Hella Fast, LLC

Why did the Rive community on Reddit recognize my genius, while no one here noticed me at all? :D

:(

So, my dear friends, this is a Rive animation. If you’re not familiar with it, the cool thing about Rive is that it can be interactive—once it’s added to a website, people can actually interact with it. (!!!!!)

We’ve created this kind of animation for many websites, but this girl was by far the most challenging: her teeth, hair, eyes, and muscles all had to look natural while remaining fully movable.

Pretty cool, right? с:

AI HAS STARTED A LAYOFF RACE (Pt.4)

Here is the plot twist nobody wants to talk about:

AI can be useful. AI can be everywhere. And it can still fail to pay back the money spent scaling it.

Yes, really.

The most expensive illusion of the AI era is this:

“People pay for a subscription. So the model must be profitable.”

No.

Maybe one answer pays for itself. Maybe the product does.

But do the data centres pay for themselves? The GPUs? The electricity? Training the next model? The cost of borrowing all that money?

That is a very different question. And, publicly, we still do not have a clean answer.

There are three levels of “profitable”:

One request pays for itself. Your API payment or subscription brings in more than that answer costs to generate.

The product pays for itself. Revenue covers the answers, the teams, safety, support, and the next round of training.

The infrastructure pays for itself. Now add the GPUs, data centres, power, networks — and the money raised to build all of it.

Most AI conversations stop at level one.

“People pay $20 a month” sounds like a business model.

It is not an answer to whether that business model can repay tens of billions poured into chips and data centres.

And this changes how we should look at the AI race.

A company can cut staff because it expects AI to save money.

But if the AI stack itself needs permanent, enormous spending to stay useful, the savings may not be as simple as the pitch deck promised.

Next: who is definitely winning from AI — and why most business owners are not on that list. Sorry.

AI has already destroyed the job market.

They fired 4,000 people. Profits grew. 🤑

The beginning of my analysis of what’s happening in the market. I’ll be posting the next part every day.

Pt.1 https://sub.chujiqiqi.click/community/posts/J8uPBxKD3Jq5pmmVh6Bevo

Pt.2. https://sub.chujiqiqi.click/community/posts/LdaDDhgVVfrPEL7kZNDs7C

Pt.3 https://sub.chujiqiqi.click/community/posts/9gA56P4YXCE2B92rYe9458

What do you think about this situation?

I want to hear from you — my fellow freelancers. 🫠

This is about my wonderful Estela.

Seriously, guys, it’s so good that I’m starting to worry this might be my swan song 🥸

AI HAS STARTED A LAYOFF RACE.

“Oh, dear investors — look at me. I’m AI-native now!”

AI is not just a work tool anymore.

It is also a very profitable story to tell the market.

A CEO says “AI,” cuts costs, and investors hear: smaller team, higher margins, faster growth.

So yes: some layoffs may be happening faster than the technology itself has earned.

Challenger tracked 112,713 announced U.S. job cuts that cited AI through July.

But that does NOT mean 112,713 people were literally replaced by a chatbot.

Even Challenger says the category is messy. In some cases, “AI” is a clear reason. In others, it is part of a broader restructuring — and a much better headline for investors than “we are cutting costs.”

This is where the conversation gets silly.

One side says: “Nothing is happening. AI is just a tool.”

The other says: “AI has already destroyed the job market.”

Both are lazy takes.

What is already happening: — fewer entry-level openings; — fewer replacements when someone leaves; — lower prices for standardised knowledge work; — more pressure on people whose work is easy to describe, repeat, and measure.

What we cannot honestly claim yet: — mass unemployment caused by AI; — a collapse in consumer demand; — every company becoming the next Block within a year.

Block proves that one company can get smaller and make investors happy.

The paper from my first post makes a much bigger claim: what happens if everyone does it?

We are not there yet.

In Q2, U.S. consumer spending still grew. A measure of demand from households and businesses rose 3.9% annualised. Payrolls fell by 23,000 in July — a real sign of a softer labour market, but not proof of an AI depression.

That is the uncomfortable place we are in: the first cracks are visible, but the collapse is not.

And that makes the next question even more interesting:

Next: Can this AI boom actually pay for itself — or is “AI-native” mostly an expensive investor story?

AI HAS STARTED A LAYOFF RACE (pt. 2)

But it is not firing everyone.

It is making it harder for new people to get hired.

Yesterday, I wrote about a paper that describes an AI-driven layoff race.

So what does the real market look like?

Not mass unemployment.

Not yet.

But something quieter is already happening.

"Block" just cut more than 4,000 people — from over 10,000 to under 6,000.

This was not a company collapsing.

"Block" had a strong year. Profits were growing.

The bet was simple: a smaller team with AI can do more.

That is the shift.

It does not start with firing an entire profession overnight.

It starts with not replacing the person who leaves.

With fewer junior roles. Fewer assistants. Fewer entry-level tasks. Fewer simple freelance projects.

The first thing that disappears is not the job.

It is the first rung of the ladder.

Yes, AI is already everywhere at work. In the U.S., 55% of workers say they use it for at least one task.

But using AI to write an email is not the same as a company rebuilding itself around AI.

Only 18% of U.S. firms formally use AI in a business function. And among those, most use it to help people do their work — not to cut jobs.

So we are not at “AI replaced everyone.”

