Hoyt Ag said:

---

Quote:

---

AI watching over every move of your employees will get rid of the bad employees, but how are you going to retain top talent?

---

You wont. Once your company is known for stuff like this, no one will want to apply. You will be left with average at best talent applying and will get burned out and leave in short order.

---

What was the name of that software company in College Station that made applications for car dealerships that timed how long you were in the bathroom each day? They used to employ a lot of college kids in College Station around 2000 or so, but turnover was so bad it was absolutely stunning.

Are they still in existence?

Hoyt Ag said:

---

Quote:

---

AI watching over every move of your employees will get rid of the bad employees, but how are you going to retain top talent?

---

You wont. Once your company is known for stuff like this, no one will want to apply. You will be left with average at best talent applying and will get burned out and leave in short order.

---

To the Zucks of the world this isn't a problem because they believe that AI will replace everyone anyway.
It's really hard to be optimistic about many things these days.
The world is changing at an unprecedented pace. This will make the Industrial Revolution look like small potatoes.
We did not evolve to be able to cope with the speed with which things are happening now. It's very troubling.

At least I have my faith.

Today at work I'll be finding someone to help my disabled son get his e-bike repaired, calling the the county jail to ask why they are withholding my other son's medications, helping my third son plan his college trip without interfering too much with Mother's Day weekend, figuring out my daughter's financial situation in graduate school, helping my second daughter plan her wedding, helping my 3rd daughter with her on-line homework, and coordinating family moving/leasing agreements...and having a critical conversation with a supplier over a process that could make the company $50M over the next decade, working on some patents, and coordinating lab work to make a new molecule that could be worth around $20M. This is my normal work day. This is what the top of the ladder looks like.

BusterAg said:

---

Hoyt Ag said:

---

Quote:

---

AI watching over every move of your employees will get rid of the bad employees, but how are you going to retain top talent?

---

You wont. Once your company is known for stuff like this, no one will want to apply. You will be left with average at best talent applying and will get burned out and leave in short order.

---

What was the name of that software company in College Station that made applications for car dealerships that timed how long you were in the bathroom each day? They used to employ a lot of college kids in College Station around 2000 or so, but turnover was so bad it was absolutely stunning.

Are they still in existence?

---

I never heard that before but it would not shock me.

I did some consulting work in Covid for a small operator that monitored keystrokes and webpages. No one there was happy and was waiting on the upcoming buyout. It was the worst big brother environment I had ever seen.

I don't see the current LLM replacing everyone. The functionality doesn't appear to be there. What I do see is an explosion in worker productivity on the back of these models. The free market side of the American economy notes that globalization exists because the cost of the American worker is the highest in the world so that it's cheaper per unit to make things elsewhere and ship them here.

There's two ways to fix that. First way is to cut the cost of employment in the US. Nice idea that will never happen. The second way then is to ramp up the productivity of a worker so high that the cost per unit plummets and that's where we're going.

Easy example from my world. I have a client that uses a time system to track employee hours. An export from that system is fed into a third party which then creates an export that is fed into ADP to generate payroll. That third party then extracts cost data from ADP and merges it with the time system data to allocate cost to the various business units they manage. The third party charges $299/month for what is effectively an excel exercise but the payroll manager doesn't have the excel skills to do it and I'm not creating a process she can break because she doesn't know excel well enough not to break it or fix it when she does.

Instead, I've taught Claude to do both ends of the process and after probably two more runs for proof of concept we'll terminate the third party. Then I'll get a Claude subscription for the payroll manager and teach her to use those skills to produce payroll and teach a senior accountant how to do the cost allocation in a Claude account we get for him. So for $40 in Claude subs we replaced a $300 subscription and we're introducing LLM usage into a team that supports a rapidly growing company that needs all the efficiency it can get.

BusterAg said:

---

Hoyt Ag said:

---

Quote:

---

AI watching over every move of your employees will get rid of the bad employees, but how are you going to retain top talent?

---

You wont. Once your company is known for stuff like this, no one will want to apply. You will be left with average at best talent applying and will get burned out and leave in short order.

