Vague overtones on AI savings without any hard evidence that’s happening, while ignoring obvious evidence that the company over-hired and is now underperforming relative to what would be needed to justify all that headcount.

Nobody believes these narratives at this point and CEOs would garner a lot more respect if they just simply said

“I screwed up, we hired too many people and fell short of performance targets. I own that. This resets us back on track.”