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The Layoff
- brunooliv 3y agoI’d read a book in this style if one was written, Xe! This is both entertaining and very well written
- gmerc 3y agoMaybe 6 months ahead of it's time. Maybe.
- vaylian 3y agoI would categorize this as science fiction. But I agree that this is very likely to happen. Spoilers: This story is about a tech worker. I wonder how the same story would unfold when the company uses this technology to fire HR workers, because they don't need them any more.
- gmerc 3y agoIt’s implicit. All the consultants ask is the worker to manager ratio and the Hr ratio. Meta decided to change both in their layoffs for example.
- treprinum 3y agoTopTal already had gigs like the one described in this story a few months ago. Also a gig to automate debt collection.
- BandButcher 3y agoOh really, yikes. i thought about creating a toptal account for work but never got around to it. Doubt I'd be comfortable working on a proj like that
- samspenc 3y agoThe first 1-2 paragraphs in, I thought: OK this is just a fictional account summarizing most people's layoff experiences. The twist in the middle and end, ha, well done! Didn't see that coming :D Very funny and very well done.
- hdanirwin 3y agoSecond this!
- briandear 3y agoNot much worse than a real HR person.
- asynchronous 3y agoTo quote GLaDOS from Portal, “That would be funny, if it weren’t so sad.”
- m_fayer 3y agoGLaDOS was a few years ahead of her time.
- resolutebat 3y ago"It's not a layoff, it's a re-evaluation of our staffing goals for Q2 2025."
- Scarblac 3y ago> "I'm from employee success. I'm here to give you an important update about your future at Techaro."
- oblio 3y ago"You have been deemed an employment failure."
- FeepingCreature 3y ago"That's what it says. Employment... failure. Funny, we weren't even testing for that."
- x86x87 3y agoNo no no. You are so successful that we need to promote you to being a customer!!!
- SCUSKU 3y agoWow! What a great piece of topical creative writing. Absolutely love it!
- 5350-uiop-1130 3y ago> HypeScript > Flack nice. we need more of this satire. although it's hard to out-satire reality right now.
- xena 3y agoThe best science fiction uses technology to shine a light on the inherent problems of the human condition. The hard part is not making it depressing or a stand-up comedy routine. It requires a lot of balance, which requires me to take weeks to let the ideas _fester_ in my head until they become a brainworm that I must excise. I think I hit the right balance here.
- bbor 3y agoSuper biased, strongly held first impression: drop the disclaimer, or move it to the side. I'm just an attention-deprived zoomer, but for me a big preface is not a good way to keep my interested. If I'm gonna be sucked into a whole thing, it's usually because I didn't realize it was a whole thing. Plus 'A dull thud hit James' wrist.' pretty immediately puts this in the realm of fiction imo! After reading the whole thing (great stuff, sobering for an AI developer) I can somewhat confidently say that the disclaimer at the top isn't some meta-commentary lol
- xena 3y agoIn 2024, you need to have those disclaimers. This is just life now.
- wetpaws 3y ago[dead]
- OfficeChad 3y ago[dead]
- KronisLV 3y agoThat was interesting. I'm reminded of the sci-fi story called "Manna" that I read a while ago, which explored a bit of a dystopian future, where advancements in technology eventually made a lot of people unemployed: https://marshallbrain.com/manna https://marshallbrain.com/manna Actually, the Wiki page has more info on it, for those that don't have the time to read it: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manna_(novel) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manna_(novel) The story is from 2003, but hearing about people being laid off due to AI/LLM advances suddenly reminds me of it, as well as AI gradually encroaching upon more positions. After all, letting an AI of some sort handle layoffs would almost make sense. That's not to say that the early attempts at replacing writers or artists, or even some developers won't backfire pretty badly.
- jaggederest 3y agoI've been "enjoying" watching that story come true since he published it. It's a great summation of all the trends that have been going on for a long time now.
