ClickUp announced it has cut 22% of its workforce, the third round of significant layoffs at the productivity platform since 2022. CEO and founder Zeb Evans posted the news directly to X, framing the decision as a bet on AI-driven productivity rather than a response to financial pressure.

"The business is the strongest it's ever been," Evans wrote. "I made this decision and I own it."

The San Diego-based company had an estimated 1,500 employees prior to this cut, which suggests roughly 330 workers lost their jobs. ClickUp was valued at $4 billion after a 2021 Series C round led by Andreessen Horowitz and Tiger Global. It has raised more than $535 million in venture capital.

The "100x Org" Thesis

Evans's statement runs thousands of words and reads more like a manifesto than a layoff memo. The core claim is that AI has restructured what it means to build software at scale. His term for the new model is "100x org."

The argument goes like this: The best engineers are no longer writing code. They're directing AI agents that write code. What matters now is judgment, orchestration, and review. Everyone else using AI, Evans says, slows down the best engineers. He calls it the "great reckoning of AI coding."

The implications, in his framing, are brutal. More code produced does not mean better outcomes. Companies celebrating "500% more pull requests" are missing the point. The bottleneck has shifted from execution to decision-making, and most workers are now standing in the way of their best colleagues.

$1 Million Salary Bands

Evans announced that ClickUp will introduce "million-dollar salary bands" for employees who produce "100x impact" by building or managing AI systems. Most of the savings from the layoffs, he claims, will flow back to the remaining staff.

"This wasn't about cutting costs," Evans wrote. The company says affected employees will receive severance packages intended to "honor their contributions." Specifics on package terms were not disclosed.

This is ClickUp's third layoff round since 2022. The company cut 7% of its staff that year and another 10% in July 2023, when it eliminated about 90 positions. At the time, Evans attributed those cuts to efficiency goals and IPO preparation.

The New Roles

Evans outlines three categories of worker who will thrive in the 100x org:

  • Builders: Engineers who orchestrate AI agents instead of writing code, and product managers who merge design and product work into a single function.
  • Agent Managers: The people who automate their own jobs, then own those systems. "Ironically," Evans writes, "the people that automate their jobs with AI will always have a job."
  • Front-liners: Customer-facing roles where human contact is irreplaceable, at least for now.

The manifesto explicitly dismisses the idea that AI makes everyone more productive. "Many of the workflows of today, if left unchanged, create bottlenecks in AI systems," he wrote. The solution, in his view, is not iteration. It is disruption.

A Pattern Emerging

Evans is not alone in reaching for radical AI-native language while handing out pink slips. Coinbase used similar framing in its recent 700-person cut. GitLab called its layoffs a "rebuild for the agentic era." The vocabulary is consistent: agentic workflows, 10x engineers becoming 100x, new roles like Agent Manager.

What's different here is the directness. Evans is not hiding behind corporate platitudes. He explicitly states that he sees AI as an existential forcing function, and that waiting for the market to catch up would mean falling behind.

"I only see two options," he wrote. "Wait for this to play out gradually in the market or be honest about what I'm seeing and act proactively."

Whether the 330 people who lost their jobs find that honesty comforting is another matter.