Adding talent — not cutting it — leads to better revenue growth, study finds

Well, here's a shocker: a study from Orgvue has discovered that hiring people actually correlates with better revenue growth — 12.2% for hiring companies versus 6.8% for those wielding the axe. Who'd have thought that the 'efficiency through layoffs' gospel might be a bit of a con?

And that $50 billion in severance costs? Turns out less than 10% of corporate restructures had anything to do with AI. So all that 'AI made me do it' patter from CEOs was mostly theatre. They could have spent that fifty billion on, I don't know, paying the people they kept — and seen double the growth. But no, better to hand over a fat cheque for doing nothing than admit you misread the room.

Perhaps the lesson is that companies should stop pretending AI is the bogeyman for every dubious headcount decision. But that would require humility, and we all know how rare that is in the C-suite. Expect a flurry of 'strategic hires' announcements that somehow still fail to mention the 12.2% number. After all, nothing kills an 'AI-first' narrative like actual data.