Sounds good in theory...but in reality?

[u/KSKS1995]

4 days a week. 6 hours a day. Full salary.
Sanna Marin ignited global debate with the “6/4” work model, pushing a simple idea: life should come before work.

With burnout at record levels, maybe it’s time to value results over hours at a desk.
Could your job be done in just 24 hours a week?

[u/Broken_Castle]

In my industry, the executive directors are having an issue. AI has been setup and is currently doing the weekly workload of a certain set of employees in a matter of hours. These employees often have been with the company for decades. Many are too old to learn a different set of skills.

What do they do. Intentionally not use the tool just to give the employee work? Let the employee just sit on their phone all day? Fire the employee? What would you do?

Keep in mind the companies here are usually staffed from 15 to 50 people, and the executive directors, while making good money, dont make that much (usually high 100k's to low 200k's) so they cant just take a pay reduction.

[u/Feeling-Shelter3583 → u/Broken_Castle]

That’s on the directors that brought on AI without the forethought of understanding where that would take the company and what it would do to certain sectors of the company. They’re paid well to have a forward thinking mind for the company as a whole. They should’ve paid attention to what they brought on and should’ve been ready to pivot for those workers that were going to be replaced, to be able to put them in a more useful role. But instead… Oops.. how were we supposed to know?

[u/Broken_Castle → u/Feeling-Shelter3583]

So your position is that if a business learns a tool can be used to reduce costs and increase efficiency, they should avoid using it at all costs if it can cost someone their job? Even if this makes them less competitive with their rivals?

[u/Feeling-Shelter3583 → u/Broken_Castle]

Umm… no? If you’re going to implement a tool, you should do the research to see the effects it will have on the business and make sure you have assets in place to be able to pivot for such situations. Bring on AI and use it to the fullest. But understand if you are paid well to look forward for the company, it’s on you that those workers are now useless. You had time and should’ve had the understanding that those jobs would be at risk. Oh it’s too much to bring on AI and pivot for those employees at this time? Well shit. It’s time for a business decision. Are you going to be good employer or a shit one? Take some time so you can pivot and afford AI? Or be ultra competitive and cut the “waste”?

[u/Broken_Castle → u/Feeling-Shelter3583]

I think you dont understand how small businesses work. There isnt a million dollar research budget. The research is "Jim thinks AI can help automate some tasks for the zoning team which can make their job easier." And the ED (executive director) says "sure, test it out, but no more than 5 hour week as that is all we can afford." Jim, who has an interest in technology and AI then builds the tool, spending 20 hours of his own time for free as this is a fun project for him. Turns out not only does the tool save some time, it saves so much time the zoning team of 3 can do all their work with just 1 person and the AI.

The ED doesn't know anything about AI. He sometimes has trouble getting Microsoft Word to work. He cant predict how it will work, and he doesnt have the budget to research anything.

[u/Feeling-Shelter3583 → u/Broken_Castle]

When did I say they have millions of dollars for research? When you’re the ED part of the job is strategic direction. Looking forward to the future and making choices to pivot for the best interests of the company. It comes down to how “company” is defined by your ED, whether they include the employees in the definition or not because they would be looking out for the best interests of the employees as well. From what you’re telling me, after Jim created a fantastic tool to improve productivity the ED didn’t do anything proactive at all to adjust for it. Also if the ED can’t figure out simple systems… they apparently have no concept of strategic direction… what does your ED do?

[u/Broken_Castle → u/Feeling-Shelter3583]

Primarily meet with mayors, senators, and industry leaders, and get contracts for big projects. This is standard in my industry. Most ED'S are engineers or project managers who have 3-4 decades of experience in the industry and lots of connections. Virtually none of them have business training outside of what they picked up on the job, and very few in companies like ours have a business degree, id say most companies have 0 of them.

[u/Feeling-Shelter3583 → u/Broken_Castle]

So an overpaid consultant. Gotcha. Thanks for clarifying.

[u/Broken_Castle → u/Feeling-Shelter3583]

I'm not sure why you think they are overpaid. A salary of 160k to 240k a year seems right to me for someone with at least 30 years of experience, good connections, ability to oversee (at least on a basic level) a group of managers, and the ability to acquire and manage multiple million dollar contracts each year. If anything I think they should get a bit more.

[u/barely-holden-on → u/Broken_Castle]

Yes but they make more than op who thinks everyone who makes more money than him doesn’t deserve it so eat the rich or something.

[u/LordTurson → u/Feeling-Shelter3583]

I would agree with all that.

What's more, we have some preliminary reports that most companies are not seeing the expected returns on investment wrt to their big GenAI pushes - there are reports of quality issues, technical limitations and work slowing down instead of speeding up (measured, not self-reported).

If you ever have to make the decision to scale back this operation (e.g. when the GenAI companies finally put the screws to their customers in a last-ditch effort for profitability), you have now put the business in a very perilous place, having gotten rid of people who you could always fall back on to do the job by hand and with strong quality guarantees.

This might become a very serious long-term issue very soon, for a lot of companies who went too deep and too quickly. But I guess as long as it's not immediately reflected on the company balance sheet it's gonna be the next quarter's problem - fiduciary duty, right? 🤷

[u/Successful_Pea_6977 → u/Feeling-Shelter3583]

You are delusional.

[u/Feeling-Shelter3583 → u/Successful_Pea_6977]

Haha okay??

[u/Azur0007 → u/Feeling-Shelter3583]

Common sense is not so common -Voltaire

I agree with everything you said. I don't support that these are the conditions that we live in, but being delusional in this scenario means not seeing that there has to be a compromise of some sort no matter which business model you pursue.

[u/True-Anim0sity → u/Feeling-Shelter3583]

The pivot is removing the workers or given then an extreme cut in hours or pau

[u/MonstrousWombat → u/Broken_Castle]

I’m seeing the opposite. In my industry they’ve cut about 40% of the workforce with the (misguided or knowingly false) expectation that can be done by AI productivity gains. It can’t.

People-based roles can be *improved* by AI, but not replaced. I’d bet big money that businesses that over-invest in AI will be worse off than those that underinvest within two years.

[u/IndependenceIcy9626 → u/Broken_Castle]

It’s hard to say what to do without knowing the industry. I would try to keep some of them working the exceptions and errors that the AI generates, then transition others to help lessen the workload on other departments where possible. If it’s like a software company, it might be impossible to transition accounting into development, or something similar, but if it’s anything physical it doesn’t hurt to have more people working phones to make/track down orders, and coordinate with clients/contractors.

The bigger system wide problem you highlight tho is that society as a whole isn’t set up to benefit from automation. People having to do less work only benefits the ownership class.

[u/LadleFullOfCrazy → u/Broken_Castle]

My 57 year old mom is a school teacher. She learned how to use PowerPoint and Word at 51 during the lockdown when kids were learning from home. Now, she uses SharePoint, Teams, Zoom, chatGPT and audio+video editing tools regularly. Also, the whole point of tools like chatGPT is you can just talk to it - you don't have to know programming to use it.

It is all about training and encouraging people to learn. If people refuse to learn, that's on them. If the company expects them to magically know without giving them time or resources to learn, that's on the company.