- euroderf 3y agoSO where is the near-real-time country-wide system that ratchets down the standard (statutory) work week in sync with the overall decline in aggregate work ?
- _heimdall 3y agoGovernments need us busy and distracted, they'll never willingly give us free time like that.
- generic92034 3y agoFirst there would need to be signs of greatly increased productivity where it counts (customer facing). Somehow I have my doubts we will see that with the current crop of LLM.
- dbetteridge 3y agoThe most unrealistic part of this is Australia being a utopia of universal basic income. Unfortunately we've gone the way of the USA in many ways, though at least centrelink (unemployment/dole) still exists as a minimal safety net.
- vasco 3y ago"We won't share a list of the affected employees because some of them might not want the information to be public" was the biggest bullshit I've heard recently - no fiction needed. Discovering that people you worked with for years have been laid off only because you randomly notice their slack is deactivated has to be one of 2024s gifts to humanity.
- vdqtp3 3y ago> one of 2024s gifts to humanity You think that started in 2024? You sweet summer child
- robinduckett 3y ago“Hey is Dave working today? We were supposed to groom the backlog today.” “Dave is no longer with us” “Oh no! What do we do? Send a condolences card to his partner? Do we have contact information? I worked with Dave for three years” “Oh.. no he just has been let go.” “Okay.. uh. So who will be the scrum master now?” “You will have to take on some extra responsibilities while we transition to the new team structure” “:sadparrot:”
- forgotusername6 3y agoThat's at least better than I've experienced: Manager at a standup "got some news. Unfortunately Bob has passed out" Confused looks. "What do you mean passed out?" "Oh I mean he's died" Horror from everyone there. No further information was ever given.
- saagarjha 3y agoNo need for the disclaimer. I know this is fake because Scroogle would never do anything as personal as a 1:1 when laying people off.
- oblio 3y agoOh, no, the company that runs from human support since inception has an inhumane approach to handling people?!?
- xena 3y agoI'd love to not have to put a disclaimer there, but legal counsel advised me to.
- saagarjha 3y agoIn case you're being serious: did you actually retain legal counsel for this blog post? Why?
- cupofjoakim 3y agoAs a guy who surfed the unemployment wave twice the last year, this was a fun read, albeit sad.
- frfl 3y agoThat's rough, twice in a bad year. How was the job hunt experience for you, did you end up finding a second position yet?
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- midasuni 3y agoAbout a decade ago I was doing a lot of travel for work - 140 plus flights a year over 6 continents level. I remember watching a film, “Up in the Air”, about a guy who was contest flying from airport to airport to lay people off because the boss was too much of a wimp to do it himself. I guess even his job isn’t safe from AI. Sure some will manage to hack with prompt injection attacks, and potentially get compensation, but those attacks will be fixed.
- twoodfin 3y agoThat George Clooney’s traveling show was going to be replaced by Anna Kendrick’s Zoom-before-Zoom technology solution is a major part of the plot. It’s a fantastic film, albeit in a bit of an obscure niche if you haven’t dipped your toe in the points/status game.
- pokerface_86 3y ago[dead]
- OfficeChad 3y ago[dead]
- loloquwowndueo 3y agoPlot twist : this story was written by AI.
- xena 3y agoOnly the press release at the end was :)
- ezst 3y agoOn par with the recent news of Air Canada hiring a hallucinating chatbot for customer support. Fun times ahead.
- p_l 3y agoInterestingly, the story fails to load on Chrome 121, actually removing DOM nodes with the story... Worked fine in Firefox though.
- xena 3y agoThat is strange. I'll investigate. What browser extensions do you use?
- p_l 3y agoSeems to be somehow connected to loading an image that fails to load - just replicate it in chrome 121 on Android, which obviously has no extensions. https://usercontent.irccloud-cdn.com/file/zQfJpquv/1000006989.png https://usercontent.irccloud-cdn.com/file/zQfJpquv/100000698... Some more context - Chrome seems to get stuck getting contents of "hero image" of bay bridge, which is invisible (height=0) in Firefox, and somehow everything after said image's <figure> tag gets removed from DOM. Looking at chrome debugger, it seems both the AVIF file and inter.css fail to load, stuck in "pending" state.
