Services firm’s AI-linked layoffs claim fuels ‘buy rural land’ jokes on Reddit

A Reddit post claiming an Indian services company laid off nearly its entire 70-person developer team over AI efficiency gains has triggered a wave of dark humour on r/developersIndia, alongside more serious debate about job security in tech.

“For replacing a team of 70 people, the token cost for Fable is going to be insane. Anyways, start saving money and buy some land in rural areas before it gets expensive too lol,” one commenter wrote, drawing further replies debating whether rural land prices would even rise if mass layoffs became widespread.

Another commenter joked about the company’s remaining eight employees: “By firing the remaining 8. Then the CEO will write prompts and the CTO will do the code reviews.”

Beneath the jokes, several commenters raised more grounded doubts about the post’s accuracy, with one calling it “100% a fake post” and another noting that AI usage costs for replacing that many workers “hasn’t even started” being calculated. The original poster maintained the layoffs were real, saying the company was already short on projects beforehand.