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Wayfair fired a bunch of people again today, after using them to train AI
As my friend logged into work today, they were told to join a mandatory meeting, as was everyone on their team and everyone they had known at the company. It wasn't a meeting though, they were the only one in it.
After being shown some stupid bullshit video about how Wayfair is "moving in a new direction" or whatever, they were locked out of their accounts almost without warning. Friends barely got a chance to say goodbye to each other.
For the last few months, they've been training an absolutely useless AI to replace themselves.
They made all the managers wait till later in the day to come into work so they could be fired separately.
Of course, they kept the one manager who lives in a place with underpaid labor, where they are offshoring the work for managing this new AI to near-slaves.
Of course they were told not to go posting about it on social media, and I couldn't find anything yet, so I took it upon myself. What a trash company that doesn't care about its people one bit.
- pfdietz 2y agoIt seems one of AI's major successes will be the production of schadenfreude (as when this effort goes disastrously pear shaped.)
- drewcoo 2y agoNo more than offshoring. I don't see much news about those failures.
- orwin 2y agoBecause the business side doesn't want to communicate on the 'success' of offshoring. Which, to be fair, isn't an issue if you pay the locals fairly, have a correct vulture based on good communication and clear vision. I've worked for a French bank that messed up its tech offshoring badly, and is one of the _European_ bank that spend the most for its IT division, despite being nowhere near the top _french_ bank in revenue.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- pfdietz 2y ago> correct vulture This confused me until I realized c and v are adjacent on the keyboard.
- replyifuagree 2y agoI just went with it and enjoyed the visual!
- lamontcg 2y agoProbably won't. As long as they stick to things that are already 'enshittifying' at warp speed (like customer support) there won't be any real consequences to bottom line because everyone they're competing with is racing to the bottom anyway.
- pylua 2y agoWasn’t this the company where the ceo urged everyone to work insane hours? These people only care about themselves.
- ryandrake 2y agoYup, work harder and forget about having personal lives[1]. I wonder whether he sent it from a vacation home or a yacht… 1: https://www.usatoday.com/story/money/business/2023/12/22/wayfair-ceo-niraj-shah-email-work-longer-hours/72010867007/ https://www.usatoday.com/story/money/business/2023/12/22/way...
- greenyoda 2y agoThis was followed by a layoff in January: > Wayfair lays off 13% of its workforce weeks after telling employees to work harder https://www.cnn.com/2024/01/19/investing/wayfair-layoffs/index.html https://www.cnn.com/2024/01/19/investing/wayfair-layoffs/ind...
- BillyTheMage 2y agoYeah, they said something like "better work-life balance" when telling people they'd be working ridiculous hours
- JojoFatsani 2y agoWayfair is always churning.
- black_13 2y ago[dead]
- ungreased0675 2y agoWhen and why did this soulless dismissal process become popular? Is this really the best way to treat people?
- justinclift 2y ago> why Un-empathetic leadership + lack of unionisation?
- globular-toast 2y agoIt's similar to how people buy meat all nicely wrapped in plastic from the supermarket and pretend the slaughter and cruelty doesn't happen. Many of them claim to be "animal lovers" too. Self-delusion is a powerful thing. It lets people do things they wouldn't otherwise feel comfortable with. Treating people like humans, getting to know them, making friends etc. means you inevitably start thinking of them like equals. That's no way to get on top.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- surfingdino 2y agoIt's not a new thing, every time a new consultancy is hired to "help you" and begins process of "discovery" it's a signal to get your CVs updated.
- lotsofpulp 2y agoBuyers choosing to buy equivalent or sufficiently “good“ products or services sold at the lowest price is a very, very old thing.
- anal_reactor 2y agoWhen companies grew so large that they stopped caring about their impact on their immediate surroundings. In my friend's tiny town there are literally two companies that employ everyone living there. Once my friend was complaining to me about poor performance of one employee. I asked "can't you just fire him?" to which he replied "then I'll have a jobless bum walking around my town, I need to have him doing something". Meanwhile modern big corporations don't care about such issues because they are completely shielded from the results of their mismanagement.
- billy99k 2y agoA friend of mine was just fired after he worked on a 6-month death march project. He worked until 2am almost every night with meetings at 7am the next day, including weekends. He missed New years, Christmas events, kids birthdays/other family events, and any planned vacations. His reward was the elimination of his position at the end of the project.
