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I’m surprised not many people talk about this, but a big reason corporations are able to do layoffs is just that they’re doing less. At my work we used to have

I’m surprised not many people talk about this, but a big reason corporations are able to do layoffs is just that they’re doing less. At my work we used to have thousands of ideas of small improvements to make things better for our users. Now we have one: AI. It’s not that we’re using AI to make all these small improvements, or even planning on it. We’re just… not doing them. And I don’t think my experience is very unique.

nickff 2y ago
De-scoping is also a commonly-cited result of higher interest rates. We recently lived through a prolonged episode of zero-interest-rate-policy (ZIRP), which encouraged long-term and risky projects. When interest rates go up, the minimum acceptable return-on-investment (ROI) required to lure investment money away from low-risk investments like government bonds also increases correspondingly.
- Bukhmanizer 2y ago
  Yeah I think there are a bunch of different reasons that corporations are doing less, interest rates are a major factor, but the point is that it isn’t exactly the “AI is taking our jobs” narrative that people want it to be.
  - nickff 2y ago
    Agreed! Uncertainty to do with short term economic issues, medium term geopolitical risk (Trump, China, Russia, etc.), and longer-term issues (national debt, Medicare, etc.) also shouldn’t be underestimated.
  - UncleOxidant 2y ago
    It seems like we're in kind of a lull that's being caused by expectations of what AI is about to be able to do. And these expectations could be completely wrong. But it's already causing changes in corporate planning and spending.
  - walterbell 2y ago
    Starting in 2022, US companies could not deduct SWE salary expenses in the same year, only over 5 years like hardware CapEx. For big companies, this will roll over in 2027. Meanwhile, LLM expenses can be written off immediately as OpEx. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37494601 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37494601
    - emgeee 2y ago
      great point, thanks for sharing
    - trollbridge 2y ago
      This is probably the single dumbest aspect of US tax policy. If you hire Canadian software engineers, you can dodge this and deduct the expenses in your Canadian subsidiary. If you outsource software dev to another company you can usually get away with expensing it.
      - __turbobrew__ 2y ago
        That is a good point, my company recently expanded to Canada pretty aggressively and I wonder if this was a factor. Historically there has been a brain drain from Canada to the US, but if Canada can set up favourable policies for companies maybe they can start reversing that.
      - walterbell 2y ago
        Research outside the US = 15 years amortization? https://www.grantthornton.com/insights/alerts/tax/2023/flash/irs-guidance-clarifies-amortization-under-section https://www.grantthornton.com/insights/alerts/tax/2023/flash... The TCJA amended Section 174 by removing the option to expense SRE expenditures, instead requiring taxpayers to capitalize and amortize SRE expenditures over a period of five years (attributable to domestic research) or 15 years (attributable to foreign research)
        trollbridge 2y ago
        You create an “arm’s length” Canadian subsidiary that then licences the software to you. The Canadian government also heavily subsidises this. Smart of them to do so.
- echelon 2y ago
  I'd be willing to bet that the biggest reason is that there hasn't been any antitrust action against the big tech companies. They just sit at the top, siphoning value from every other market in the world. If you need to use the internet in any way, FAANG taxes you. None of these big tech companies really need to grow bigger. The smartphone is essentially done. AWS just prints money. Social/consumer apps are "done". What more is for them to do but collect rent? The US government needs to break them all up. That'll oxygenate the entire tech sector, unlock value for investors, and kickstart the playing field for startups. Google, Apple, Amazon, Meta, and maybe Microsoft. Break them up.
  - zombiwoof 2y ago
    Maybe Microsoft
    - echelon 2y ago
      Apart from their gaming department absorbing every big competitor, I can't think of ways Microsoft is abusing monopoly power like the rest of the mentioned companies.
      - autoexec 2y ago
        How about turning Windows into an advertising and data collection platform. Sucking up vast amounts of people's personal data, even corporate data, to leverage against their customers so that MS can take in more profit.
        globnomulous 2y ago
        I'm much less concerned about this -- as far as I'm aware, the data collection is standard telemetry that any software provider would want, and the stuff related to advertising is, I think, largely concerned with app recommendations in the Microsoft store -- than I am about anti-competitive bundling practices.
        2y ago
- nicbou 2y ago
  At the same time, ZIRP completely distorted the market and gave us multi-billion dollar companies that never had a workable business models, but filled offices all over the world with useless employees. I really enjoyed having a chief happiness officer, but I don't think the company needed it.
  - coffeebeqn 2y ago
    It’s easy to have happy employees when you have infinite money and no pressure to ever build a sustainable product. Personal experience. Things do take a very sudden and powerful turn when the bubble bursts
  - nyarlathotep_ 2y ago
    Yep. This is part of the core of the unspoken reality in this article--there were/are way too many people, even in nominally "technical" roles, for a well-adjusted market. A large portion of this employment is a direct result of the "prosperity" of the ZIRP era, which has now ended.
- jayd16 2y ago
  It also feels like the investor class has lost the ability to make strong/informed bets after the decade of cheap slot pulls.
mrweasel 2y ago
