Who to lay off: CFOs, FP&A, or Controllers?

AI, Jobs and Finance. This might feel scary but there's a way.

A white-collar bloodbath.

That’s what Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei called it.

In his recent interview with Axios, Amodei said AI could wipe out up to 50% of entry-level white-collar jobs within 1–5 years. Not decades. Not eventually. This decade.

Finance. Law. Tech. Consulting. Especially entry-level.

That’s a gut punch for new grads dreaming of a finance career.

This isn’t sci-fi. This is what's coming for the foundation of your company.

And it’s happening fast.

But AI might spark a job boom, much like the industrial revolution did. AI could supercharge productivity and create roles we can’t even imagine yet.

So what’s going to happen?

Let’s dive in.

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The Disappearing Bottom

In finance, the first roles to go are the most foundational

• AP/AR clerks

• Junior analysts

• Staff accountants

• Entry-level FP&A

Every task below can now be done faster by an AI agent

• Data collection.

• Reconciliations.

• Journal entries.

• Routine modeling.

• Budget variance checks.

AI doesn’t just reduce labor. It vaporizes it.

Companies like Walmart, CrowdStrike, and Microsoft are already slashing corporate headcount, citing automation.

But it’s not just layoffs. It’s hiring freezes.

The real change is this:

Companies stop hiring entry-level employees… because they don’t need to.

This erodes the entire ladder. No entry. No training. No growth.

And for finance leaders, that should terrify you.

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The Apprentice Problem

Every CFO today was once the junior who stayed late to fix a broken model. Who caught a missed assumption in the variance analysis. Who closed books with spreadsheets and Red Bull?

That pain trained judgment.

But what happens when the new generation never touches the numbers?

When the AI does the work and they just click approve?

We’re raising editors. Not experts.

AI handles

• Rolling forecasts

• First drafts of board slides

• P&L and variance checks

• 80% of management reporting

But without understanding why numbers move, your team becomes surface-level smart.

The risk: a finance org that’s fast, clean, and hollow.

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The ROI Explosion and the Trap

Here’s the capitalist fantasy:

• A $100K employee managing 3 AI agents

• Each agent outputs $300K of value

• Total: $900K output on $100K salary

• 800% ROI per employee

Now stretch it.

What if each agent produces $900K of value? What if agents manage other agents?

One human, $2.7M in output.

This is real. It’s coming.

But here’s the paradox:

As output per head increases, so does demand. Not fewer jobs, more. Not less work, far more.

Because capitalism doesn’t rest. If Company A hits 99% margins,

Company B undercuts to win share. Prices drop. Output expands.

The number of solvable problems explodes.

This is Jevons’ Paradox in action:

As the cost of intelligence drops, we use it everywhere.

But to deploy AI at scale, you still need humans:

• Orchestrators

• Taste-makers

• Spot-checkers

• Decision-makers

So yes, AI will take your job.

But it also creates new demand, new leverage, new jobs, etc. if you train for them.

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What the AI-Native Future Looks Like

Today’s junior analyst does:

• Reconciliations

• Excel modeling

• Manual reporting

Tomorrow’s does:

• Risk triage

• Result interpretation

• AI prompt engineering

• Exception management

It’s not about typing faster. It’s about managing 10x more with machines.

You don’t eliminate the entry-level job. You evolve it.

The best finance teams will build training grounds that teach both AI and intuition.

Yes, AI writes the memo. But your analyst must still ask:

• What did we miss?

• Does this conclusion hold up?

• What’s the downstream impact?

If they can’t answer those, AI becomes a liability, not a partner.

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What Leading Companies Are Already Doing

Box’s CEO, Aaron Levie, shared this internally:

We don’t want to use AI just to do what we already do, just cheaper. We want AI to unlock new ideas, faster delivery, and more strategic work.

Shopify’s Toby Lütke went further:

AI usage is now part of employee reviews. Teams must prove why AI can’t do the work before hiring more humans.

At Stability AI, Emad Mostaque warns:

AI is like a bear. You don’t have to outrun the bear. Just the guy next to you. Except this bear gets faster.

So the only defense is learning faster.

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The Real Divide Is Now About Leverage

The most dangerous trend isn’t job loss. It’s job compression.

One finance pro managing 3 agents. Then 6. Then a pyramid of agents.

Leverage per person explodes. But so does the need for taste, oversight, and first-principles thinking.

The new gap is this:

• Those who learn AI lead teams of agents.

• Those who don’t get replaced by one.

And the bigger risk?

Only the capital-rich companies will be able to scale AI. Which means power consolidates even more.

The middle falls out.

The top gets sharper.

And the average worker has no leverage.

Unless they adapt now.

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A CFO’s Action Plan for the Transition

Master AI in Every Day (Block 20 minutes)

Stop delegating the learning curve. The unpleasant truth is that AI is coming for every finance role, including yours. If you’re not experimenting with the latest AI tools daily-writing memos with ChatGPT, summarizing complex docs with Claude, researching with Perplexity-you’re already behind.

Block 20 minutes each day to play with these tools and benchmark what gives your team superpowers: faster closes, sharper forecasts, and automated compliance. Don’t wait until you’re forced to adapt-get ahead now.

Create Opportunities (Play with AI)

Know your company’s goals cold and make yourself indispensable by pitching AI-driven solutions that directly align with business strategy.

Don’t wait for an invitation-drive the conversation, bring ideas to the table, and help leadership achieve its goals. Stop waiting for direction or permission: the future belongs to proactive leaders who create value before being asked.

The CFO of the future is a business partner, not a back-office operator. If you’re not learning independently and seeking growth, your value will erode fast.

This is not a time to be passive. You can go further this quarter:

1. Reward critical thinking, not task output.

2. Pair each analyst with an AI tool.

3. One human + one AI = 5x output if trained right.

4. Share the best prompts internally.

5. Audit results for quality and speed.

6. Recreate the finance apprenticeship model.

7. Focus on judgment, narrative, and questioning assumptions.

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Most finance teams are still using AI like it’s Google. They give generic inputs and get generic outputs. Meanwhile, real finance operators are doing something radically different:

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The Bottom Line

The nature of finance work is being rewritten by software that doesn’t sleep.

AI is coming for every job-including the CEO and CFO.

And the only ones doomed are those who refuse to adapt.

The message from Fiverr’s CEO is clear.

It’s an urgent call for CFOs to fundamentally rethink their role, their teams, and their approach to value creation.

If you’re still running finance like it’s 2020, you’re already behind. The days of manual, repetitive work are numbered. Easy tasks are vanishing, hard tasks are becoming routine, and what was once impossible will soon be table stakes.

The only way to stay relevant is to become exceptional-fast.

And that’s all for today.

See you on Thursday!

P.S. 24 sentences every CFO regrets not hearing sooner:

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I’m Wouter Born. A CFOTech investor, advisor, and founder of finstory.ai

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