Jakob Rufus Klimkait
Co-Founder, CEO & Digital Strategy Lead at Fuchs Devils Wild
Co-Founder, CEO & Digital Strategy Lead bei Fuchs Devils Wild
Dresden, Germany
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Jakob Rufus Klimkait is co-founder and Managing Partner of Fuchs Devils Wild — the consultancy that rolls up its sleeves instead of just sending slide decks. Since 2019 he has guided teams and leadership from SMEs to DAX-listed corporations through transformation processes. His conviction: real change only works when it's carried on every level. That's why he runs parallel 90-to-120-day programs for C-level and whole-organization change — across industries, with people at the center.
His focus is legacy organizations facing digital and AI transformation without losing their culture. In 2019, his project "Tomorrow" received the New Work Award from New Work SE.
Lecturer for digital communication at the University of Freiburg since 2020. Trainer for project management and AI application at TU Dresden since 2021 — working with administration, research staff, and faculty.
Speaking engagements include Big & Growing Festival, HR Campus Mitteldeutschland, Brains on Silicon Dresden, and Wirtschaftsförderung Brandenburg.
Jakob Rufus Klimkait ist Mitgründer und Managing Partner von Fuchs Devils Wild — der Unternehmensberatung, die anpackt, statt nur Slide Decks zu liefern. Seit 2019 begleitet er Teams und Führungsebenen vom KMU bis zum DAX-Konzern durch Transformationsprozesse. Sein Ansatz: echte Veränderung gelingt nur, wenn sie auf allen Ebenen getragen wird. Deshalb arbeitet er mit klaren 90-120-Tage-Plänen parallel am C-Level und an der Gesamtorganisation — branchenübergreifend, mit dem Menschen im Mittelpunkt.
Sein Fokus liegt auf Legacy-Organisationen, die vor Digital- und KI-Transformationen stehen, ohne ihre Kultur zu verlieren. 2019 wurde sein Projekt "Tomorrow" mit dem New Work Award der New Work SE ausgezeichnet.
Lehrbeauftragter für digitale Kommunikation an der Albert-Ludwigs-Universität Freiburg seit 2020. Trainer für Projektmanagement und KI-Anwendung an der TU Dresden seit 2021 — für Verwaltung, wissenschaftliche Mitarbeiter und Professuren.
Sprach u.a. bei Big & Growing Festival, HR Campus Mitteldeutschland, Brains on Silicon Dresden und der Wirtschaftsförderung Brandenburg.
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The Quiet Cost of AI Efficiency: Why Your Seniors Are Burning Out — And Nobody's Talking About It
The promise of AI in tech organizations sounds great: more time for the human stuff: collaboration, communication and maybe pet projects.
The reality in most companies we work with: more compression, less mentoring, higher load — and seniors quietly burning out while everyone celebrates the productivity gains.
Here's the pattern we keep seeing in legacy tech orgs: AI gets rolled out to absorb shrinking margins. Hours don't drop — they go up. Investment in junior talent gets cut. Value creation concentrates on two or three experienced people per department. They become strategic single points of failure — with all the psychological mess that comes with it.
This talk names three mental patterns the AI hype machine isn't ready to discuss:
– Last-Resort Exhaustion: Seniors operating beyond 100% capacity, where calling in sick becomes existential for the company. Holidays don't fix this.
– The Enthusiasm Crash: At first, seniors love AI for taking over the boring stuff. A few months in, they realize the work they actually loved — including the coding itself — is also being handed to the machine.
– Identity Erosion Through Skill Democratization: When everyone can code with AI, what's left of seniorship? When the gap to junior level shrinks, what exactly are you a senior of?
None of this gets fixed by better tools or mindfulness apps. It needs a structural decision at the top: the productivity dividend AI delivers must be explicitly reserved for mentoring and knowledge transfer. Otherwise margin pressure eats it — and your key people's mental health with it.
Seven years of transformation work with companies from SME to DAX and 10+ in tech companies in leadership roles. Concrete observations, clear anti-patterns, and a wake-up call for tech leads and execs to re-read their own AI strategy.
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