Isn't there also the possibility that the US job market simply isn't doing to great at the moment and businesses are adjusting, or preparing for a downturn. In the case layoffs would be across the board, not just entry level or in the service industry. Perhaps the service industry and blue collar jobs have already been trimmed to the limit and knowledge work has simply been lacking. As pointed out, it easy enough, at least for a limited time, to simply not do stuff and just attempt to coast for a few quarters/years. If it was truly a decline in knowledge work in general, it should be visible in other economies as well, but I don't think that's the case, at least not here in Denmark. Arguably we typically trend a bit behind the US, so it could be looming on the horizon.
carlmr 2y ago
I think we'll have to start asking "AI, and...?", i.e. the question "what's your idea, besides AI". Everybody seems to talk about AI at this point as if it magically solves all issues we have. Even if it does, which I currently still doubt, it won't be a differentiator for your company. We have to ask, beyond AI, what's your idea? If your idea is only "use AI for X" your company doesn't have anything really. At least if AI isn't its core business like OpenAI.
emseetech 2y ago
The AI takeover of the startup space makes me feel a bit crazy because there are still thousands of world-changing app ideas that have zero to do with AI but nobody's funding or building them. We can't possibly have run out of consumer app ideas in a decade or two, right?
- morkalork 2y ago
  It feels like we ran out in the first decade since the iPhone (2007-2017) and have been running on fumes since. Can you name some world changing consumer app or company outside of AI fluff that came to be in that post 2017 to end of 2022 period when chatgpt was released?
  - AbstractH24 2y ago
    Slack, Zoom, TikTok And those are just off the top of my head
    - robenkleene 2y ago
      Those all predate 2017: - Slack: 2013 - Zoom: 2011 - TikTok: 2016 Based on "Initial Release" on Wikipedia.
    - singpolyma3 2y ago
      Neither slack nor zoom did anything new or interesting. Just a clone of stable tech that worked out in marketing
      - baby_souffle 2y ago
        Maybe they didn't have innovative functionality initially but the user experience was certainly better. Microsoft fumbled Skype and nobody was putting together convenient apis on top of IRC...
        entropicdrifter 2y ago
softwaredoug 2y ago
Well in a ZIRP environment every department head imagined the thing they was building was a massive growth opportunity. Even if they were basically refactoring a part of the app the instinct was to build an empire. Now it’s do the minimum a lowest cost.
Spooky23 2y ago
It’s not unique. We’re coming out of a long growth period fueled by two decades of war and the inflation that came with it, first in asset values from ZIRP and then from the COVID capital infusions. Look at where we sit economically, at least in the US. Real estate, a core economic and political engine is a bomb waiting to go off. Commercial real estate is totally underwater. Residential real estate is in another bubble. I won’t go into the madman in DC that’s gonna light the fuse. Everyone knows it at some level, so projects are getting cancelled. Changes add value but create problems. Take away change and the implode demand for labor. Avoiding the need for marginal later lowers the marginal cost, so you start purging expensive people.
baazaa 2y ago
I think people need to get used to the idea that the West is just going backwards in capability. Go watch CGI in a movie theatre and it's worse than 20 years ago, go home to play video games and the new releases are all remasters of 20 year old games because no-one knows how to do anything any more. And these are industries which should be seeing the most progress, things are even worse in hard-tech at Boeing or whatever. Whenever people see old systems still in production (say things that are over 30 years old) the assumption is that management refused to fund the replacement. But if you look at replacement projects so many of them are such dismal failures that's management's reluctance to engage in fixing stuff is understandable. From the outside, decline always looks like a choice, because the exact form the decline takes was chosen. The issue is that all the choices are bad.
- WillieCubed 2y ago
  I don't think the issue is that the West is going backwards in capability; rather, it's that although it has the capability to produce great products (software, media, etc.), it deliberately chooses not to because it's not as cost effective, because the people with expertise are overworked and understaffed, or because management had other priorities (see AAA game development). In other words, the capitalists won.
  - QuadmasterXLII 2y ago
    that was it even 6 or seven years ago, but the warning signs are there that we’ve chosen not to for so long that the abilities have rotted
  - fijiaarone 2y ago
    Who did the capitalists beat? America wasn’t a socialist utopia 20 years — or even 50 years ago.
  - baazaa 2y ago
    AAA games are eye-wateringly expensive though, management aren't imagining it; my point is things becoming more expensive is a symptom of decline. I'm sure the late romans consoled themselves they could build another Pantheon they just cared more about efficiency now. Where I work in government we've stopped paying for important data from vendors (think sensors around traffic etc.) because the quotes are eye-wateringly expensive. But I've worked in data long enough to know the quotes probably reflect genuine costs, because data engineers are so incompetent (and if it's a form of pricing gouging it's not working because gov isn't paying up). So it looks like we're choosing to be in the dark about important data, but it's not entirely a choice. Saying we can do stuff but it's unaffordable is imo just another way of saying we can't do stuff.
didibus 2y ago
Not just less in that sense, but also, they are no longer focused on growth, so the question is, how do we maintain the current offering but lower the cost of operating it. You need less people to maintain, and by losing people you also reduce the cost.
squigglydonut 2y ago
they're dying
andyst 2y ago
I somewhat resonate with this. Working in mature industries where competition has condensed down to larger players with enormous scale and embedded product distribution, don't need to compete _much_ on innovation or product, just on price. I don't think specifically AI has done this compared to a broader view of constant stream of digitilisation of every departments function. Orgs don't need grads to learn the ropes from the bottom and make their way up the career ladder, when the ladders might only be 3-4 rungs high now.