- xena 3y agoWhat does the last line of https://cdn.xeiaso.net/cgi-cdn/wtf https://cdn.xeiaso.net/cgi-cdn/wtf say?
- p_l 3y agoI am XeDN fra (instance ID 4d89706f61e778) running /nix/store/l4wc41rg57ajwmcci3gvxs605z891zka-xedn-20240210195656/bin/xedn Connected using ipv6
- xena 3y agoRoger, I'll go get hacking. Until then, grab the version on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/layoff-xe-iaso-fefqe https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/layoff-xe-iaso-fefqe Soon I will migrate XeDN storage to Tigris and then we should never have this problem ever again.
- tomohawk 3y agoThe author comments about the story here: https://lobste.rs/s/uumbc6/layoff https://lobste.rs/s/uumbc6/layoff
- sys_64738 3y ago[Spoiler alert - look away now if you haven't read the story] I'd expect the logical extension to this to wholly be using AI for the managerial aspect of bringing you into the conversation. Employers will have the right to make use of a manger's likeness for reasons they see fit, such as using a bot to layoff their direct reports. Removes the emotional liability from the manager.
- halfmatthalfcat 3y agoThese AI doomer predictions get more and more detached from reality.
- sys_64738 3y agoThe naivety of many people still staggers me. Life has a lot to teach you yet, grasshopper.
- halfmatthalfcat 3y agoThanks for the life lesson Dad.
- imacomputer 3y agoYay we have turned into reddit.
- Frost1x 3y agoWhy do you think a class of folks with asymmetric access to a given resource, because of costs to access and use such resources creating barrier to entry, would not use those very asymmetric resources to their advantage when possible? So long as the prediction is viable from a technological and execution level, I don’t see why it has to be labeled “doomer.” If it’s possible and people can exploit it to their advantage, they will, that’s humans.
- halfmatthalfcat 3y ago
- aestetix 3y agoStory is not loading for me for some reason. Is there an archive link?
- thewisenerd 3y agohttps://web.archive.org/web/20240217123128/https://xeiaso.net/blog/2024/the-layoff/ https://web.archive.org/web/20240217123128/https://xeiaso.ne...
- tr3ntg 3y agoThis was a really fun read. I’ve only read a couple short stories ever that so narrowly focus on the technology of today, but I think it’s great. Such an effective and entertaining way of discussing what’s in the news cycle.
- tleb_ 3y agoI agree the format is interesting. What are some other examples of short stories about technology, recent or less so?
- antiframe 3y agoMost short stories about technology are about it's role in society. Take a look at any of the winning or short-listed short stories from any reputable sci-fi award (like the Nebula or Locus) and you'll find them by the dozen. I like stories by Asimov and Bradbury. If you're looking for something contemporary, take a gander at Ted Chiang.
- xena 3y agoYeah, the trick to writing science fiction is that it's almost never about the grandeur of the setting, it's using that setting and its technology as a tool to lay bare the inherent problems with society and humanity. One of the things I've been struggling with is that AI tools are effectively cheap low-quality knowledge labour. How could this go wrong? Many fucking ways it turns out.
- tbwriting 3y agowell you did ask https://boilingdown.ghost.io/thoughts-on-neuralink/ https://boilingdown.ghost.io/thoughts-on-neuralink/ https://boilingdown.ghost.io/loyalty-program/ https://boilingdown.ghost.io/loyalty-program/ https://boilingdown.ghost.io/streetcred/ https://boilingdown.ghost.io/streetcred/ https://boilingdown.ghost.io/grow-up/ https://boilingdown.ghost.io/grow-up/ https://boilingdown.ghost.io/deluge/ https://boilingdown.ghost.io/deluge/
- thewisenerd 3y agohug of death, archive link below: https://web.archive.org/web/20240217123128/https://xeiaso.net/blog/2024/the-layoff/ https://web.archive.org/web/20240217123128/https://xeiaso.ne...
