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I find it all quite strange: - AI companies of course will try and sell you that you can reduce headcount with AI - CEO's will parrot this talking point witho

I find it all quite strange: - AI companies of course will try and sell you that you can reduce headcount with AI - CEO's will parrot this talking point without ever talking a closer look. - Everyone lower down on the org chart minus the engineers are wondering why the change hasn't started yet. - Meanwhile engineers are ripping their hair out cause they know that AI in it's current state will likely not replace any workers. Pretty soon we will have articles like "That time that CEO's thought that AI could replace workers".

newsclues 1y ago
AI is most capable of replacing the humans who have the power to decide or influence the choice to replace humans with AI. But managers will not obsolete themselves. So right now AI should be used to monitor and analyze the workforce and find the efficiency that can be achieved with AI.
btbuildem 1y ago
I am still of the conviction that "reducing employee head count" with AI should start at the top of the org chart. The current iterations of AI already talk like the C-suites, and deliver approximately same value. It would provide additional benefits, in that AIs refuse to do unethical things and generally reason acceptably well. The cost cutting would be immense! I am not kidding. In any large corps, the decision makers refuse to take any risks, show no creativity, move as a flock with other orgs, and stay middle-of-the-road, boring, beige khaki. The current AIs are perfect for this.
- A4ET8a8uTh0_v2 1y ago
  One could argue that they deliver a better value than meat leaders.
- johndhi 1y ago
  Not a crazy idea. Sergey at Google said it's best at replacing managers fwiw
  - apwell23 1y ago
    why isn't he doing it then?
- jordanb 1y ago
  "Wow this AI both writes and reads email? That's about 90 percent of my job and -- I presume -- 90 percent of what happens around here!"
  - imglorp 1y ago
    AND it can sit meetings all day and not forget any decisions; that's the other 90 percent of a manager's day.
    - rwmj 1y ago
      And just like senior managers, every time you ask it a question, it starts a new context.
      - walkabout 1y ago
        Can it turn simple yes-or-no questions, or "hey who's the person I need to ask about X?" into scheduled phone calls that inexplicably invite two or three other people as an excuse to fill up its calendar so it looks very busy?
- skeeter2020 1y ago
  It's not the top IME, but the big fat middle of the org chart (company age seems to mirror physical age maybe?) where middle to senior managers can hide out, deliver little demonstratable value and ride with the tides. Some of these people are far better at surfing the waves than they are at performing the tasks of their job title, and they will outlast you, both your political skills and your tolerance for BS.
- mbesto 1y ago
  > In any large corps, the decision makers refuse to take any risks, show no creativity, move as a flock with other orgs, and stay middle-of-the-road, boring, beige khaki. It's hard to take this sentiment seriously from a source that doesn't have direct experience with the c-suite. The average person only gets to see the "public relations" view of the c-suite (mostly the CEO) so I can certainly see why a "LLM based mouthpiece" might be better. The c-suite is involved in thousands of decisions that 90% of the rest of the world is not privy to. FWIW - As a consumer, I'm highly critical of the robotic-like external personas the c-suite take on so I can appreciate the sentiment, but it's simply not rooted in any real experience.
- visarga 1y ago
