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The World Economic Forum released its bi-annual survey on what employers worldwide expect their businesses to look like in the future and much of the attention

The World Economic Forum released its bi-annual survey on what employers worldwide expect their businesses to look like in the future and much of the attention is on generative AI. And while a majority (77%) expect to help train their existing staff to work with AI, 41% say they expect to reduce the number of staff they employ as AI automates more tasks on the job. The survey includes 1,000 employers worldwide, which covers more than 14 million workers in 22 different industry clusters, according to the new report. One of the big problems that emerges from the survey is that employers believe many of their workers don’t have the skills needed to do their jobs as technology evolves. While I share your skepticism about the viability or specificity of predictions, large think tanks do this sort of research all the time and provide at least some indication of where corporate weathervanes are pointing and trends in business management, be they fundamental or faddish. This information was all laid out in the first 2 paragraphs. You could have critiqued their track record or methods rather than asserting such questions are meaningless. Why do you think it's so outlandish to survey ~1000 corporations, especially if that's your raison d'etre and you do it twice a year, every year? 41% of the business today won't exist by 2028. You think 40% of businesses are going to disappear in the next 3 years? That seems unlikely. I assume you're being sarcastic.

makeitdouble 2y ago
> You think 40% of businesses are going to disappear in the next 3 years? That seems unlikely. I assume you're being sarcastic. The average life span of a business is short. Even for S&P500 companies it's only 15 years[0], if we take in all the startup and small/individual businesses, parent's 3 year bet is aggressive, but not completely unreasonable. [0] https://www.ey.com/en_gl/insights/consulting/how-businesses-can-stand-the-test-of-time https://www.ey.com/en_gl/insights/consulting/how-businesses-...
- hn_throwaway_99 2y ago
  I went to the referenced article about the 15 years (https://eprints.kingston.ac.uk/id/eprint/42134/ https://eprints.kingston.ac.uk/id/eprint/42134/), but I'm very skeptical as to what that actually means without more info (I just read the abstract, don't have access to the full article). I'm sure a huge part of that is there is much more M&A than there was 80 years ago. I also don't even understand how the quote in the abstract can make sense, because it states "The average lifespan of a US S&P 500 company has fallen by 80% in the last 80 years", but that article was written in 2018 and the S&P 500 was only created in 1957. There were no "S&P 500 companies" 80 years ago. I'm also guessing the WEF's survey list skews heavily, if not entirely, to large, established employers.
  - makeitdouble 2y ago
    I think you are right about the M&A influence, just looking at one random company sitting at 434th of the S&P500, it has been around for only 16 years and the abstract mentions 5 other companies that had major influence on its trajectory. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skyworks_Solutions https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skyworks_Solutions I think this is still on point with what the parent was alluding to: if your company lives and dies by M&As, do you have a clear vision of what the future will be in even a few years ? When two company merges, one of the vision mechanically dies after all.
- subarctic 2y ago
  Hmm I guess it's a good point that a lot of those 1000 companies are not startups and will be around in 3 years
  - makeitdouble 2y ago
    My impression is that bigger companies still come and go at a pace we're not used to. It might be an extreme, but streaming services for instance are their own companies within a group, and outside of the biggest two or three ones they get merged/split way more than we'd expect. I experienced the same in the restaurant field, where middle sized companies would get merged, become a business unit, then get spinned out again as independant entities, to get absorbed some other faceless blob. When enough money is involved these kind of operation are relatively fluid.
benterix 2y ago
> You think 40% of businesses are going to disappear in the next 3 years? That seems unlikely. I assume you're being sarcastic. Not necessarily. When you look at the lifecycle of a company, the numbers are quite harsh[0]: > 23.2% of private sector businesses in the U.S. fail within the first year. After five years, 48.0% have faltered. After 10 years, 65.3% of businesses have closed. So the parent's figure is exaggerated but not by a large margin. [0] https://www.lendingtree.com/business/small/failure-rate/ https://www.lendingtree.com/business/small/failure-rate/
slowmovintarget 2y ago
Ah. The "You will own nothing and be happy" folks.

makeitdouble 2y ago

> You think 40% of businesses are going to disappear in the next 3 years? That seems unlikely. I assume you're being sarcastic. The average life span of a business is short. Even for S&P500 companies it's only 15 years[0], if we take in all the startup and small/individual businesses, parent's 3 year bet is aggressive, but not completely unreasonable. [0] https://www.ey.com/en_gl/insights/consulting/how-businesses-can-stand-the-test-of-time https://www.ey.com/en_gl/insights/consulting/how-businesses-...

hn_throwaway_99 2y ago
I went to the referenced article about the 15 years (https://eprints.kingston.ac.uk/id/eprint/42134/ https://eprints.kingston.ac.uk/id/eprint/42134/), but I'm very skeptical as to what that actually means without more info (I just read the abstract, don't have access to the full article). I'm sure a huge part of that is there is much more M&A than there was 80 years ago. I also don't even understand how the quote in the abstract can make sense, because it states "The average lifespan of a US S&P 500 company has fallen by 80% in the last 80 years", but that article was written in 2018 and the S&P 500 was only created in 1957. There were no "S&P 500 companies" 80 years ago. I'm also guessing the WEF's survey list skews heavily, if not entirely, to large, established employers.
- makeitdouble 2y ago
  I think you are right about the M&A influence, just looking at one random company sitting at 434th of the S&P500, it has been around for only 16 years and the abstract mentions 5 other companies that had major influence on its trajectory. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skyworks_Solutions https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skyworks_Solutions I think this is still on point with what the parent was alluding to: if your company lives and dies by M&As, do you have a clear vision of what the future will be in even a few years ? When two company merges, one of the vision mechanically dies after all.
subarctic 2y ago
Hmm I guess it's a good point that a lot of those 1000 companies are not startups and will be around in 3 years
- makeitdouble 2y ago
  My impression is that bigger companies still come and go at a pace we're not used to. It might be an extreme, but streaming services for instance are their own companies within a group, and outside of the biggest two or three ones they get merged/split way more than we'd expect. I experienced the same in the restaurant field, where middle sized companies would get merged, become a business unit, then get spinned out again as independant entities, to get absorbed some other faceless blob. When enough money is involved these kind of operation are relatively fluid.

benterix 2y ago

> You think 40% of businesses are going to disappear in the next 3 years? That seems unlikely. I assume you're being sarcastic. Not necessarily. When you look at the lifecycle of a company, the numbers are quite harsh[0]: > 23.2% of private sector businesses in the U.S. fail within the first year. After five years, 48.0% have faltered. After 10 years, 65.3% of businesses have closed. So the parent's figure is exaggerated but not by a large margin. [0] https://www.lendingtree.com/business/small/failure-rate/ https://www.lendingtree.com/business/small/failure-rate/

slowmovintarget 2y ago

Ah. The "You will own nothing and be happy" folks.