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Its depressing when people are hearing managers are openly asking all employees to pitch in ideals for AI in order to reduce employee headcount. For those hear

Its depressing when people are hearing managers are openly asking all employees to pitch in ideals for AI in order to reduce employee headcount. For those hearing this at work, better prepare an exit plan.

andsoitis 8mo ago
> Its depressing when people are hearing managers are openly asking all employees to pitch in ideals for AI in order to reduce employee headcount. If the manager doesn’t have ideas, it is they who deserve the boot.
- wiseowise 8mo ago
  Manager is to manage optimal delivery, not coming up with ideas.
Wobbles42 8mo ago
"Ideas for AI to help reduce headcount" sounds like the title everyone should start using on resignation letters. If anyone still resigns that is. They seem to have automated that too.
hackit2 8mo ago
I've all-ways asked the managers can you kindly disclose all confidential business information. In which they obviously respond with condescending remarks. Then I respond with, then how am I going to give you a answer without all the knowledge of how the business runs and operates? You can go away and figure out what is going to make work for the business then you can delegate what you want me to do, it is the reason why you pay me money.
EliRivers 8mo ago
Apropos, I once had a boss who said he was running a headcount reduction pilot and anyone who had the time and availability to help him should email him saying how much time they had to spare. I cannot deny this had a satisfying elegance.
- MrDresden 8mo ago
  Except it is a horrible metric to determine who is the least effective in an org and should be cut.
zihotki 8mo ago
Suggest replacing managers with AI
mmarian 8mo ago
Never seen it actually work though...incentives matter.
entropyneur 8mo ago
Why is it depressing? Personally, unless the alternative is literally starving, I wouldn't want to do a job that a robot could do instead just so that I could be kept busy. That sounds like an insult to human dignity tbh.
- paintbox 8mo ago
  Dignity has no calories, though.
  - joe_mamba 8mo ago
    Yeah but it's the job of the elected governments to build and maintain housing, education, social and welfare systems for their population that keep up with the challenges of the times, not the responsibility of the private sector to hold back progress and inefficiency just so more people can stay in employment even if they're not needed anymore. The governments however have been and continue to be ill prepared to the rising increases of globalisation labor offshoring and automation. There was a news article yesterday in my EU country about a 50 year old laid off CEO of a small company that continues to be unemployed after a year because nobody will hire him anymore so he lives off welfare and oddjobs and the government unemployment office has no solution. What happens in the future when AI and offshoring culls more white collar jobs and there will be thousands or tens of thousands of unemployable 50 year old managers with outdated skills that nobody will want to hire or re-train due to various reasons, but they still need to keep working somehow till their 70s to qualify for retirement? Sure you then go to re-train yourself to become a licensed plumber or electrician, but who will want to hire you to gain experience when they can hire the 20-something fresher rather than the 50 year old with bad knees? Governments are not prepared for this.
    - Gormo 8mo ago
      > but it's the job of the elected governments to build and maintain housing, education, social and welfare systems for their population that keep up with the challenges of the times I'd say those things are the job of the population itself, via a wide range of pluralistic institutions. The job of governments, which are just specific organizations within a much larger society, is primarily to maintain public order.
epolanski 8mo ago
I know at least two different companies in Italy that are very hard on shoving NotebookLM and Gemini down their employees (not IT companies, talking banking/insurance/legal). Which for the positions/roles involved does make some sense (drafting documents/research). But it seems like most people are annoyed, because the people shoving those aren't even fully able to show how to leverage the tools, the attitude seems like "you need to do what you do right now under lots of pressure, but also find the time to understand how to use these tools in your own role".
AlexeyBelov 8mo ago
At my job a certain department was very enthusiastic about AI, and were going out of their way to show the top managers that they can leverage it in the best possible way. Maybe they thought they must appear to be at bleeding edge tech-wise, I'm not sure. 75% of people from that dept were let go because of how successful their AI trial was.

andsoitis 8mo ago

> Its depressing when people are hearing managers are openly asking all employees to pitch in ideals for AI in order to reduce employee headcount. If the manager doesn’t have ideas, it is they who deserve the boot.

wiseowise 8mo ago
Manager is to manage optimal delivery, not coming up with ideas.

Wobbles42 8mo ago

"Ideas for AI to help reduce headcount" sounds like the title everyone should start using on resignation letters. If anyone still resigns that is. They seem to have automated that too.

hackit2 8mo ago

I've all-ways asked the managers can you kindly disclose all confidential business information. In which they obviously respond with condescending remarks. Then I respond with, then how am I going to give you a answer without all the knowledge of how the business runs and operates? You can go away and figure out what is going to make work for the business then you can delegate what you want me to do, it is the reason why you pay me money.

EliRivers 8mo ago

Apropos, I once had a boss who said he was running a headcount reduction pilot and anyone who had the time and availability to help him should email him saying how much time they had to spare. I cannot deny this had a satisfying elegance.

MrDresden 8mo ago
Except it is a horrible metric to determine who is the least effective in an org and should be cut.

zihotki 8mo ago

Suggest replacing managers with AI

mmarian 8mo ago

Never seen it actually work though...incentives matter.

entropyneur 8mo ago

Why is it depressing? Personally, unless the alternative is literally starving, I wouldn't want to do a job that a robot could do instead just so that I could be kept busy. That sounds like an insult to human dignity tbh.

paintbox 8mo ago
Dignity has no calories, though.
- joe_mamba 8mo ago
  Yeah but it's the job of the elected governments to build and maintain housing, education, social and welfare systems for their population that keep up with the challenges of the times, not the responsibility of the private sector to hold back progress and inefficiency just so more people can stay in employment even if they're not needed anymore. The governments however have been and continue to be ill prepared to the rising increases of globalisation labor offshoring and automation. There was a news article yesterday in my EU country about a 50 year old laid off CEO of a small company that continues to be unemployed after a year because nobody will hire him anymore so he lives off welfare and oddjobs and the government unemployment office has no solution. What happens in the future when AI and offshoring culls more white collar jobs and there will be thousands or tens of thousands of unemployable 50 year old managers with outdated skills that nobody will want to hire or re-train due to various reasons, but they still need to keep working somehow till their 70s to qualify for retirement? Sure you then go to re-train yourself to become a licensed plumber or electrician, but who will want to hire you to gain experience when they can hire the 20-something fresher rather than the 50 year old with bad knees? Governments are not prepared for this.
  - Gormo 8mo ago
    > but it's the job of the elected governments to build and maintain housing, education, social and welfare systems for their population that keep up with the challenges of the times I'd say those things are the job of the population itself, via a wide range of pluralistic institutions. The job of governments, which are just specific organizations within a much larger society, is primarily to maintain public order.

epolanski 8mo ago

I know at least two different companies in Italy that are very hard on shoving NotebookLM and Gemini down their employees (not IT companies, talking banking/insurance/legal). Which for the positions/roles involved does make some sense (drafting documents/research). But it seems like most people are annoyed, because the people shoving those aren't even fully able to show how to leverage the tools, the attitude seems like "you need to do what you do right now under lots of pressure, but also find the time to understand how to use these tools in your own role".

AlexeyBelov 8mo ago

At my job a certain department was very enthusiastic about AI, and were going out of their way to show the top managers that they can leverage it in the best possible way. Maybe they thought they must appear to be at bleeding edge tech-wise, I'm not sure. 75% of people from that dept were let go because of how successful their AI trial was.