  > I am still of the conviction that "reducing employee head count" with AI should start at the top of the org chart. The current iterations of AI already talk like the C-suites That is exactly what it can't do. We need someone to hold liable in key decisions.
  - danaris 1y ago
    Right, because one really widely-known fact about CEOs is that whenever anything goes wrong at a company, they take the full blame, and if it's criminal, they go to jail! ....hey, wait a sec....
itake 1y ago
The incentive structure for managers (and literally everyone up the chain) is to maximize headcount. More people you managed, the more power you have within the organization. No one wants to say on their resume, "I manage 5 people, but trust me, with AI, its like managing 20 people!" Managers also don't pay people's salaries. The Tech Tools budget is a different budget than People salaries. Also keep in mind, for any problem space, there is an unlimited number of things to do. 20 people working 20% more efficiently wont reach infinity any faster than 10 people.
- skeeter2020 1y ago
  Maybe 40 years ago or in some cultures, but I've always focused on $ / person. If we have a smaller team that can generate $2M in ARR per developer that's far superior to $200K. The problem is once you have 20 people doing the job nobody thinks it's possible to do it with 10. You're right that "there is an unlimited number of things to do" and there's really obvious things that must be done and must not be done, but the majority IME are should or could be done, and in every org I've experienced it's a challenge to constrain the # of parallel initiatives, which is the necessary first step to reducing active headcount.
  - paulsutter 1y ago
    Exactly, it’s much easier with a new organization. In my previous company, we would speculate about where to use AI and we were never sure. In the new company we use AI for everything and produce more with substantially fewer people
    - ipython 1y ago
      Do you have any examples of the types of tasks you’ve found the most success with using ai ?
      - itake 1y ago
        we use AI (LLMs) to improve the recall and precision of our classification models for content moderation. Our human moderators can only process so many items per day, at a high cost. AI (LLMS) act as a pre-filter, auto-approving or auto-rejecting before they get to the humans for review.
parliament32 1y ago
> ripping their hair out I mean, nah, we've seen enough to these cycles to know exactly how this will end.. with a sigh and a whimper and the Next Big Thing taking the spotlight. After all, where are all the articles about how "that time that CEOs thought blockchain could replace databases" etc?
rsynnott 1y ago
> Pretty soon we will have articles like "That time that CEO's thought that AI could replace workers". Yup, it's just the latest management fad. Remember Six Sigma? Or Agile (in its full-blown cultish form; some aspects can be mildly useful)? Or matrix management? Business leaders, as a class, seem almost uniquely susceptible to fads. There is always _some_ magic which is going to radically increase productivity, if everyone just believes hard enough.
xp84 1y ago
> AI in its current state will likely not replace any workers. This is a puzzling assertion to me. Hasn’t even the cheapest Copilot subscription arguably replaced most of the headcount that we used to have of junior new-grad developers? And the Zendesks of the world have been selling AI products for years now that reduce L1 support headcount, and quite effectively too since the main job of L1 support is/was shooting people links to FAQs or KB articles or asking them to try restarting their computer.
duxup 1y ago
I was working with a team on a pretty simple AI solution we were adding to our larger product. Every time we talk to someone we're telling them "still need a human to validate this..."