- Clubber 3y ago"the rest of the year's worth of pay in one lump sum, to keep your corporate laptop, and COBRA coverage for the rest of the year should you need it. You will also get double the value of any unspent paid time off, including the time you would have gained during the rest of the year." OMG I would love this kind of severance, in February no less. I'm accustomed to hearing about severance that goes from from jack squat to 2 weeks severance + 1 week per year worked, no insurance, no laptop, and maybe you unpaid vacation time that didn't carry over. Lay me off, baby. Daddy's going on a 10 month paid sabbatical! The worst that are affected are the people who didn't get laid off and now have to do the work of all the people that did. Double the work with no extra pay, what's not to like?
- arpa 3y agohahaha yes. This kind of a layoff is actually winning the lottery.
- x86x87 3y agoThis kind of severance is a thing of the past. I predict a new type of employement will emerge as a result of the late stage capitalism we are experiencing: the just in time employment. Where you are technically employed all the time but you are not paid [the same] when the corpo has you in the idle bucket. The drones will stay on for the health insurance, minimum pay, the illusion of work right around the corner. Heck, we also may have corpos form big pools of disposables that allow them to elastically scale the number of people that currently work on something up and down. Remember folks! JustInTime Employment!
- joelegner 3y agoIs that really how these layoffs go? The HR person is belittling ("I need you to focus") and the employee passively takes the belittling. Here's a script the employee could have used. "Excuse me, I need to pause. I have never met you before this call. We are strangers. You demand my attention because you say you need it. To be fair, your needs are no more important than mine. One of my needs is to be treated with respect. Frankly, since I am no longer an employee, I fail to see why you make any demands of me. But because I am polite and want to hear the details about the severance, I will stay on this call for now. However if you continue to treat me disrespectfully, I will drop from the call, and you can email me the details of the severance." I realize the bravado of the above, but I was in fact laid off one time, and I did assert myself to the owner who at least had the guts to do it himself. A few months later he calls me and asks me to me to return to work to finish the project (not a software project, a building construction project), and I declined and instead told him I would do it on a contract for twice what he was previously paying me. He had no choice, took the offer begrudgingly, and I finished the project, designed another big project the same way, and then moved on with my life.
- bruh2 3y agoYou might enjoy this TikTok video of an ex-CloudFlare employee getting laid off by people she has never met, and responds as fiercely as your text. Except she's also trying to extract the actual reason she's being laid off, to no avail – yet still impressive how hard she's pressing those random HRs. https://old.reddit.com/r/TikTokCringe/comments/194v9y8/ae_at_cloudflare_records_hr_trying_to_fire_her/ https://old.reddit.com/r/TikTokCringe/comments/194v9y8/ae_at...
- commandlinefan 3y ago> get the rest of the year's worth of pay Damn, last time I got laid off I got two weeks severance after five years of employment. I didn’t even get to keep the laptop.
- omoikane 3y agoI remember when the first company I worked for did their first round of layoffs, the severance was something like two months. It was good enough that people were asking the CEO "why didn't you ask for volunteers?" The later rounds were not as generous. Nobody got to keep their laptops or desktops, but few months later the company was liquidating its assets, and some of the former employees got to buy some slightly dated hardware for cheap. If I recall correctly, that was also the only month we were profitable.
- p00psicle 3y agoAt one place I worked I really needed a piece of hardware. I found the best hardware for the price and sent it to my manager. A couple weeks later it was delivered to THEIR desk. So I bought it myself and went to the CEO and asked if he'd cover it, he did. Then when they went under the next year everything went to auction. So I went and bought it again.
