February 2025. Piyush Gupta is speaking at a tech conference in India.
He has run DBS, Southeast Asia's biggest bank, for 15 years. In a few weeks he retires. Then he says something bank CEOs rarely say in public.
"In my 15 years of being a CEO, for the first time, I'm struggling to create jobs."
THE PLAN
DBS already had more than 800 AI models running across 350 use cases. Gupta expected them to be worth more than S$1 billion in 2025.
So the bank said what that meant for its people.
About 4,000 temporary and contract roles would go over three years. That's close to half of its 8,000 to 9,000 contract workers. No layoffs. As projects ended, the contracts just wouldn't be renewed. Permanent staff weren't affected.
DBS also said it would create around 1,000 new jobs in AI.
4,000 out, 1,000 in, said out loud and with a timeline.
20 MONTHS LATER
DBS put the value of its AI work in 2025 at about S$1 billion, right around what Gupta promised.
The 800 models are now more than 2,000, across 430 use cases.
The new CEO, Tan Su Shan, stopped hiring for roles likely to be automated. More than 11,000 employees have been retrained for AI-enabled work. Bank tellers are moving to customer relationships and running video teller machines.
I couldn't find an update on how many of the 4,000 contract roles are gone.
WHAT I TAKE FROM IT
Most companies cut quietly and only talk about AI when the numbers look good. DBS said how many roles, which kind, how and by when. Then it paid to retrain the people who stayed.
The cost still landed on someone. Contract workers went first, because their jobs were the easiest to let lapse.
AT DOCSUMO
We had to lay off a bunch of people because AI changed how we run the company.
The most impacted ones were junior developers. They started using AI, but only in a limited capacity, for code completion.
What changed is that senior developers were able to move a lot faster without having to spend time getting juniors up to speed.
We helped the people who left get placed at other organizations.
ONE ASK
Has AI changed a job on your team yet?
Reply yes or no. If yes, tell me which job. One line is plenty.
Rushabh