---

What was the name of that software company in College Station that made applications for car dealerships that timed how long you were in the bathroom each day? They used to employ a lot of college kids in College Station around 2000 or so, but turnover was so bad it was absolutely stunning.

Are they still in existence?

---

UCS. I fixed 25 year old dot matrix printers for them around that time and they were the worst. You could tell they had 0 regard for their employees, but it was hard to find a good job in CS then because there were just too many students looking for work. Pizza delivery on campus paid 4x as much as that job did, cash under the table.

BusterAg said:

---

Hoyt Ag said:

---

Quote:

---

AI watching over every move of your employees will get rid of the bad employees, but how are you going to retain top talent?

---

You wont. Once your company is known for stuff like this, no one will want to apply. You will be left with average at best talent applying and will get burned out and leave in short order.

---

What was the name of that software company in College Station that made applications for car dealerships that timed how long you were in the bathroom each day? They used to employ a lot of college kids in College Station around 2000 or so, but turnover was so bad it was absolutely stunning.

Are they still in existence?

---

Answered

Over_ed said:

---

In the first article, Zuckerberg will be capturing every employees' keystroke and mouse movement. One stated objective: perform employee evaluations. Certainly replacing the employees with AI is much higher in priority.

---

Wells Fargo did that during Covid and fired a handfull of people for using mouse jigglers to simulate active work when they were not even at their computers.

Keystroke loggers are common from a targeted observation point.

I think the innovation here will be to log all keystrokes of all employees generally and analyze all of them simaltaneously. We're at a point now where that is vastly more feasible than it was 10 years ago.

Hank the Grifter said:

---

Hoyt Ag said:

---

Quote:

---

AI watching over every move of your employees will get rid of the bad employees, but how are you going to retain top talent?

---

You wont. Once your company is known for stuff like this, no one will want to apply. You will be left with average at best talent applying and will get burned out and leave in short order.

---

To the Zucks of the world this isn't a problem because they believe that AI will replace everyone anyway.
It's really hard to be optimistic about many things these days.
The world is changing at an unprecedented pace. This will make the Industrial Revolution look like small potatoes.
We did not evolve to be able to cope with the speed with which things are happening now. It's very troubling.

At least I have my faith.

---

Best of luck for the Zuck's in the world when the most talented people in the market can make much more money directly competing with their company than they can working for them, thanks to the added power of entrepreneurism created when AI reduces overhead costs for start-ups.

Yep, I worked at UCS for a summer during college. I got the strange role of doing their cat5 wiring for the new building. Had absolutely zero experience before they hired me and 9 other college kids to do the work. Had to punch in our code to use the restroom or go to the cafeteria (they didnt want you leaving campus for lunch). Odd place.

ts5641 said:

---

There's something daily that comes out about how bad AI is going to screw everyone. We're not going to like the outcome of all this.

---

if you invest correctly in the development of AI companies -

you will certainly like the outcome.

your kids definitely will not

The Chicken Ranch said:

---

If AI, takes my job I'll be ok. I'm not ready to retire, monetarily, but I am mentally ready.

I can find something to do that I enjoy that AI can't do. Like yard work, repair dive regulators, help researchers at A&M, or something. Sure, it wouldn't pay what I make, but as I grow older I will want something stimulating as I slide off of my peak earnings.

---

words of wisdom

I am moving to Dallas to be close to my parents after a 30 year legal career.

being a part time Counsel at a law firm downtown and having a consulting firm with two clients will not pay as much as I make now so that sucks.

on the other hand, some things are more important than money

millions of Americans are about to learn this lesson either willingly or unwillingly with AI

LOYAL AG said:

---

I don't see the current LLM replacing everyone. The functionality doesn't appear to be there. What I do see is an explosion in worker productivity on the back of these models. The free market side of the American economy notes that globalization exists because the cost of the American worker is the highest in the world so that it's cheaper per unit to make things elsewhere and ship them here.

There's two ways to fix that. First way is to cut the cost of employment in the US. Nice idea that will never happen. The second way then is to ramp up the productivity of a worker so high that the cost per unit plummets and that's where we're going.