giantg2 2y ago
Yep, my company used to be know for service quality. We've seen an increase in negative feedback. The response from management is that it's only a small percentage, so it's nothing to worry about and that we'll focus on AI instead.
- nradov 2y ago
  It depends on the industry but a lot of the concern over service quality was always "cargo cult" management than anything really rational. Google (Alphabet) has been enormously profitable for decades despite the fact that their customer service is famously terrible or nonexistent (unless you're a whale of an advertising customer). Most of us don't make purchasing decisions based on service quality.
timewizard 2y ago
> is just that they’re doing less. The loaded term for that is simply "cutting corners."
csomar 2y ago
I have a second hand experience with this. A friend trying to open a quickbooks account. He created the account successfully, his card was charged but then couldn't login as his account essentially doesn't exist. Contacting support was useless because they can't find his account either (though one was able to locate the charge and refund it). Tried it again and hop the same issue. Now he is going for a chargeback. There is nobody in quickbooks that can solve this problem as most of the support (from India) seems to be there just to re-read manuscripts. But hey you should buy into the stock as they are going into an AI transition: https://www.tipranks.com/news/intuit-stock-nasdaqintu-layoffs-enable-an-effective-ai-transition https://www.tipranks.com/news/intuit-stock-nasdaqintu-layoff...
- idrathernot 2y ago
  Intuit is a perfect microcosm of everything wrong with the western status quo. Complete disregard for their customers, corporate focus on regulatory capture and other forms of rent seeking, product updates that reduce functionality from prior versions accompanied by price hikes.
KurSix 2y ago
It's like the focus has narrowed to chasing the next big disruption instead of steadily improving what already works
oxfordmale 2y ago
It is part of the regular economic cycle. Most companies try to do more with less, like in any downturn. This cycle is different, as senior management now has AI to justify hiring fewer knowledge workers. Things will turn around eventually when the AI bubble bursts. Companies will then scramble for graduates who have likely moved to work in different industries and complain about a talent shortage.
- YetAnotherNick 2y ago
  > senior management now has AI to justify hiring fewer knowledge workers Justify to whom? Shareholders just care about metrics like earnings and revenue. If they don't need workers to optimize this metrics, they have right to hire fewer workers.
  - oxfordmale 2y ago
    The number of employees you hire is seen as a proxy for growth and future earnings and revenue. With AI the argument is that you can grow with less staff.
Cthulhu_ 2y ago
I suspect there will be a whip effect in a few years when companies realise they neglected their usual operations / innovations / maintenance work and they need to rush to catch up again.
seydor 2y ago
That's normal. You initially need a lot of workers to find the vein of gold, but after you find it you just milk it endlessly
noneeeed 2y ago
I feel like a portion of it is the way that many/most companies have been captured by their finance departments. Everything is accounting. The CFO in many organisations has become the most powerful exec, and many CEOs seem to come up through the CFO role. Outside of places like Meta, who are printing money at a ridiculous rate, finance acts as a break on any long-term or big bets. There can be no risk taking. I feel like this is one of Google's problems now. Once upon a time they were willing to take big swings with their piles of cash, now it's all about revenue maximisation at the low level. I forget which change it was, but they started charging for something, or limiting quotas on something, and the email contained the phrase "in line with industry norms", and I just thought that was very tellings. Back in the early 2000s Google was constantly defying and upturning "industry norms", now they are just like everyone else, squeezing every last drop from the smallest stones. Getting rid of the previously grandfathered in free Google Workspaces was a good example. I find it hard to imagine that the cost of those even registers in their accounts compared with everything else.
- bell-cot 2y ago
  Sounds all too similar to General Electric, pre-Jack Welsh...vs. General-Electric, post-Jack Welch. The first prioritized engineering 'most everything that a modern nation might need. The latter prioritized only engineering its own financial statements. Both did very well...at least at their top priorities.
  - BeFlatXIII 2y ago
    As they said in The Wire, “We used to make things in this town. Now, everyone just sticks their hand in the next guy's pocket.”
    - noneeeed 2y ago
      a) That is a fantastic way to put it. It does feel like the whole world seems focused on just moving money around b) I really must make the time to watch The Wire.
wvh 2y ago
I've always admired people that get out before the shit gets anywhere near the fan instead of staying glued to their seat in quiet despair and apathy, grasping at something that feels like security and stability. If you're really honest, you can feel energy, enthusiasm, interest, ideas floating around, even hope and life force in some projects and companies. All too often that dies at some point, leaving only zombies behind (most of us). There is of course the trend of influencers, quiet quitting, gig economy and people going to work for themselves. That assumes that there is enough capital floating around for everybody to survive on their own... If you can't land a decent job in an established company, maybe you should think twice about being able to float above the waterline when you go at it by yourself.
geye1234 2y ago
Two words: Jack Welch. Every conversation of this sort should involve his name being shouted from the rooftops.
james-arg 2y ago
Very much this.

