Two articles about Monotype’s busines travails and HR practices

John Hudson
John Hudson Posts: 3,536
in Type Business
[Disclaimer: I can’t vouch for the accuracy of these reports, but they come across as well-researched and informed. As far as I can tell, these arise out of Monotype India, but discuss the impact on the corporation as a whole.]

Is Monotype Running Out of Type? Layoffs, AI Failures, and the Price of a Lost Culture
[27 September 2025]

The Redundancy Lie: Inside Monotype’s HR and a Culture of Deceit
[5 October 2025]

Comments

  • Stephen Coles
    Stephen Coles Posts: 1,031
    edited October 9
    To me, the writing smells very strongly of AI. That doesn’t mean the stories behind it aren’t true, but there’s a lot of repetition of general ideas wrapped around very few specifics. The trouble with generative AI is that you could prompt it with facts, which this author may have gathered from real people, and it spits out overwrought copy that sounds suspicious. 

    I also know some people who (understandably) use AI to write in a language that isn’t their first, so that could be a factor here. 
  • John Butler
    John Butler Posts: 345
    AI slop is spam squared.
  • Thierry Blancpain
    Thierry Blancpain Posts: 221
    The author’s LinkedIn showed him as an MT employee when I checked on Tuesday. It’s prudent to assume that he was fired in this most recent round of layoffs. Also, yes, this is clearly written with AI. 
  • John Hudson
    John Hudson Posts: 3,536
    My mind still has trouble processing the possibility that anyone actually uses AI to write stuff, which probably makes me the ideal readership for stuff written by AI. :#
  • Nadine Chahine
    Nadine Chahine Posts: 132
    Bloated middle management, clueless executives, and the constant fear of layoffs.

    Sounds very familiar...
  • Ray Larabie
    Ray Larabie Posts: 1,467
    edited October 10
    It's less of a problem in the first article, but for the second one, I would have edited it down and submitted it back to the AI for critique and requested follow-up questions to clarify. Then I would have hand-edited and given it one more round, scanning for telltale AI cliché signifiers ("chef's kiss" "it's not just X, it's Y!" etc.). You don't publish first-draft AI content. Maybe it was hand-edited too, I'm not sure.

    It feels like the main point in the second article is "HR is on the company's side," which, while the drama adds to it, could have been tighter.

    There was a vendor's newsletter in my inbox this morning, and it clearly had first-draft AI content. There's no excuse; you can even ask it how to produce better writing, and it'll give you all the steps.
  • Typedesigner
    Typedesigner Posts: 74

    The recent reports of staff reductions at Monotype in India are not entirely unexpected. In Germany, significant restructuring had already taken place over the past few years: the storied Linotype brand has been gradually phased out, the website linotype.com is no longer active, and the former office in Bad Homburg appears to have closed.

    Linotype held a prominent place in typographic history, especially in the German-speaking world. The brand stood for quality and innovation in type design. It is therefore regrettable that its potential is no longer being actively developed or strategically repositioned.

  • Abdurrahman Hanif
    Abdurrahman Hanif Posts: 20
    Sadly, not surprised

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