Titans of trade like Salesforce, Microsoft, and Intel have all been slashing employees, and workers are hand-wringing about being subsequent on the chopping block. Donald King, a 26-year-old who constructed AI brokers for PwC, by no means thought he’d be the following one out the door—however he quickly realized why consultants are referred to as “hatchet-men.”
After graduating with a level in finance from the College of Texas at Austin in 2021, King landed a job at one of many “Big Four” consulting giants: PwC. He packed his baggage and moved to New York to begin his position as an affiliate in know-how consulting, working with main shoppers, together with Oracle, throughout his first 12 months. However every thing modified when PwC introduced a $1 billion funding in AI; King was already intrigued by the tech, so he pitched himself to affix the corporate’s AI manufacturing unit crew. Working 60 to 80 hours every week, he immersed himself within the tech, even throwing knowledge-sharing AI agent block events inside the agency that drew as much as 250 individuals. King logged a ton of hours—typically on the expense of his weekends—however was assured he was excelling in his position as a product supervisor and knowledge scientist.
“I was coding and managing a team onshore and offshore. It was crazy, it’s like, ‘Give this 24-year-old millions of dollars of salary spent per month to build AI agents for Fortune 500 [companies],’” King tells Fortune. “[It was] my dream job…I won first place in this OpenAI hackathon across the entire firm.”
Though King was proving himself as a key AI expertise for PwC, he did start to query the impression of his work. The AI brokers King was constructing for main companies might undoubtedly automate swaths of human roles—maybe even whole job departments. One Microsoft Groups agent his group created mimicked an precise particular person, and King was a bit of spooked.
“We had a late night call with all the boys that are building this thing, like, ‘What the hell are we building right now?’” King says. “Just saying ‘Treat them like humans’ is probably not the best way to think about it.”
Behind the scenes, a layoff was brewing—however this time, for King. In October 2024, simply eight months into his closing position at PwC, the Gen Zer offered his successful challenge from the OpenAI hackathon: a fleet of AI brokers that automated guide duties. King was proud and felt assured in his place on the agency, however two hours later, PwC referred to as King to tell him he was being laid off. The 26-year-old recorded the assembly and posted it on TikTok, raking up greater than 75,000 likes and a pair of.1 million views. Commenters beneath his movies expressed shock that King can be let go after successful the hackathon.
“I thought I was safe, especially after I won first place,” King says. “I just got a little blindsided.”
King clarifies he doesn’t suppose there have been any “nefarious” intentions behind his layoff, reasoning he was doubtless a random staffer dismissed after the agency had overhired in earlier years. Nonetheless, he does join the dots between the AI brokers he constructed for PwC clients and the layoffs that quickly ensued at these consumer firms.
Fortune reached out to PwC for remark.
King believes his AI brokers could have been linked to layoffs
Whereas King doesn’t imagine his former position at PwC was automated, he acknowledges that the AI brokers he constructed doubtless had an impression on others. The 12 months after his layoff, King noticed that a few of the Fortune 500 shoppers he served have been implementing staffing cuts. These AI brokers he helped create could have had a hand within the layoffs.
“It’s 100% connected,” King says. “I knew that consulting was a hatchet-man type job, I knew you’re going in to potentially lay people off, but I didn’t think it was going to be like this.”
Whereas King believes AI brokers are akin to the reasoning energy of a five-year-old, they nonetheless know “all the corpus of information in the world” and might automate mundane duties. Oftentimes, which means entry-level jobs are most prone to being disrupted.
Pivoting to his new life goal: founding a advertising and marketing company
Whereas being on PwC’s AI crew could have as soon as been his dream job, the layoff didn’t crush his spirit.
“I’m grateful for it happening…It was the worst thing that ever happened to me, but then it turned into the best thing,” King says. “Overall, [I’m] very grateful that I got laid off.”
Within the aftermath of being let go, King says he was inundated with job affords from main tech firms to affix their AI operations. Nonetheless, the scrappy younger entrepreneur sidelined the thought of returning to a nine-to-five gig; as an alternative, King began his personal advertising and marketing company, AMDK. The enterprise formally launched in December final 12 months, lower than two months after being laid off from PwC.
Thus far, King says AMDK has roped in shoppers starting from small firms to billion-dollar enterprises, lots of whom are on the lookout for AI brokers of their very own. His finish objective is to construct a swarm of brokers that assist firms with their again ends—however after his expertise on PwC’s AI crew, he says he’s being cautious concerning the ramifications of his creations. He’s nonetheless studying the ropes of entrepreneurship, however wouldn’t commerce the highs and lows for a salaried company job.
“This is my purpose in life, versus this is someone else’s purpose,” King says. “[I’m] way happier.”
