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The Companies Cutting Headcount for AI Will Lose to the Ones Who Didn't

libertas.software

201–210 of 218 posts

Re: The Companies Cutting Headcount for AI Will Lose to the Ones Who Didn't

#201

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I probably take between 20-30 days total annually Great! Bare minimum legal in most developed countries for a factory worker or shelf stocker!

Ok… but that’s a larger conversation about the US and PTO. I’m not saying it’s some amazing situation that is the envy of the world. With federal holidays I get about 30-40 days off a year. In the US that’s pretty good, unfortunately. I’m just telling you it’s not less than 10 days and unlimited PTO system works for my needs. Ease off the gas.

Many people are posting in this thread that factually people take less PTO when it’s unlimited.

It is not a good thing

Re: The Companies Cutting Headcount for AI Will Lose to the Ones Who Didn't

#202

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ok… but that’s a larger conversation about the US and PTO. I’m not saying it’s some amazing situation that is the envy of the world. With federal holidays I get about 30-40 days off a year. In the US that’s pretty good, unfortunately. I’m just telling you it’s not less than 10 days and unlimited PTO system works for my needs. Ease off the gas.

Many people are posting in this thread that factually people take less PTO when it’s unlimited. It is not a good thing

[deleted]

Re: The Companies Cutting Headcount for AI Will Lose to the Ones Who Didn't

#204

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ok… but that’s a larger conversation about the US and PTO. I’m not saying it’s some amazing situation that is the envy of the world. With federal holidays I get about 30-40 days off a year. In the US that’s pretty good, unfortunately. I’m just telling you it’s not less than 10 days and unlimited PTO system works for my needs. Ease off the gas.

Many people are posting in this thread that factually people take less PTO when it’s unlimited. It is not a good thing

[deleted]

Re: The Companies Cutting Headcount for AI Will Lose to the Ones Who Didn't

#205
post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> if the sales pipeline cannot keep everyone busy That has nothing to do with AI. It is happening due to global economic conditions. Im not saying the bench doesn't exist, Im saying its not full of people because you have two consultants doing all 59 jobs with AI. There are definitely places making cuts of staff who are not on the bench.

You have a team of two consultants, for what used to be a team of five, kind of. No need to take the 69 out of a magic hat. The other three join the on bench pool. When economy gets worse, the lucky two are the ones staying.

> kind of

This is arbitrary nonsense.

What “big consultancy” has 5 developers?

What are you even talking about?

Re: The Companies Cutting Headcount for AI Will Lose to the Ones Who Didn't

#206

I agree with the article in its entirety, but its just so easy to play devil's advocate here. There might actually be a large value add to companies who replace poor performing employees with AI. So, who are the low versus high performing employees? The largest problem with software employment is defining software developer performance. There is no industry baseline for defining or measuring this. Its so easy for a p…

The problem for high-performing developers (even the elitest) is that over a long enough time scale, they won't be remotely competitive with high performing AI. At the moment we need human operators to guide and supervise these AIs, but unless the tech's progress grinds to a halt for some unforeseeable reason, it won't be this way for long.

We will always have humans that are better at using some tool than others, this won't change with AI.

Re: The Companies Cutting Headcount for AI Will Lose to the Ones Who Didn't

#207
post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because you don’t have enough work that really needs doing, at least in that particular area. You cut engineers because the bottleneck to increased revenue isn’t software features or bugs, it’s marketing/sales; human beings’ limited attention for which there is now more competition than ever; and customers’ available funds. ETA: this is sometimes (though not always) very different for a mature company than an early s…

That is a very convenient message for marketing and sales people. The fact that their whole job is crafting messages shouldn’t raise any eyebrows.

I took 'engineer' vs 'marketing' and 'sales' as just examples in the grandfather message. The essence was about bottlenecks to revenue.

Re: The Companies Cutting Headcount for AI Will Lose to the Ones Who Didn't

#208

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But the firms in the headlines doing layoffs after layoffs aren't growing crops, selling groceries, or driving busses... They're knowledge work roles in companies selling intangible products and services. It's large corporations doing this much more than SMBs.

They’re also the ones constantly hiring and recruiting because internally nearly everyone benefits to having more people “under them”, and there’s a massive HR/Talent team that doesn’t go into hibernation after a 20% workforce reduction. Organizations want to grow, not because they need to but because it’s in the best interest of nearly all individuals still on the inside.

That's why it's so important that people get some stock compensation, so that when the stock goes up when they finally fire people the incentives are aligned.

Re: The Companies Cutting Headcount for AI Will Lose to the Ones Who Didn't

#209

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But the firms in the headlines doing layoffs after layoffs aren't growing crops, selling groceries, or driving busses... They're knowledge work roles in companies selling intangible products and services. It's large corporations doing this much more than SMBs.

And I’m sure those companies also have “backlogs" due to limited labor/labor costs. There are always shelves to face, vehicles with deferred maintenance, and so on. Obviously, there are limits: I’m not sure what my local grocery store or bus line would do with 100 new workers, but I have no doubt they could put a few people to work right away.

Well, but they aren't doing so right now, because labour has costs.

If your existing labour suddenly gets more productive, there's still a trade-off between cost and benefit to be made. And it would be a great coincidence if the optimal trade-off were exactly at the same headcount as the old trade-off under the old productivity figures.

It's more likely that the optimal trade-off for the business under the new conditions is at some other headcount.

Re: The Companies Cutting Headcount for AI Will Lose to the Ones Who Didn't

#210
post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The point is if a worker plus AI can do the work of two workers without AI, then why not keep both workers and have them both use AI to have the equivalent of four non-assisted workers?

If one woman can produce a baby on 9 months, why can't you get 9 women pregnant and produce a baby in one month?

That works for throughput just fine. And if you have a bit of an inventory, you can hide the latency.

That's also how CPUs are made and sold: it takes a few months to make a physical CPU, but you can just go into a shop and buy one whenever you feel like it.

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