- https://kanebridgenews.com/more-big-companies-bet-they-can-s...
- My big company just throws more and more work at fewer and fewer people. Our managers are quiet quitting as we're mostly told to just figure it out for ourselves. I've asked for more money due to having more responsibilities, but the answer is "we can't have that conversation now". I suspect I'll get the same answer in a few months. Hey, the stock is up though.
Talking to friends in other places, and reading the article, it isn't really different elsewhere. Given the disarray the US government is in & their refusal to give us benefits we've already paid for, employers know they have all the power at this time.
by onlyrealcuzzo
6 subcomments
- There is a HUGE amount of waste in big companies from:
1. People being blocked on others
2. Lack of focus (Upper management ordering lower ICs to build bridges to nowhere, stop midway, start another bridge to nowhere project)
3. A lot of work being purely performative
4. A large chunk of REAL work having negative returns (management telling people to do stuff you'd be better off not doing financially)
5. ICs having slack.
AI doesn't need to do any of the real work. If it can increase efficiency ANYWHERE in this chain, it could have huge rewards.
Most people are focusing on getting AI to do REAL work.
But most "work" is waste or exceptionally low value, and I think more effort should go to AI reducing (instead of increasing) that.
by whatever1
1 subcomments
- The economies of the west (and some eastern ones) are facing a k style growth where a small fraction of the population gets all of the gains.
It is reasonable for companies to increasingly target that small part of population and sell them the same (small) number of widgets /services in higher prices and see their profits go up.
- I don't think AI has anything to do with this. For a while, investors were using headcount as a metric for growth, even though startups often showed very poor utilization of their new hires. Hiring was done for the sake of hiring. Trying to achieve more with less is simply a reasonable response to a market where money is much more expensive than before. Many tech companies were unreasonably ineffective with their manpower, this is a much bigger problem now.
by janalsncm
1 subcomments
- This kind of “hope growth” and LLM based metrics speaks to rot within the economy. Don’t hire more, just say you’re going to build new products and launch something half baked with a skeleton crew that’s also maintaining the legacy products.
These incumbent companies are able to keep doing this because there’s no one around to eat their lunch. Maybe it’s cheaper to just buy (and kill) any company who legitimately threatens the status quo.
Companies should be hungry for real growth. You should not be able to financially engineer your way into stock growth.
by 1vuio0pswjnm7
0 subcomment
- No SNI:
https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/companies/more-big-companies...
Text-only:
https://assets.msn.com/content/view/v2/Detail/en-in/AA1Pevu9...
- This implies a kind of efficiency gain that is pretty much unheard of outside of acquisitions and layoffs. Inefficient organizations need huge culture and incentive shifts to move the needle on efficiency. Humans (especially the bureaucrats) resist changes in culture, so it's often necessary to shift the culture by shifting the humans. LLMs that don't quite fully replace any role aren't going to do it.
by nickdothutton
0 subcomment
- If large companies were prepared to really change then they could grow faster by _removing_ headcount.
- As long as the government keeps printing money and handing it out to unproductive sectors like the sample companies in the article the scam might work.
If it collapses, maybe AirBnB will still be able to rent out (illegally in many cases) apartments to rich foreigners from productive countries.
- Enough of the wsj posts with their engagement-bait
- Growth through savings is limited.
Greed is sustainable.
When there's enough money on the sidelines, the pendulum swings, and big bets come back in fashion.
Downsizing is not a big bet.
Nobody leads tech to save billions and have money sit on the sidelines. It's a weak, shallow bet that should be reserved for discount retail and commodity markets.
The savings will be spent on engineering, eventually.
by paulsutter
0 subcomment
- The existing org chart is the biggest barrier to AI productivity improvements, because tasks/responsibilities and departmental boundaries are set up for the old way to get things done. This is why adding AI to an existing org chart results in modest (at best) improvement.
Starting over with a new org chart is the fastest path to higher productivity, but it should also work to gradually migrate to a more efficient structure by not hiring. Of course this could take many years and meanwhile you'll be outperformed by a smaller org.
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