nickff 2y ago

De-scoping is also a commonly-cited result of higher interest rates. We recently lived through a prolonged episode of zero-interest-rate-policy (ZIRP), which encouraged long-term and risky projects. When interest rates go up, the minimum acceptable return-on-investment (ROI) required to lure investment money away from low-risk investments like government bonds also increases correspondingly.

Bukhmanizer 2y ago
Yeah I think there are a bunch of different reasons that corporations are doing less, interest rates are a major factor, but the point is that it isn’t exactly the “AI is taking our jobs” narrative that people want it to be.
- nickff 2y ago
  Agreed! Uncertainty to do with short term economic issues, medium term geopolitical risk (Trump, China, Russia, etc.), and longer-term issues (national debt, Medicare, etc.) also shouldn’t be underestimated.
- UncleOxidant 2y ago
  It seems like we're in kind of a lull that's being caused by expectations of what AI is about to be able to do. And these expectations could be completely wrong. But it's already causing changes in corporate planning and spending.
- walterbell 2y ago
  Starting in 2022, US companies could not deduct SWE salary expenses in the same year, only over 5 years like hardware CapEx. For big companies, this will roll over in 2027. Meanwhile, LLM expenses can be written off immediately as OpEx. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37494601 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37494601
  - emgeee 2y ago
    great point, thanks for sharing
  - trollbridge 2y ago
    This is probably the single dumbest aspect of US tax policy. If you hire Canadian software engineers, you can dodge this and deduct the expenses in your Canadian subsidiary. If you outsource software dev to another company you can usually get away with expensing it.
    - __turbobrew__ 2y ago
      That is a good point, my company recently expanded to Canada pretty aggressively and I wonder if this was a factor. Historically there has been a brain drain from Canada to the US, but if Canada can set up favourable policies for companies maybe they can start reversing that.
    - walterbell 2y ago
      Research outside the US = 15 years amortization? https://www.grantthornton.com/insights/alerts/tax/2023/flash/irs-guidance-clarifies-amortization-under-section https://www.grantthornton.com/insights/alerts/tax/2023/flash... The TCJA amended Section 174 by removing the option to expense SRE expenditures, instead requiring taxpayers to capitalize and amortize SRE expenditures over a period of five years (attributable to domestic research) or 15 years (attributable to foreign research)
      - trollbridge 2y ago
        You create an “arm’s length” Canadian subsidiary that then licences the software to you. The Canadian government also heavily subsidises this. Smart of them to do so.
echelon 2y ago
I'd be willing to bet that the biggest reason is that there hasn't been any antitrust action against the big tech companies. They just sit at the top, siphoning value from every other market in the world. If you need to use the internet in any way, FAANG taxes you. None of these big tech companies really need to grow bigger. The smartphone is essentially done. AWS just prints money. Social/consumer apps are "done". What more is for them to do but collect rent? The US government needs to break them all up. That'll oxygenate the entire tech sector, unlock value for investors, and kickstart the playing field for startups. Google, Apple, Amazon, Meta, and maybe Microsoft. Break them up.
- zombiwoof 2y ago
  Maybe Microsoft
  - echelon 2y ago
    Apart from their gaming department absorbing every big competitor, I can't think of ways Microsoft is abusing monopoly power like the rest of the mentioned companies.
    - autoexec 2y ago
      How about turning Windows into an advertising and data collection platform. Sucking up vast amounts of people's personal data, even corporate data, to leverage against their customers so that MS can take in more profit.
