This started over a year and a half ago at my company.
Over half my department was fired, and now they are forcing us to give assessments on AI tools to replace the jobs of the rest of us.
We’re so fucked, guys. This isn’t just where I work, it’s most places from what I’m hearing.
The writing was on the wall when that many layoffs happened. If they’re that willing to take that kind of risk, they’ve been on insecure financial footing for a while. Best move on ASAP.
Last time I job-hopped was when my CEO took a tour of the R&D department, chewing each of us out individually, complaining how we’re too expensive and he can’t afford us… a job offer came through the next day and I was out in 2 weeks. They asked why I was leaving, all too simple: you remember Mr. “I had a bad day in sales, so I took my insecurities out on the R&D guys” tirade? Yeah, that was a big factor.
Clearly the AI needs to be trained to answer that the CEOs should be fired. They cost the most and contribute the least, especially since they have shown they’re replaceable with AI.
I’m so glad I don’t work anymore.
So, basically shitty bosses are shitty?
The sycophantic LLM behavior phenomenon is very real. LLMs will tell you what you want to hear, so yes, if shitty bosses want to hear how great they are, they’ve got a new friend (maybe their only one…)
Company owners that were lucky enough to get a company of the ground are themselves too stupid so they put stupid people in charge to maximise profits before the company inevitably crashes and burns.
Biggest problem with this idiotic company structure is the working people that are swindled out of their hard earned money because of rules made by criminals to protect themselves and other criminals.
Honestly, if there are jobs that could best be replaced by AI, it seems that management could be high on that list. I’m sure many of us have had shitty managers and know how disastrous that can be for productivity. In some cases an algorithm would definitely have done better. It could hardly have done worse.
Big organizations are constantly trying to optimize the middle layers. Do you have a 5:1 reporting ratio so the manager really knows what everybody is doing, or do you have a 25:1 reporting ratio and cut out half the layers in the “telephone” miscommunication up the chain game? Seems like AI tools could bump up the optimal ration a little, if they’re used well, but middle managers aren’t the first group I’d pick to use something like an AI agent “well.”
treating an AI as analogous to an algorithm is a giant endorsement to the AI and a massive insult to the algo’s
Thankfully not my management but my SO boss is out of control. He keep feeding meeting notes to chat gpt to get actions and decisions. Like company level stuff. This has been going on For years and keeps using company time to talk about personal AI projects like making music. He even kept my partner late because he was talking about it! This stuff is Not even remotely related to the Department. My SO is losing patience with this bloke. Its no wonder no one in upper management respects him.
One of the only benefits of this technology is that it will expose the incompetence of management. They can’t hide their stupid now.
Oh, they will continue to hide their stupid as un-successfully as they always have. Some get away with it for a day, some for a quarter, some for many years.
theyd fire all their employees and blame the comapny’s implosion on sun spots before tech execs admit their own failures. But nothing of value will be lost if nearly all tech companies went bankrupt overnight.
Only normal ones
Last company I worked for was about 85% of phasing out HR for AI. It was a nightmare for new hires, checking benefits, changing benefits, and so on… Also it was zero tolerant in firing decisions and the humans they had left never strayed from AI’s recommendations.
They started trying w/ IT but was such a disaster the put it on the back burner.
I’m all for pushing hr out first. I mean how hard is that job anyway? Every question has the same answer: “well you should check the internal hr site.” Thanks for nothing, i did that first because it would have saved me the trouble of dealing with your useless ass. I need to understand how I can buy a new hire in india out of the waiting period from their current employer. If you would put useful things on the site, that might help, but you don’t. And then you don’t know the answer and punt to legal AGAIN. I could save us both a lot of time and talk to them directly. If your only value is being a proxy to legal, bring on the fucking ai.
If your only value is being a proxy to legal, bring on the fucking ai
Bingo
the humans they had left never strayed from AI’s recommendations.
That’s a very real problem in all fields that take instructions from faceless machines. All the way back to Milgram.
