Startup Lays Off Engineers Hired to Watch AI, Recruits Engineers to Watch AI Watch AI

MENLO PARK—Software infrastructure firm Datavance announced Thursday it had completed its AI transition by laying off its seven remaining AI-Native Senior Engineers — the specialized role created in 2025 to oversee AI systems that had replaced the company's previous engineering staff — and would immediately begin recruiting three AI-Native Principal Engineers to oversee the AI that would now be overseeing the AI.

The departing engineers, who earned between $310,000 and $380,000 annually, had been responsible for reviewing AI-generated pull requests, escalating AI-detected errors to the orchestration layer tasked with managing the AI that produced the errors, and attending a Tuesday stand-up at which they confirmed they had nothing to report.

Datavance said an updated orchestration layer would absorb the review functions previously handled by the AI-Native Seniors, while the three incoming AI-Native Principals — each commanding a base salary of $420,000 plus equity — would provide the human judgment layer deemed necessary to maintain board confidence that a human judgment layer existed.

Each of the seven departing engineers received a separation notice generated by Datavance's AI communications platform. The notices opened: "I wanted to reach out personally."

The company confirmed that its prior engineering organization — 94 engineers laid off in January 2025, who had built and maintained the software now operated by AI — had performed roughly equivalent functions at an average salary of $168,000.

A Datavance spokesperson said that was not a relevant comparison.