Thing is, the companies doing these layoffs rarely actually end up losing money from overhiring. They’re still profitable. Just not profitable enough for the people on top.
That’s a bit perverse. In democracies, corporations ultimately exist to serve society, not shareholders.
The plutocracy is forgetting that a working and productive populace - with fair wages and representation - is their end of the deal for disproportionally benefitting from the fruits of labor from others; and directly prevents violence against the status quo. See: The top articles in the last 3 days.
Sure, but all they have to do is not hold up their end of the bargain. Who enforces that? These are just norms from 60 years ago that the rich decided they no longer have to follow.
They’ve started treating incorporation like a modern day papal indulgence, something that absolves whatever they do in the name of profit. It doesn’t. Limited liability buys you forgiveness in court but it doesn’t buy you forgiveness in the court of public opinion. Doing harm for a company is still doing harm.
I think you are correct in asserting the mercy-disciple of market forces.
I also think that counter points on the inhumanity of firms, misses that economies are an objective way to structure incentives to achieve subjective ends.
If you want more money to travel to other parts of the pyramid, or you want to disincentivize certain behavior, then economic incentives can be set up to achieve those goals.
Expecting firms to do charity is pointless. Expecting firms to optimize under constraints is not.
At societal scale hiring people is self-interest, not charity. Otherwise you'll get to exactly where the US is heading now: large parts of the consumer market are mostly dead because people have no discretionary spending power left, and the only way to make money as a business is to become a monopolist.
Pangram says this is 61% AI generated. Thinking of paying for a Pangram subscription so I can spend the valuable time I have to read for pleasure on human created pieces than AI slop.
Interesting, I just did this on some stuff I have personally handwritten, but the writing is about LLMs, and it says 25% AI generated, but because I used terms that are "x% likely AI" generated.
This is not a very useful test; it basically means a person has to "ban" terms like "user experience" and "tireless" etc. because these are "Nx more likely to appear in generated content".
> Imagine if your boss fired you - and your response was - I’ll come back if you quit! Yeah, no. People might confuse status with those of actual ceo shareholders like zuck, bezos, or musk. But Altman is just another employee
Think you're missing the big picture here. Sam Altman isn't an "easily replaceable employee" especially given his fundraising skills.
Brilliant as sama is, a star fundraiser is more replaceable than a top engineer.
One can imagine Microsoft, for example, swooping in and acquiring a larger share of the for-profit entity (and an actual seat on the board, dammit) for more billions, eliminating the need for any fundraising for the foreseeable future.
If a lot of top engieers follow sama out, now that's a real problem.
There’s probably a lot of behind the scenes drama and phone calls occurring among their top researchers. I’d guess Sam Altman calling them and trying to gain support for a counter coup. Things like this article to give the appearance that Sam et al have ready won, etc. If the board and new CEO isn’t doing that too, they could end up losing.
There will always be steep corrections when they overhire driven by economic cycles or otherwise (and we're living through an otherwise).
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