Cool fire the bosses then. The AI is doing their work anyway.
deleted by creator
If only there was a whole department at schools that was made for exactly this… I heard they used to have one way back in the olden days. What would it be called? God the art of naming things is so difficult!
(Seriously, this is what happens when you defund the arts programs in education, you end up with teachers who are not trained in art doing their best… and their best is really really bad)
they already infiltrated YEARBOOKS, i heard some teens the other day on the bus that were complaining how creepy the yearbook was with AI in it.
deleted by creator
Isn’t this enough proof that these chucklefucks are a drain on company resources and time and the FIRST thing to replace AI with is the bosses so workers can organize collectively while the AI helps them stay organized without being in control.
I mean, I guess that would make too much sense.
They’re also probably the only employees who can be replaced by AI at a cost savings because of their hugely inflated compensation.
Well capitalism is darwinistic. They’ll probably disappear.
Darwinism involves a lot of cruelty and suffering via starvation and predation.
Yes. Yes it does.
It’s okay, they will need all the devs they can get when they realise how much AI has messed up their codebases lol
Like how Ford just had to hire back all their old greybeard engineers after the AI was not actually up to snuff (shocker).
Not all. Just a select few. To help the AI.
Indeed, but lets see how this story develops. I’ve done my share of messing up repos with genAI, plus have some background in ML… these gives me the intuition that hiring back seniors to “fix the AI” is not going to cut it.
If I were them, I’d just not teach the AI very well.
Yes. The managers are the most replaceable.
They’re too dumb to realize this, though… And they’re in charge…
HR is there to manage benefits mostly. if the US went to medicare for all, and done away with employer sponsored health care, then a ton of HR could go away. Company culture might actually improve for once.
My partner works in HR, and from what I’ve heard about her stories from her job, this is nowhere near true. Anecdotal evidence, though.
There is a lot of paperwork that needs to be done. If everyone could follow simple, written and documented directions that have actual pictures about how to fill the form you have to fill, you could have a lot less HR people.
But majority of employees are not able to. They have to remind them dozens of times and chase people who didn’t do it unless personally threatened. They have to constantly answer questions that are very well documented. They have to parse out information that finances should be able to access, but they need it directly copied from the systems.
It sounds like hell of a job, that would’ve been so much easier if people were able to follow simple instructions. And the kind of people that can’t follow a step-by-step guide that had 5 notifications about needing to be done in a Slack channel won’t do it if some AI is telling them to.
From what I’ve heard, she is just managing disasters that could be a legal problem, always chasing people who don’t care about their annoying beraucracy that could cause a lot of trouble.
I have a lot more respect for HR after seeing it from the other side.
That sounds like a self-created problem. Other than joining and leaving, I have had to fill out very little HR paperwork in my career.
I think you might be pleasantly surprised to find that if we all just collectively agreed not to do a lot of that paperwork, absolutely nothing bad would happen.
I have worked for more than one company that had paperwork requirements that, once traced down, had their causes and effects commingled and were a self-perpetuating problem that was causing itself.
Surely some paperwork and documentation is important and serves a purpose that justifies the nuisance, but a good deal of it does not, and it could simply disappear if we could dispense with our collective obsession to document irrelevant information simply because it exists.
Fair enough. I suppose I’m showing my bias. The only time I ever deal with HR is for open enrollment.
True, but I still think there would be plenty for HR to be mediating in terms of employee-to-employee relationships. However, it’s a big ask for HR to stop being a “cover your ass” department that is otherwise dedicated to making sure things like sexual harassment and hostile workplace environments don’t impact the company itself despite existing in the company all the same. Because that too is a large function of HR.
The computer did that auto layoff thing again!
I had a boss once who was going down this path! She wanted to make a side-business selling AI slop videos with financial advice. I don’t know if it ever actually went anywhere. I found out she pled guilty to fraud a couple years before I started and made a hasty exit.