- nine_zeros 2y agoNEVER sacrifice your life for an artificial deadline. How to determine if something is an artificial deadline? Because if it were a real deadline with significance to the business, they'd pull more hands on deck, remove roadblocks relentlessly day after day, and even offer to take portions of your work on themselves so that the deadlines can be met. If they are not making such moves, rest assured that the deadline is not critical - but only required for some BS stack ranking, or for the management's own promotion. They WILL fire you after putting all the work if it fits their BS processes.
- ryandrake 2y agoThe only people who will remember you worked insane hours are your family.
- mrazomor 2y agoThis is amazingly well said! It deserves a huge virtual billboard.
- moe_sc 2y agoJust adding more people to a team isn't useful if you don't have the time to integrate them well in a project. Even then, it might be what you call a "real deadline", doesn't mean you should overwork for months, a couple of days or even some weeks is okay, but you should also be compensated for it.
- realusername 2y agoI'd go further and say to never sacrifice your life for any deadline at all. Part of having a work contract specifically means that all risks rests on capital holders shoulders and not yourself.
- leet_thow 2y agoBoycott all these assholes and their shitty products.
- VS1999 2y agoI don't really understand the moral issue with a company eliminating jobs. Similarly, I also don't think these companies are doing a moral good for creating jobs in the first place.
- MrJohz 2y agoThe moral issue comes because these jobs are tied to people's livelihoods and ability to provide essentials like food, housing, healthcare, etc for themselves and their families.
- VS1999 2y agoSo is the company doing a morally good thing when it provides the ability for someone to have food, housing, healthcare, etc? If not, it doesn't make sense to blame the company for eliminating jobs if they also don't get credit for employing people for however many years.
- MrJohz 2y agoIn a system where those things can't be taken for granted: yes. That's why people talk so positively about job creation, and we praise job creators. It's also why we shame and indeed ban companies that don't do those things: for example companies that pay below what is considered a minimum wage. Of course, we could also discuss whether things like housing and healthcare should be tied to an employer in the first place, but this is a different discussion.
- AStrangeMorrow 2y agoI think the issue that most people have is also that companies expect a certain level of respect and dedication from their employees but are not willing to reciprocate. Make sure to work as hard as possible for us, pleas work extra hours if the company is doing bad. Don't take your vacations when it might impact team performance badly. If you leave give up a big heads up. However we'll refuse your raises and bonuses if we feel like it. Also must be willing to move and uproot your whole life with no guarantee we'll keep you for long. We'll fire you one day after telling you your job was safe, and close all your company accounts before you get to save any of your documents or say bye to your colleagues. And remember no complaining after you leave, or we'll get you. Happened to quite a few people I know, not me thankfully. And just "get an other job if you company sucks" doesn't always work. You might not know that your company sucks until you're out the door, or finding a new job in your field or without moving your whole family might not be easy
- 4death4 2y agoWhat does the AI do?
- BillyTheMage 2y agoAnswers questions wrong and then agrees with you that their answer was incorrect
- sph 2y agoJesus I had ChatGPT do that once and it was infuriating.
- fransje26 2y agoOnce?
- Intralexical 2y agoWith the right system prompt, you can also have it answer questions wrong and then insist to you that the correct information must be mistaken or malicious.
- sph 2y agoIt is trained not to blame you. It is too "smart" to blame itself. The next step is blaming whoever has trained it. "Sorry about that, they have fed me the wrong data. Unbelievable. Anyway, you can send any complaint to the OpenAI technical team at the following email: ..."
- badgersnake 2y agoEvery time. I haven't tried GPT 4 though, I'm not paying for this nonsense.
- sumek83 2y agoI've paid for a month! Now letting subscription lapse. ChatGPT-4 is still garbage
- iancmceachern 2y agoWayfair already has had a terrible user experience. I've been waiting for something I ordered 3 years ago to arrive.
- thrillgore 2y agoWasn't Wayfair also caught selling stuff to ICE?
- toast0 2y agoWayfair is like a retail outlet for garbage products right? Why wouldn't they sell to anyone with money?
- junon 2y agoEh idk, I've had some Wayfair stuff in the past and it's all been solid. I'm sure a lot of it is subpar though.
