Company fires 40 data entry staff after automating their work with Claude

The account describes a scenario that has been speculated about in AI discourse but rarely documented from a direct participant's perspective: large-scale job displacement in a single organizational move. The poster's three-year arc with AI tools — from believing the technology would ease work and create jobs to witnessing mass layoffs — underscores a shift in how AI is actually being deployed. Rather than augmenting human capability, Claude Code in this case was used to replicate entire workflows, making the human workers redundant. The cost efficiency ($20 per month versus the salary expense of 40 employees) made the business case straightforward. The remaining employees, who handle problem-solving tasks, suggest that AI's impact may stratify the workforce — automating routine work while leaving complex reasoning to humans — though the poster's concern about future displacement indicates even that boundary may not hold indefinitely.