      - globnomulous 2y ago
        I'm much less concerned about this -- as far as I'm aware, the data collection is standard telemetry that any software provider would want, and the stuff related to advertising is, I think, largely concerned with app recommendations in the Microsoft store -- than I am about anti-competitive bundling practices.
        2y ago
nicbou 2y ago
At the same time, ZIRP completely distorted the market and gave us multi-billion dollar companies that never had a workable business models, but filled offices all over the world with useless employees. I really enjoyed having a chief happiness officer, but I don't think the company needed it.
- coffeebeqn 2y ago
  It’s easy to have happy employees when you have infinite money and no pressure to ever build a sustainable product. Personal experience. Things do take a very sudden and powerful turn when the bubble bursts
- nyarlathotep_ 2y ago
  Yep. This is part of the core of the unspoken reality in this article--there were/are way too many people, even in nominally "technical" roles, for a well-adjusted market. A large portion of this employment is a direct result of the "prosperity" of the ZIRP era, which has now ended.
jayd16 2y ago
It also feels like the investor class has lost the ability to make strong/informed bets after the decade of cheap slot pulls.

mrweasel 2y ago

Isn't there also the possibility that the US job market simply isn't doing to great at the moment and businesses are adjusting, or preparing for a downturn. In the case layoffs would be across the board, not just entry level or in the service industry. Perhaps the service industry and blue collar jobs have already been trimmed to the limit and knowledge work has simply been lacking. As pointed out, it easy enough, at least for a limited time, to simply not do stuff and just attempt to coast for a few quarters/years. If it was truly a decline in knowledge work in general, it should be visible in other economies as well, but I don't think that's the case, at least not here in Denmark. Arguably we typically trend a bit behind the US, so it could be looming on the horizon.

carlmr 2y ago

I think we'll have to start asking "AI, and...?", i.e. the question "what's your idea, besides AI". Everybody seems to talk about AI at this point as if it magically solves all issues we have. Even if it does, which I currently still doubt, it won't be a differentiator for your company. We have to ask, beyond AI, what's your idea? If your idea is only "use AI for X" your company doesn't have anything really. At least if AI isn't its core business like OpenAI.

emseetech 2y ago

The AI takeover of the startup space makes me feel a bit crazy because there are still thousands of world-changing app ideas that have zero to do with AI but nobody's funding or building them. We can't possibly have run out of consumer app ideas in a decade or two, right?

morkalork 2y ago
It feels like we ran out in the first decade since the iPhone (2007-2017) and have been running on fumes since. Can you name some world changing consumer app or company outside of AI fluff that came to be in that post 2017 to end of 2022 period when chatgpt was released?
- AbstractH24 2y ago
  Slack, Zoom, TikTok And those are just off the top of my head
  - robenkleene 2y ago
    Those all predate 2017: - Slack: 2013 - Zoom: 2011 - TikTok: 2016 Based on "Initial Release" on Wikipedia.
  - singpolyma3 2y ago
    Neither slack nor zoom did anything new or interesting. Just a clone of stable tech that worked out in marketing
    - baby_souffle 2y ago
      Maybe they didn't have innovative functionality initially but the user experience was certainly better. Microsoft fumbled Skype and nobody was putting together convenient apis on top of IRC...
      - entropicdrifter 2y ago

softwaredoug 2y ago

Well in a ZIRP environment every department head imagined the thing they was building was a massive growth opportunity. Even if they were basically refactoring a part of the app the instinct was to build an empire. Now it’s do the minimum a lowest cost.

