monitoring software program. The startup, known as Optifye, says on its web site that it’s growing “AI line optimization for guide meeting” that may enhance effectivity by as much as 30%. That sounds anodyne sufficient till you watch the video.
“Thirty-seven p.c line effectivity? That’s unhealthy,” the video begins, as a younger man seems to be at a dashboard exhibiting the supposed efficiency metrics of a particular employee on a producing line.
The man calls his “supervisor,” who seems to be at a dashboard stuffed with pink and begins haranguing the employee, whom he refers not by title however solely as “Workspace 17,” over a video feed pointing down on the employee’s station. The employee pleads that he has been working all day, just for the supervisor to have a look at one other dashboard and retort, “you haven’t even hit your hourly output as soon as right this moment, and also you had 11.4% effectivity.” How that effectivity quantity is calculated, or what that may even imply to a line employee, is unclear.
“It’s simply been a tough day,” the employee provides, just for the supervisor to say, “Rough day? More like a tough month.”
Y Combinator is taken into account the premier boot camp for brand new startups to get off the bottom and gives accepted firms with $500,000 in preliminary funding.
There are many issues one may say about this video. It, in fact, comes off as chilly and inhumane. But what is probably most humorous is that, regardless of claiming it may enhance meeting line effectivity, within the demo video itself, Optifye’s software program has zero impression aside from to harass the employee. The so-called managers don’t take any tangible steps to resolve the “situation” aside from yelling on the man. How precisely the software program can enhance effectivity aside from encouraging managers to berate their stories is unclear. Optifye’s web site leans on the concept that solely what’s measured might be improved.
sir, workspace 17 is working at 11% effectivity and hasn’t hit it’s hourly output even as soon as right this moment pic.twitter.com/PTsT517khK
— Jordi Hays (@jordihays) February 25, 2025
Maybe the video garnered such a visceral response from individuals throughout Silicon Valley as a result of an underlying PTSD from the best way by which software program engineers are already monitored via monitoring software program like Jira. But the few defenders on the market have identified that the founders of Optifye look like from India, and dubiously argue that work ethic within the nation is way much less dependable than one can count on within the United States.
Optifye is probably going concentrating on the Indian manufacturing base, the place completely different, and extra, accountability instruments could also be obligatory. However, the poor productiveness could also be due partially to a foul managerial class within the nation, the place a 2022 report discovered 45% of staff dreaded going to work as a result of poor therapy by a supervisor. And evidently, video monitoring just isn’t an accepted follow in a lot of the world and is rarely obtained effectively when it’s recognized.
Another argument that has been made defending the video is that critics are hypocritical to complain about “sweatshop” practices whereas utilizing units, like iPhones, made utilizing low-cost international labor. But it’s powerful to keep away from these merchandise right this moment as a result of complicated international provide chain and the glacial tempo at which change might be made. One can nonetheless denounce most of these surveillance practices, not endorse or help them, with out being a hypocrite.
No matter the place you come down on the topic, particularly contemplating the cultural nuance, the video was fairly tone-deaf contemplating it was printed on the X account of a U.S.-based funding agency. How no person on the firm acknowledged what kind of suggestions the video would obtain is damning.
Gizmodo reached out to Y Combinator for remark.
