'CEO finally said something honest': CEO sides with workers in truthful look at modern workplace expectations

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Remy Millisky • Writer and Editor
Feb 20, 2026 3:00 PM EST

A CEO siding with his own workers is a real surprise! 

We're at the start, or middle perhaps, of a new style of workplace productivity management. In its' simplest form, 75 years ago, office workers would come into the office and take phone calls, file papers, tasks like that. 

With the invention of the internet many years later, office workers were suddenly expected to be answering their cell phones and replying to emails late at night. 

Just when it seemed like we finally got that type of workplace balance down to a tee — no answering emails after 6 PM! — we're now set up with a new challenge. 

The age of Claude and other AI chatbots are trying to "help" workers, but many of these employees just fear that their workloads are about to quadruple. Same amount of pay, same 8 hours in a day, and yet now, they're responsible for both their own output and the output of their AI agents. 

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    CEO having conversation with 2 workers.
    via Getty Images For Unsplash+

    CEO having conversation with 2 workers. 

    The image does not depict the actual subjects of the story. Subjects are models.

  • I actually touched upon this topic while discussing one startup boss who somehow found a way to make meetings worse. She shared that her workers will take 5-minute breaks to manage what their AI agents are doing as background tasks! Instead of dedicating all of one's working hours to the tasks at hand, there are now a bajillion background projects that employees now have to keep in mind. 

    It'll certainly be an interesting time for technological advancements, but a lot of workers are pushing back against it's use (or overuse). Check out what this CEO said — it's refreshingly honest to hear someone in leadership talk about this tech in a down-to-Earth kinda way. 

  • 02
    Dax Raad from anoma.ly might be the only CEO speaking honestly about Al right now. His most recent take:
    via u/Tech-Cowboy
  • 03
    "everyone's talking about their teams like they were at the peak of efficiency and bottlenecked by ability to produce code
    via u/Tech-Cowboy
  • 04
    here's what things actually look like - your org rarely has good ideas. ideas being expensive to implement was actually helping
    via u/Tech-Cowboy
  • 05

    Thank you for saying this!

    - majority of workers have no reason to be super motivated, they want to do their 9-5 and get back to their life
    via u/Tech-Cowboy
  • 06
    - they're not using Al to be 10x more effective they're using it to churn out their tasks with less energy spend
    via u/Tech-Cowboy
  • 07
    - the 2 people on your team that actually tried are now flattened by the slop code everyone is producing, they will quit soon
    via u/Tech-Cowboy
  • 08
    - even when you produce work faster you're still bottlenecked by bureaucracy and the dozen other realities of shipping something real
    via u/Tech-Cowboy
  • 09
    - your CFO is like what do you mean each engineer now costs $2000 extra per month in LLM bills"
    via u/Tech-Cowboy
  • 10

    Is... is this true?

    Evinceo How do I get this guy to talk technical leadership for me? Just kidding, I'm pretty sure they only listen to Claude now.
    via u/Evinceo

    Perhaps the whole ChatGPT/Claude/Gemini thing is already affecting the c-suite? I suppose in time, they might think it could replace their executive assistants, or be trained how to reply to any of their emails. I don't think that'll happen — I think it'll mess up a lot before they see the error of their ways — but that also won't stop a lot of higher-ups from trying to join the cool crowd and implement the newest tech into their workflow. 

  • 11
    GRIFTY_P It's funny how accurate this is to my current situation
    via u/GRIFTY_P
  • 12
    revoluti... Why would I as an engineer that gets paid hourly try to produce 10 times as much code within the same timeframe unless I was getting paid 10 times more?
    via u/revolutionpanda
  • 13
    I learned 20 years ago when I entered the work force that being super extra productive just leads to more work without more compensation.
    via u/revolutionpanda
  • 14
    If Al makes me more productive that just means I'm gonna have more downtime throughout my day. I'm not gonna use that productivity to put myself out of a job.
    via u/revolutionpanda
  • 15
    tigerlily_4 Sounds about right. I heard someone from the OpenAI Codex team share a similar sentiment last week.
    via u/tigerlily_4
  • 16
    He said "dysfunctional orgs just become dysfunctional faster with Al".
    via u/tigerlily_4

    I imagine we'll see a lot of proof of that in the years to come! AI frequently hallucinates things, oftentimes just making up it's own facts whole-cloth. There are going to be plenty of lazy white-collar workers who find themselves over-reliant on technology that just can't do the work correctly. 

  • 17
    CEO advises his team of 3 workers.
    via Getty Images For Unsplash+

    CEO advises his team of 3 workers. 

    The image does not depict the actual subjects of the story. Subjects are models.

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