- jcadam 3y agoI've found laptops always go back, but monitors they tend to not care about. I've been on contracts where they only want the laptop back, after sending you a complete setup with monitor, keyboard, etc.
- whatever1 3y agoThe day before the lay offs we are all inclusion, empathy, #goteam. Then in a split second it's literally go f yourself. And don't make a scene or we will take your health insurance too.
- web007 3y agoGiven this is (almost to the letter) how impersonally "layoffs" went at my company in January I think we could switch to AI severance and not lose anything of value.
- xena 3y agoHi, author of the story here. Here's the side notes that I put on Patreon: This story was hard to write. Well, okay, the story was a lot easier to write after I ended up working in person in San Francisco for a week and after I had a long conversation with Corey Quinn about why things are the way they are. Either way, this story was hard to write because of the way you have to balance these things very carefully. If you make a satire story like this, you have to be very careful to balance it between plausibility and comedy. If you falter to one side, it’s too realistic and depressing. If you falter to the other side, it’s just an extended stand-up comedy routine and you don’t get the message you’re going after. I think I got the balance right. An earlier draft of it emphasized the “oh god this is a robot isn’t it” a bit more and I don’t think that made it good to read. Generally when you’re making creative works, you know you’re done when you can’t cut anything else away without affecting the bones of the story. I think I got to that point in editing. One of my biggest inspirations for this story was that one Cloudflare layoff call of the woman who joined Cloudflare in a sales role (https://www.tiktok.com/@brittanypeachhh/video/7323004085043612959?lang=en https://www.tiktok.com/@brittanypeachhh/video/73230040850436...) right between two major holidays (thanksgiving and christmas). I wanted to take it a step further. What would it be like if an AI did the layoff call for the company? Layoff calls are super taxing to the human psyche afterall, especially in the US where there’s this subtext of “and we’re taking your health insurance coverage with it”. I did try to make it turn out well for James, the severance package is ridiculously good for the employee in comparison to what you’d probably get on the market today (I think it’d be something like 1.5 years of pay?). Originally the story was gonna end with a little bit like: > James later attempted to appeal his termination in arbitration due to the legally binding promise the bot had made. It was unsuccessful. James’ use of “prompt injection” proved that James was aware he was talking to an AI system, and thus the bot was therefore not capable of making legally binding promises on behalf of Techaro. James was ordered to pay legal costs and financial damages to Techaro for reputational harm. James was marked as “not eligible for re-hire” in Techaro’s HR system and his severance offer was revoked. > > James later moved to a farm in the countryside and never used a computer again. He was happy. Or something, but I think that this could actually be its own story a lot better than it could be as a footnote to an existing story. Maybe the arbitration case could be good surrealism fodder. What if the AI gets called to the stand? Absolute hilarity. I think the next satire story about AI is going to involve an astute observation that a friend of mine made: for some reason people haven’t figured out that people just want a sandbox where you interact with NPC characters. With one glaring exception: japanese VR erotica games. I’ve wanted to try writing something a bit…more mature, and this may be the concept that I use for it. The ideas I’m working with are VR erotica, mind uploading (how else would you get AGI on the cheap), something written from the perspective of an AI agent that doesn’t realize they are an AI agent, and this one word in Czech that is the reason we have the term “robot”. We have that word because of the play R.U.R. (Rossum’s Universal Robots) adapting the word “robota”, which means forced labour of the kind that serfs had to perform on their masters’ lands. So, the main character is actually a fully sapient NPC in a VR erotica game that thinks they’re the protagonist in a game where they’re actually there to make the players happy. This concept is probably going to require a fair bit of development to avoid making it too adult because I do have a number of non-adult readers, to my horror. Might just make it patron-only. I don’t know. Still need to noodle things out.
- joe0789 3y agonice! interesting read, thank you!
- brvsft 3y ago> "James, eyes up here please. This is important." James looked back at the E100 Meet tab. Bit too tryhard for my taste.
- op00to 3y agoWas this written by LLM?