Spooky23 2y ago

It’s not unique. We’re coming out of a long growth period fueled by two decades of war and the inflation that came with it, first in asset values from ZIRP and then from the COVID capital infusions. Look at where we sit economically, at least in the US. Real estate, a core economic and political engine is a bomb waiting to go off. Commercial real estate is totally underwater. Residential real estate is in another bubble. I won’t go into the madman in DC that’s gonna light the fuse. Everyone knows it at some level, so projects are getting cancelled. Changes add value but create problems. Take away change and the implode demand for labor. Avoiding the need for marginal later lowers the marginal cost, so you start purging expensive people.

baazaa 2y ago

I think people need to get used to the idea that the West is just going backwards in capability. Go watch CGI in a movie theatre and it's worse than 20 years ago, go home to play video games and the new releases are all remasters of 20 year old games because no-one knows how to do anything any more. And these are industries which should be seeing the most progress, things are even worse in hard-tech at Boeing or whatever. Whenever people see old systems still in production (say things that are over 30 years old) the assumption is that management refused to fund the replacement. But if you look at replacement projects so many of them are such dismal failures that's management's reluctance to engage in fixing stuff is understandable. From the outside, decline always looks like a choice, because the exact form the decline takes was chosen. The issue is that all the choices are bad.

WillieCubed 2y ago
I don't think the issue is that the West is going backwards in capability; rather, it's that although it has the capability to produce great products (software, media, etc.), it deliberately chooses not to because it's not as cost effective, because the people with expertise are overworked and understaffed, or because management had other priorities (see AAA game development). In other words, the capitalists won.
- QuadmasterXLII 2y ago
  that was it even 6 or seven years ago, but the warning signs are there that we’ve chosen not to for so long that the abilities have rotted
- fijiaarone 2y ago
  Who did the capitalists beat? America wasn’t a socialist utopia 20 years — or even 50 years ago.
- baazaa 2y ago
  AAA games are eye-wateringly expensive though, management aren't imagining it; my point is things becoming more expensive is a symptom of decline. I'm sure the late romans consoled themselves they could build another Pantheon they just cared more about efficiency now. Where I work in government we've stopped paying for important data from vendors (think sensors around traffic etc.) because the quotes are eye-wateringly expensive. But I've worked in data long enough to know the quotes probably reflect genuine costs, because data engineers are so incompetent (and if it's a form of pricing gouging it's not working because gov isn't paying up). So it looks like we're choosing to be in the dark about important data, but it's not entirely a choice. Saying we can do stuff but it's unaffordable is imo just another way of saying we can't do stuff.

didibus 2y ago

Not just less in that sense, but also, they are no longer focused on growth, so the question is, how do we maintain the current offering but lower the cost of operating it. You need less people to maintain, and by losing people you also reduce the cost.

squigglydonut 2y ago

they're dying

andyst 2y ago

I somewhat resonate with this. Working in mature industries where competition has condensed down to larger players with enormous scale and embedded product distribution, don't need to compete _much_ on innovation or product, just on price. I don't think specifically AI has done this compared to a broader view of constant stream of digitilisation of every departments function. Orgs don't need grads to learn the ropes from the bottom and make their way up the career ladder, when the ladders might only be 3-4 rungs high now.

giantg2 2y ago

Yep, my company used to be know for service quality. We've seen an increase in negative feedback. The response from management is that it's only a small percentage, so it's nothing to worry about and that we'll focus on AI instead.

nradov 2y ago
It depends on the industry but a lot of the concern over service quality was always "cargo cult" management than anything really rational. Google (Alphabet) has been enormously profitable for decades despite the fact that their customer service is famously terrible or nonexistent (unless you're a whale of an advertising customer). Most of us don't make purchasing decisions based on service quality.

