once you are made redundant, are you ready to go back in there? will jobs change or disappear at other companies too because of this AI implementation? "This company's issue isn't profit, it’s growth." The company must grow to remain competitive; if other companies adopt AI and have fewer roles, then this one must do exactly the same and, as it appears, these are years where they are only letting people go. Are you ready for a world where you just can’t make ends meet because no company will ever need a human doing the job? Am I being too catastrophic or simply this issue is not getting addressed enough with governments and the public?
19 replies (most recent on top)
I'm hoping for how much bigger layoff.
@x7 I was exaggerating and of course many of these roles are useful. However, I would personally trim there long before touching engineering. Middle management with few direct reports though would be my #1 culling target.
@tx most PMs I have worked with were vital to a product success.
In the end, if you want to cut 20% of staff, you need to ki-l off features, and even product lines
@vr large companies often end up with management bloat leftover from previous acquisitions. Some fall through the cracks and end up as just professional meeting attenders. I hope they flatten each organization out by dump these clowns and NOT useful employees. It's time for that toilet to finally flush!
The number of Directors, Sr Directors, VPs, Sr VPs is unreal... These are layers we surely need less of.
@j4 I am ready... for a massive toilet flush of useless middle managers, PMs, project managers and other useless extra-meeting-attendees. Bawoosh!
@gh I agree with most parts of what you stated, I think there is still respect towards the affected people that get notified when they are made redundant, let's not forget that most of these things are discretionary of each company out there, PayPal may handle things one way, Amazon/Google/Meta (whatever) could handle these type of things differently with its own employees. However there are many factors at play here, one being that there is still not enough regulation for AI at workplaces in many countries, it's still something new and most people still didn't realize their potential or are just not acting because it's way easier to be lax these days. There are also people that would like to be made redundant (I mean it's totally fine if they are cool with it). But once you get that redundancy money, what if the whole job market has nothing more to offer to you for the skills that you worked so hard to acquire? That money can get you by just until a certain point... That's why I think it's important to at least spread awareness and ask ourselves, where exactly are we going with this? Do we like it? I mean unless you are close to retirement, you should give some sort of sh-t, no? (not "you" you, just generically speaking here).
@OP I remember a time not all that long a go that employees where given empathy and respectful before or during layoffs, before the world knew through the media that a company was letting people go through company would gold meetings with there staff,.speak to them as if they are the most important asset of the company l, tell them future plans and direction and treat them with dignity and respect. All that has changed since this AI stuff - now it's, let's use every tactic possible to get rid of people and nothing is upfront or in the open anymore. What are people going to do when these jobs that they spend a lot of years becoming skilled at go and their degrees become worthless, because it looks like it is coming and fast, what plans or safeguard do governments have in place so people can still feed their families and pay their mortgage? Where is the general respect for people? I don't like where this is all going because you can always already see how humans are being treated in this race to have AI running through world...and it's bleak
I know someone with internal knowledge at Block. They have backtracked on some of the layoffs. It would be interesting to know the actual percentage of layoffs that are going to actually materialize. Not saying it won't be high, just saying it is not as easy as it may seem. Easier said than done.
@ez true it does like 60% of my job these days. It is very good and I am getting to old for this sh-t.
@ef I don't want to be the corporate language guy but please let's be respectful towards each other even if we stay anonymous. As for the other person who asked if companies can really lay off 40% of their workforce: yes they can. AI is not just an excuse to get investors, it is very much so real, otherwise I wouldn't have had the necessity to create this thread. I think we should talk about what's happening with the whole job market and what's about to come, I really feel we won't like it one bit and it will hit everyone really hard, even if 80% remains, what happens in the next years? This stuff is going to improve and improve, it has that potential, hard to believe I know but that's what it is. It can make decision, it can analyze, it can write, it can text, it can analyze emotions and it's really fast and for companies it's way cheaper than paying actual people at the moment and that's why I think we should talk about it and think this through even if we are not CEO's, this is not only PayPal, it's going to be the whole job market soon and yes Block is a good example.
@ee can you ellaborate on your 2nd to last sentence? No wonder it's a sh-t pile.
@ea But are they really going to be able to layoff 40% of people at block and the company still runs as if nothing happened? Or are they going to outsource the workload? PayPal has been doing that a lot over the years. The number of employees PayPal officially reports (24k) vs the actual number of people who work for PayPal either directly or indirectly are very much different. This is all fake.
@e2 I think the company could afford to lose 30 to 40% and be fine. Take a look at block.
They can't even make simple tools work, AI is just a magic word to make the company attractive to investor, the 80% remaining will pick up the slack as usual
"You will own nothing and be happy"
youtube can have AI posting videos and comment (and now is such a boring app to watch), I'm not talking about paypal specifically but the whole AI trend looks to really point in one direction, humans are just being slowly left out... to me at least that's clear as day
Agree. The big question is, how are companies going to make any profits if they layoff their employees? Who will be spending money? Surreal if they think that treating employees badly, they will have customers...
Of course companies and governments are not being honest with ppl. If they were there would be wide scale riots and more warehouses being lit on fire.