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This comment is completely divorced from the facts given in the article. The main point is that certain types of jobs like customer service reps, secretaries a
by hn_throwaway_99 5mo ago
This comment is completely divorced from the facts given in the article.
The main point is that certain types of jobs like customer service reps, secretaries and sales people are being disproportionately affected. If it was just general fears about the economy overall one would expect a more broad-based impact.
- themafia 5mo agoIf you replace customer service with LLMs I will look for a way to stop doing business with you.
- lbrito 5mo agoCompetitors will be using LLM too.
- ACCount37 5mo agoWhy care if "unthinking execution of a generic customer service script" is performed by an interpreter made of silicon or flesh? Neither has any free will to deviate from the script. Both are useless in any case that's not handled by the script. The silicon one has better wait times though.
- 0gs 5mo agobecause the customer doesn't get to pretend that if they got angry enough, a real live person could be made to suffer by being fired. if anything, making the humans follow the canned responses only encourages this thirst for revenge in the customer. now THAT'S efficiency!
- themafia 5mo agoWhy care if I spend my money with you or someone I perceive to provide better service? I mean, it's my money, you need to justify your reasons for deserving it.
- csallen 5mo agoYou will probably be in the minority, and that minority will keep shrinking as AI keeps improving.
- Sharlin 5mo agoPeople already have to bear with deeply customer-hostile "support". I'd love to think that companies can't make it any worse than it already is, but realistically I know they're going to do just that.
- themafia 5mo agoOh no. My decisions are unpopular. This has zero bearing on them.
- csallen 5mo agoYour other comments seem to imply that you believe that your decisions are popular, i.e. a customer base that hates you.
- thayne 5mo agoThe number of businesses you can switch to is quickly diminishing.
- themafia 5mo agoTrue; however, that will not stop me from trying. I mean, if you _want_ a customer base that hates you and will leave the very minute something better comes along, I guess you can choose to do that. I just have no idea why you would.
- smt88 5mo agoThose are the same roles that get axed first in any recession. Anything under “SG&A” is overhead that can be reduced.
- jollyllama 5mo agoIndeed, it's exactly what you'd expect if more people quit buying stuff.
- shwaj 5mo agoSales people sure, but secretaries and support staff?
- Sharlin 5mo agoCustomer support? Clearly the first to be cut if there are fewer customers to support, and in any case considered completely expendable and optional. Internal support roles? Also extremely expendable from your average management's perspective.
- shwaj 5mo agoMaybe I just don’t know how the business works. Many of the support calls that I make are for things or services that I’ve had for a while, not just purchased. So I expected that to be more of a trailing indicator rather than the first area hit.
- jollyllama 5mo agoIn hard times, why wouldn't it be viewed as a cost center as much as anything else?
- LogicFailsMe 5mo ago[flagged]
- shimman 5mo agoYeah but the CEOs said it, so it must be true.
- senordevnyc 5mo agoNothing they said is a defense of anything.
- LogicFailsMe 5mo agoI work with AI every day. It can do some amazing narrowly focused things and the ability to do so is a bit terrifying. But it (still) loses its mind and goes wackadoodledoo when faced with the nonlinearity of a typical employee's day job. Therefore, attributing these layoffs to AI means TLAs are idiots or it's cover for getting rid of people that should have never been hired, or maybe both?
- csallen 5mo agoIt's depressing to see logic and reasoning in discussion replaced with name-calling and tribalism. "You're on the side of the <insert pejorative descriptive here>" should rarely (if ever) be a valid rebuttal.
- mrtscollies 5mo ago[flagged]
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- jjk166 5mo agoAre the jobs going away because of AI being applied or is AI being applied because those jobs are going away? You see lots of life jackets being worn as a ship is sinking; doesn't mean people putting on the life jackets made the ship sink.
- notahacker 5mo agoSalespeople feels more like a leading indicator of concerns about a recession than AI getting good. They're a profit centre, not a cost centre and AI automating prospecting some aspects of leadgen and the necessary but low value add stuff like meeting notes and formatting proposals should make them more productive not redundant, if anyone's buying. And AI is somewhere between very bad and completely incapable of most other aspects of their job (product demos, networking, in-person meetings, negotiating) Especially when it's actually "services sales jobs a little up, manufacturing a little down"...
- thayne 5mo agoI think it's more likely an interaction of both. Tariffs and recession lead to companies looking for ways to save money, and AI is both a convenient excuse for reducing headcount, and at least in some cases may actually reducing headcount without hurting productivity too much.
- AnimalMuppet 5mo agoWait, secretaries still exist? I would have figured in the era of word processors that such jobs would be few to nonexistent.
- cumcumcumcumcum 5mo agoFacts, the last installment (6) of "Secretary's Day" came out in 2013.
- dingaling 5mo agoA good secretary is huge force-multiplier. Seniors in my org still have them and they make things happen, partly through being able to use the senior's name to open doors and force action but mostly though their deep organisational knowledge. All a boss has to say is "I need everyone involved in Project X in a meeting in London next week" and it's done, the boss just gets told when and where to get into a car.