The computer did that auto layoff thing again!
There was a funny exchange at my work where a manager AI generated a big sheet of testing specs and requirements and the engineer just ran it through AI and sent it back. Then there was a crash out where he had to justify why his action was ok but the otherside was bad.
No good point was made it was just I can do this because I’m the boss
Use a specific anecdote from one office to make a sweeping generalization. Is this even journalism?
“Reverse centaur”
(According to Cory Doctorow, a ‘centaur’ is a human augmented by tech, and a ‘reverse centaur’ is a human who is a mere meaty appendage to a tech system)
Shouldn’t that be cyborg instead of centaur?
Its more accurate to ask, which parts are the AI workhorse; the head or the body?
If it’s the body then AI is helping you (the head) to do hard tasks which probably fits your definition of a cyborg. If it’s the head as in the reverse centaur, then you (the body) are doing all the work for an AI model.
I think the argument is that at this point the use of AI has been found to be more useful for tasks that’s managers and bosses perform than more technical tasks that would be assigned to employees underneath them. And if those managers were replaced by AI then you would have a tireless manager overseeing workers doing more difficult work that do tire out but are expected to keep up with demands from the management.
The boss at a place I used to work is all in on AI bullshit. My friend works for the company remotely. He says the boss sends him massively long email, constructed by AI, full of rambling half ideas. He said he used to try to pick through it and reply appropriately and professionally. The boss would feed that into AI and copy/paste the reply back.
Now my friend doesn’t even read the email. He throws it into AI, tells AI to craft a well thought out reply, and just sends that back at the boss. He told me if the boss won’t personally read and reply, he won’t either.
Last time I talked with him he said the email chain has been going over 4 months, it’s still going on, but he has no idea what it’s about anymore.
if a colleague tells me to ask AI or gives me a response from AI again I will fucking kill somebody
I used to be in IT for years. I left around covid period.
I’m SO HAPPY right now. AI drives me insane as it is. I can’t imagine working in an office having people making idiot decisions because it’s what AI recommended.
Rest assured, they would be making more idiotic decisions without AI assistance. AI is just reinforcing what they already think, but occasionally (maybe 12% of the time) it might nudge them in a better direction.
As per the Peter Principle, ‘AI’, when used by businesses, means Amplified Incompetence.
AI and tech execs are like two garbage trucks which are on fire crashing in a high speed head-on collision.
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…)
Sounds like the bosses positions should be cut then. If the default is ai then let the ai. No need for those positions and there I saved you a bunch of money.
Sounds like the bosses positions should be cut then.
And in a worker cooperative that’s exactly what would happen.
I’ve always wondered if that’s how management views their hierarchy. Many middle managers view themselves as a wasted resource
In a worker coop workers generally want, appreciate, and hire managers for themselves. But there are power dynamic diffetences:
- The workers are the boss
- Managers do not get overinflated compensation packages
- A typical max income differential of lowest to highest paid is 1:10
Managers help organize and facilitate production, but it is the workers themselves who have to be pleased.
That’s not to say some worker coop couldn’t choose to do without the manager role. Maybe some exist like that.
One of the only benefits of this technology is that it will expose the incompetence of management. They can’t hide their stupid now.
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.
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.
and then after giving them the instructions to the AI tools, they will just lay off the remaining people. and then they hire less people, rinse and repeat. in the mean time they will probably try to outsource people as well.
with the current layoffs, im hearing alot of people just moving in back with family, and hasnt moved out since then on certain forums, and people still have jobs in some industries think thier friends/families are just not trying hard enough or worst resenting them because they are being lazy and not independent.
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.
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
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 the AI being in control.
I mean, I guess that would make too much sense.
Genuinely though, if the first thing they do with AI is outsource their own decision making, isn’t it just rock solid evidence that these people are useless at their fucking jobs to begin with? They aren’t even making the decisions anymore, the AI is. Let’s cut out the middleman, which is all a boss is now if AI is running the show. I mean, it’s what they did with all the junior developers, because they had forced the juniors into using AI and then asked themselves “why not cut out the middleman.” And they hadn’t even considered that maybe the cost of AI would outpace the cost of an employee. How the fuck are these short term thinking idiots in fucking charge anyway? A lot of bosses are just fucking charlatans.
Yes. The managers are the most replaceable.
They’re too dumb to realize this, though… And they’re in charge…
They’re also probably the only employees who can be replaced by AI at a cost savings because of their hugely inflated compensation.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Well capitalism is darwinistic. They’ll probably disappear.
Darwinism involves a lot of cruelty and suffering via starvation and predation.
“I’m sure enough people don’t compliment you for your courage and insight, but this is truly an amazing question. And being able to ask, “I have no idea what I’m doing , how do I not ruin everything and embarrass myself in front of my frat bros that I hired as VPs?” is so brave and it also shows just how humble you are to be open to learning even though you are at the absolute top of your field!”
I can absolutely see some people needing just this output to be sure that AI Ia all they need to get shit done.
What the self-absorbed hell. Who said this?
Every GenAI, when responding to a CEO’s quiet,desperate query.
And the CEO believing the response whole cloth
This is as dumb as the caricature of the lazy employee who needs to come into the office so the boss can watch them work.
One of the reasons I just found a new job. Clear emails completely produced by AI and not proofread.