We are at: “the same amount of office work, with fewer new people coming in.”

And there is an early warning sign.

A U.S. Census working paper found a 12% decline in employment among 22–24-year-olds in the most AI-exposed parts of the economy over 10 quarters after ChatGPT launched.

The authors are careful: COVID, remote work, and education may also be part of the story.

But the pattern matters.

Companies may not fire every senior employee.

They may simply stop giving beginners their first chance.

You can keep your job — and still watch the ladder behind you lose its first steps.

Freelancers: are you seeing fewer small projects? Or clients expecting one person to do the work of three?

Next: “Oh, my dear investors — look, I’m AI-native!”

Okay, she’s live 💅

$69 that could sell pretty much anyone’s house :D (And if it’s luxury and by the water, then yeah… this template is probably perfect for it too.)

AI HAS STARTED A LAYOFF RACE.

Okay. I’ve been quiet about the AI madness for a while.

Watching.

Listening.

Trying to separate the loudest opinions from what is actually happening.

I’m ready to talk about it.

This is the first post in a series.

No hype.

No “AI will save us.”

No “AI will destroy humanity.”

Just a closer look at the incentives already shaping the market.

A paper by two economists argues that AI can trigger a layoff race.

Here’s the nightmare in plain English:

One company replaces people with AI.

Costs go down.

Investors clap.

Competitors panic.

Nobody wants to be the last business paying a “bloated” payroll while everyone else cuts costs.

So they do it too.

Then the people who lost their jobs have less money to spend.

They buy less.

Demand falls.

Sales drop — not only for the company that fired them, but for everyone.

And what do businesses do when demand drops?

They cut more people.

Every company can say: “We had to. Everyone else was doing it.”

Individually, that decision may be rational.

Collectively, it is a disaster.

Cheaper products sound great — until fewer people can afford to buy them.

That is the trap.

The authors call it a prisoner’s dilemma. Firms capture the savings from automation, while the damage to demand gets spread across the whole market.

Their solution? A tax on automation that replaces workers — not to punish useful AI, but to stop companies from outsourcing the cost of layoffs to everyone else.

Sounds dramatic?

Maybe.

But the next question is more important:

Is this actually what is happening right now?

In the next posts, we’ll look at the market without the AI fever: jobs, money, data, energy — and the parts nobody puts in the pitch deck.

So, freelancers: scared yet?

Sources for this post:

https://arxiv.org/abs/2603.20617

Transparency note:

Written by a human.

Translated from Russian to English with GPT.

GPT’s output, facts, and sources were reviewed by a human.

I’m sorry, but are we about to witness a WordPress vs. Framer marketing war like McDonald’s vs. Burger King? 🥸 We work with WordPress too and genuinely love it, but damn… they really flexed with this one ahaha

Recently, I came across a post by an amazing creator whose content I genuinely enjoy reading. She was breaking down different marketplaces for selling Framer templates and sharing her experience trying to grow a template business across multiple platforms.

What caught my attention the most was what she wrote about UI8.

After doing some research, I realized that it’s generally considered quite difficult to get accepted there. UI8 has very high quality standards for both creators and the products they publish. They manually review every creator and decide whether they meet their criteria.

After reading all of that, I decided to apply that same night.

Ironically, the fact that they have a relatively small number of creators and focus on premium products and a high-spending audience made me want to get in even more.

In my application, I shared who we are, mentioned that we're officially recognized as Framer Experts and Rive Experts, and attached our Estela template.

A few hours later, I got the email.

We were accepted. 🎉

Now I'm finishing the documentation for Estela so I can submit it as our first product. The template itself still has to go through manual review, but I think the hardest part is already behind us.

Today, for the first time, we blocked a client.

From day one, we stayed professional and respectful. The website was approved at every milestone. We even gave a discount because the client’s budget was limited.

Every requested revision was completed.

Our policy includes one month of maintenance after delivery to fix any issues. Three months later, the client came back with new requests, and we still completed them for free. Today, months later, they returned again asking for more changes. We quoted less than half of our normal hourly rate simply because they were a returning client.

The response we received was enough.

Looking back, the client had been rude throughout the entire project. We kept telling ourselves it was probably just a language barrier. It wasn’t.

Here’s what we learned:

Never let a client speak to you with disrespect.

The cost of working with the wrong client is far higher than the money they pay you. It drains your energy, your confidence, and your love for the work.

At the time, we were new to the platform where this project came from. We accepted it because we wanted the experience and the completed order on our profile.

Six months later, one message reminded me that some projects simply aren’t worth taking.

Not every client deserves access to your time.

Sometimes the most professional thing you can do is say no — or, if necessary, block them and move on.

Have you ever had to fire a client? Or did you keep trying to make it work longer than you should have?

Gonna start dropping work we get obsessed with here.

This one's first. I literally just scroll it back and forth and can't stop — it's so smooth. The transitions are chef's kiss.

@Catalystco this is so clean guys! 🔥

Two of my favorite achievements 🥸

@Framer @Rive

The website that got me accepted as a Framer Expert within an hour of applying. 🥸

@Contra c:

Probably the most dramatic 404 page we've ever designed.Built for a waterfront real estate template in Framer. 🥸

SOOOOOO PROUD

We just launched our first template on the Marketplace, and I think it's pretty awesome. 🙂