- surfingdino 2y agoIt's a marketplace that also handles the global shipping, warehousing, and delivery of goods on behalf of the sellers. It's a low-margin business that puts a lipstick on the pig that is a bunch of incumbents in the manufacturing and global shipping industries. I do not approve of how they got rid of employees, but I do not envy them. Their partners love mainframes, MS-DOS apps, and faxes. It's hard to work with them.
- nunez 2y agoI don't know if they do this for all of their products, but one bed frame that I purchased from them turned out to be a bed frame you could buy on Amazon for half the cost, just under a more upscale name. (That bed frame lasted two years. I replaced it with a Thuma. Incredible product.)
- VS1999 2y agoIt this really an issue? It's selling chairs to a legitimate government agency. People's politics have become so skewed. That's just completely normal behavior.
- blackhawkC17 2y agoWhat’s wrong with selling furniture to the ICE?
- 2y ago
- fithisux 2y agoThe governments do not protect us.
- moomoo11 2y agoStep 1: have a moral compass and don’t work for shit tier companies. Is it really that hard? I find it hilarious when people work for these garbage companies in the first place. And then I’m supposed to do what when they turn on you? Cool story? It’s really on them imo. There are other jobs out there. Better yet you can do your own thing. But nah fam.
- nunodonato 2y agoAlthough I don't disagree with what you said, I disagree with how you said it. Some people are in a though spot and need a job fast. And not everyone else is able to create a startup and be an entrepreneur. It's never that simple.
- BriggyDwiggs42 2y agoStep 1: have parents rich enough to support you for a while so you don’t have to take a job with the shit company that exploits you Is it really that hard?
- moomoo11 2y agoI am from a third world and grew up without a bathroom and electricity. It’s not that hard to work 5-10 years as a swe and living below your means to accumulate a few 100k by the time one is 27-30. Its not that hard to interview at multiple places and pick one that isn’t awful. Excuses are easy though.
- BriggyDwiggs42 2y agoI’m sorry for implying that was your background, but I don’t think that blaming the worker for taking shitty jobs is remotely fair. The jobs aren’t shitty because of the workers; they’re shitty because the owner/upper hierarchy of the company, the people who make every single decision about the company’s structure and large-scale actions, want it to be shitty. Blaming people who need to work somewhere to feed their family or escape poverty for taking a job with a crap company that pays good money just seems completely backwards. Glad you could avoid that, but in the absence of good alternatives (similarly paying, non-shit companies) I don’t think we should blame the person who takes the bigger check when people have good reasons to need money.
- drKarl 2y agoIt seems that senior management in these companies you are talking about are following Royce du Pont's advice.
- alumic 2y agoI had to double check the reference just to make sure you were in fact talking about business luminary Royce du Pont. His negotiation tactics are second to none.
- woopwoop24 2y agodo it like the french and blow shit up
- surfingdino 2y agoI'd be curious to know in what part of their business they were replacing humans with AI?
- matthewtse 2y agoYes same, my first conclusion would be customer support? But I would also assume customer support wouldn't be working long hours to train an AI, the AI would simply be trained off what they're already doing.
- lnxg33k1 2y agoTo me was always weird how a company whose only means of doing business is a website, always had friction towards testability, to the point where I was continuously told by managers “we’re not a tech company”, while also having to revert multiple commits per day because of broken / untested code
- kioleanu 2y agoOh yes, Wayfair. In this case I’m pretty sure AI will be an improvement. Their customer support was abysmal. I needed to send a package back, they sent a company to get it and then refused to refund me because they somehow lost a piece of furniture and it never arrived. I sent them the documents showing that the package was collected and then came a reply if I could check the apartment better, maybe I’ll end up finding the missing piece of furniture
- nojvek 2y agoAI is not your friend, it is the corporation's friend. AGI by meaning means "do what humans do, even better". AGI === cheaper human that takes no breaks, doesn't get sick, needs no benefits. If AGI gets here faster than natural decline in human population, we are fucked! Likely scenario is that it will. The divide between poor and rich is ever growing, middle-class being eroded. If you are an employee, you are never secure. Not worth sacrificing your health and relationships for a job, unless they are paying you $$$$ worth early retirement.
- malaparte 2y agoWayfair has demonstrated beyond a shadow of doubt at this point that as a company they place little value on their employees. They're certainly not the only ones, but this is a timely reminder to be watchful of the signals companies send and be clear about your priorities.
- lulznews 2y agoWow just straight up playing a video saying you’re fired is crazy.