newsclues 1y ago

AI is most capable of replacing the humans who have the power to decide or influence the choice to replace humans with AI. But managers will not obsolete themselves. So right now AI should be used to monitor and analyze the workforce and find the efficiency that can be achieved with AI.

btbuildem 1y ago

I am still of the conviction that "reducing employee head count" with AI should start at the top of the org chart. The current iterations of AI already talk like the C-suites, and deliver approximately same value. It would provide additional benefits, in that AIs refuse to do unethical things and generally reason acceptably well. The cost cutting would be immense! I am not kidding. In any large corps, the decision makers refuse to take any risks, show no creativity, move as a flock with other orgs, and stay middle-of-the-road, boring, beige khaki. The current AIs are perfect for this.

A4ET8a8uTh0_v2 1y ago
One could argue that they deliver a better value than meat leaders.
johndhi 1y ago
Not a crazy idea. Sergey at Google said it's best at replacing managers fwiw
- apwell23 1y ago
  why isn't he doing it then?
jordanb 1y ago
"Wow this AI both writes and reads email? That's about 90 percent of my job and -- I presume -- 90 percent of what happens around here!"
- imglorp 1y ago
  AND it can sit meetings all day and not forget any decisions; that's the other 90 percent of a manager's day.
  - rwmj 1y ago
    And just like senior managers, every time you ask it a question, it starts a new context.
    - walkabout 1y ago
      Can it turn simple yes-or-no questions, or "hey who's the person I need to ask about X?" into scheduled phone calls that inexplicably invite two or three other people as an excuse to fill up its calendar so it looks very busy?
skeeter2020 1y ago
It's not the top IME, but the big fat middle of the org chart (company age seems to mirror physical age maybe?) where middle to senior managers can hide out, deliver little demonstratable value and ride with the tides. Some of these people are far better at surfing the waves than they are at performing the tasks of their job title, and they will outlast you, both your political skills and your tolerance for BS.
mbesto 1y ago
> In any large corps, the decision makers refuse to take any risks, show no creativity, move as a flock with other orgs, and stay middle-of-the-road, boring, beige khaki. It's hard to take this sentiment seriously from a source that doesn't have direct experience with the c-suite. The average person only gets to see the "public relations" view of the c-suite (mostly the CEO) so I can certainly see why a "LLM based mouthpiece" might be better. The c-suite is involved in thousands of decisions that 90% of the rest of the world is not privy to. FWIW - As a consumer, I'm highly critical of the robotic-like external personas the c-suite take on so I can appreciate the sentiment, but it's simply not rooted in any real experience.
visarga 1y ago
> I am still of the conviction that "reducing employee head count" with AI should start at the top of the org chart. The current iterations of AI already talk like the C-suites That is exactly what it can't do. We need someone to hold liable in key decisions.
- danaris 1y ago
  Right, because one really widely-known fact about CEOs is that whenever anything goes wrong at a company, they take the full blame, and if it's criminal, they go to jail! ....hey, wait a sec....

itake 1y ago

The incentive structure for managers (and literally everyone up the chain) is to maximize headcount. More people you managed, the more power you have within the organization. No one wants to say on their resume, "I manage 5 people, but trust me, with AI, its like managing 20 people!" Managers also don't pay people's salaries. The Tech Tools budget is a different budget than People salaries. Also keep in mind, for any problem space, there is an unlimited number of things to do. 20 people working 20% more efficiently wont reach infinity any faster than 10 people.

skeeter2020 1y ago
Maybe 40 years ago or in some cultures, but I've always focused on $ / person. If we have a smaller team that can generate $2M in ARR per developer that's far superior to $200K. The problem is once you have 20 people doing the job nobody thinks it's possible to do it with 10. You're right that "there is an unlimited number of things to do" and there's really obvious things that must be done and must not be done, but the majority IME are should or could be done, and in every org I've experienced it's a challenge to constrain the # of parallel initiatives, which is the necessary first step to reducing active headcount.
- paulsutter 1y ago
  Exactly, it’s much easier with a new organization. In my previous company, we would speculate about where to use AI and we were never sure. In the new company we use AI for everything and produce more with substantially fewer people
  - ipython 1y ago
    Do you have any examples of the types of tasks you’ve found the most success with using ai ?
    - itake 1y ago
      we use AI (LLMs) to improve the recall and precision of our classification models for content moderation. Our human moderators can only process so many items per day, at a high cost. AI (LLMS) act as a pre-filter, auto-approving or auto-rejecting before they get to the humans for review.

parliament32 1y ago

> ripping their hair out I mean, nah, we've seen enough to these cycles to know exactly how this will end.. with a sigh and a whimper and the Next Big Thing taking the spotlight. After all, where are all the articles about how "that time that CEOs thought blockchain could replace databases" etc?

rsynnott 1y ago

> Pretty soon we will have articles like "That time that CEO's thought that AI could replace workers". Yup, it's just the latest management fad. Remember Six Sigma? Or Agile (in its full-blown cultish form; some aspects can be mildly useful)? Or matrix management? Business leaders, as a class, seem almost uniquely susceptible to fads. There is always _some_ magic which is going to radically increase productivity, if everyone just believes hard enough.

xp84 1y ago

> AI in its current state will likely not replace any workers. This is a puzzling assertion to me. Hasn’t even the cheapest Copilot subscription arguably replaced most of the headcount that we used to have of junior new-grad developers? And the Zendesks of the world have been selling AI products for years now that reduce L1 support headcount, and quite effectively too since the main job of L1 support is/was shooting people links to FAQs or KB articles or asking them to try restarting their computer.

duxup 1y ago

I was working with a team on a pretty simple AI solution we were adding to our larger product. Every time we talk to someone we're telling them "still need a human to validate this..."