timewizard 2y ago

> is just that they’re doing less. The loaded term for that is simply "cutting corners."

csomar 2y ago

I have a second hand experience with this. A friend trying to open a quickbooks account. He created the account successfully, his card was charged but then couldn't login as his account essentially doesn't exist. Contacting support was useless because they can't find his account either (though one was able to locate the charge and refund it). Tried it again and hop the same issue. Now he is going for a chargeback. There is nobody in quickbooks that can solve this problem as most of the support (from India) seems to be there just to re-read manuscripts. But hey you should buy into the stock as they are going into an AI transition: https://www.tipranks.com/news/intuit-stock-nasdaqintu-layoffs-enable-an-effective-ai-transition https://www.tipranks.com/news/intuit-stock-nasdaqintu-layoff...

idrathernot 2y ago
Intuit is a perfect microcosm of everything wrong with the western status quo. Complete disregard for their customers, corporate focus on regulatory capture and other forms of rent seeking, product updates that reduce functionality from prior versions accompanied by price hikes.

KurSix 2y ago

It's like the focus has narrowed to chasing the next big disruption instead of steadily improving what already works

oxfordmale 2y ago

It is part of the regular economic cycle. Most companies try to do more with less, like in any downturn. This cycle is different, as senior management now has AI to justify hiring fewer knowledge workers. Things will turn around eventually when the AI bubble bursts. Companies will then scramble for graduates who have likely moved to work in different industries and complain about a talent shortage.

YetAnotherNick 2y ago
> senior management now has AI to justify hiring fewer knowledge workers Justify to whom? Shareholders just care about metrics like earnings and revenue. If they don't need workers to optimize this metrics, they have right to hire fewer workers.
- oxfordmale 2y ago
  The number of employees you hire is seen as a proxy for growth and future earnings and revenue. With AI the argument is that you can grow with less staff.

Cthulhu_ 2y ago

I suspect there will be a whip effect in a few years when companies realise they neglected their usual operations / innovations / maintenance work and they need to rush to catch up again.

seydor 2y ago

That's normal. You initially need a lot of workers to find the vein of gold, but after you find it you just milk it endlessly

noneeeed 2y ago

I feel like a portion of it is the way that many/most companies have been captured by their finance departments. Everything is accounting. The CFO in many organisations has become the most powerful exec, and many CEOs seem to come up through the CFO role. Outside of places like Meta, who are printing money at a ridiculous rate, finance acts as a break on any long-term or big bets. There can be no risk taking. I feel like this is one of Google's problems now. Once upon a time they were willing to take big swings with their piles of cash, now it's all about revenue maximisation at the low level. I forget which change it was, but they started charging for something, or limiting quotas on something, and the email contained the phrase "in line with industry norms", and I just thought that was very tellings. Back in the early 2000s Google was constantly defying and upturning "industry norms", now they are just like everyone else, squeezing every last drop from the smallest stones. Getting rid of the previously grandfathered in free Google Workspaces was a good example. I find it hard to imagine that the cost of those even registers in their accounts compared with everything else.

bell-cot 2y ago
Sounds all too similar to General Electric, pre-Jack Welsh...vs. General-Electric, post-Jack Welch. The first prioritized engineering 'most everything that a modern nation might need. The latter prioritized only engineering its own financial statements. Both did very well...at least at their top priorities.
- BeFlatXIII 2y ago
  As they said in The Wire, “We used to make things in this town. Now, everyone just sticks their hand in the next guy's pocket.”
  - noneeeed 2y ago
    a) That is a fantastic way to put it. It does feel like the whole world seems focused on just moving money around b) I really must make the time to watch The Wire.

wvh 2y ago

I've always admired people that get out before the shit gets anywhere near the fan instead of staying glued to their seat in quiet despair and apathy, grasping at something that feels like security and stability. If you're really honest, you can feel energy, enthusiasm, interest, ideas floating around, even hope and life force in some projects and companies. All too often that dies at some point, leaving only zombies behind (most of us). There is of course the trend of influencers, quiet quitting, gig economy and people going to work for themselves. That assumes that there is enough capital floating around for everybody to survive on their own... If you can't land a decent job in an established company, maybe you should think twice about being able to float above the waterline when you go at it by yourself.

geye1234 2y ago

Two words: Jack Welch. Every conversation of this sort should involve his name being shouted from the rooftops.

james-arg 2y ago

Very much this.