Did AI replace them too soon? Syndio's CEO laid off five experts for AI, then rehired one

Syndio, which makes pay-equity software, laid off five employees, including labour economists and other domain experts, in a restructuring built around AI, chief executive Maria Colacurcio told Business Insider in a report published on 24 September 2026. Within weeks she concluded the company had moved too fast: "The technology wasn't quite there yet." One of the five, pay-equity consultant Jonathan Vidales, reapplied two months after the layoff and was rehired into a newly created role; he says AI now takes "a lot of the tedious things" off his plate but has not made his work obsolete. Colacurcio says she should have given some of the people she cut a chance at the new roles: "One of the things we get wrong is when we assume too quickly that people who are in a certain role can't evolve." It is a small case, but a rare one: an employer saying on the record that it cut jobs for AI and got it wrong. Research firms have so far described that reversal only in aggregate; this is what it looks like inside one company.