Easy example from my world. I have a client that uses a time system to track employee hours. An export from that system is fed into a third party which then creates an export that is fed into ADP to generate payroll. That third party then extracts cost data from ADP and merges it with the time system data to allocate cost to the various business units they manage. The third party charges $299/month for what is effectively an excel exercise but the payroll manager doesn't have the excel skills to do it and I'm not creating a process she can break because she doesn't know excel well enough not to break it or fix it when she does.

Instead, I've taught Claude to do both ends of the process and after probably two more runs for proof of concept we'll terminate the third party. Then I'll get a Claude subscription for the payroll manager and teach her to use those skills to produce payroll and teach a senior accountant how to do the cost allocation in a Claude account we get for him.
So for $40 in Claude subs we replaced a $300 subscription and we're introducing LLM usage into a team that supports a rapidly growing company that needs all the efficiency it can get.

---

I fall with the latter prediction. I liken this to the Microsoft revolution on steroids. Yes, lots of jobs will be phased out both by robotics/automation & LLMs. Many, many more will be enhanced.

Think of finance/banking pre-excel. It does a very good job at replicable tasks. Where it will struggle, is the analysis, assessment, and strategy to then employ these numbers. Bookkeepers might be in trouble. Office managers, maybe not.

The Tech CEO'S especially the ones that have subscriptions that prop up there profits have said there is NO amount of subscriptions the can give the ROI on A.I. investment. LET THAT SINK IN!

When I said these CEO types are scum, the bootlickers jumped up to defend.

Now deal with this. Zuck, Musk, Jassy, Nadella, Pichai are all part of the group who want to get the most power for themselves. With power comes wealth and vice versa.

This is like "creeping Islamization". It's always one little thing here and a small thing there. Zuck is a creep, so I wouldn't be surprised if he is able to see people (maybe only hottie employees) through the webcam? After all, they must be working on FB laptops.

We need MORE LAWS to rein these guys in.

Things will only change when the Boomers say bye-bye and Gen X finally takes over and puts an end to this crap.

That first article is 1984. Glad I'm retired.

Related to thread topic, Deloitte just announced they are cutting pensions (understandable), PTO (wow), and parental benefits (wow) for their employees while at the same time announcing the largest corporate real estate deal in America, since COVID, by leasing 800k sq ft in a new ultra high end spot in Manhattan for their new US HQ.

If that doesn't tell you it's an employers market, then I don't know what does.

LMCane said:

---

ts5641 said:

---

There's something daily that comes out about how bad AI is going to screw everyone. We're not going to like the outcome of all this.

---

if you invest correctly in the development of AI companies -

you will certainly like the outcome.

your kids definitely will not

---

Exactly, you got it right. The way forward is to invest in them, not to work in or with them. That is the only way to survive.

Quote:

---

Related to thread topic, Deloitte just announced they are cutting pensions (understandable), PTO (wow), and parental benefits (wow) for their employees while at the same time announcing the largest corporate real estate deal in America, since COVID, by leasing 800k sq ft in a new ultra high end spot in Manhattan for their new US HQ.

---

Interesting choice there. Assume they are getting a great break on the price per square foot and the buildout expenses for a long term deal but still surprising.

Phatbob said:

---

BusterAg said:

---

Hoyt Ag said:

---

Quote:

---

AI watching over every move of your employees will get rid of the bad employees, but how are you going to retain top talent?

---

You wont. Once your company is known for stuff like this, no one will want to apply. You will be left with average at best talent applying and will get burned out and leave in short order.

---

What was the name of that software company in College Station that made applications for car dealerships that timed how long you were in the bathroom each day? They used to employ a lot of college kids in College Station around 2000 or so, but turnover was so bad it was absolutely stunning.

Are they still in existence?

---

UCS. I fixed 25 year old dot matrix printers for them around that time and they were the worst. You could tell they had 0 regard for their employees, but it was hard to find a good job in CS then because there were just too many students looking for work. Pizza delivery on campus paid 4x as much as that job did, cash under the table.

---

I worked for Universal Computer Systems in 97-98 for their field tech support as I was finishing up my degree. Their Houston office was even more dystopian. Had to enter your destination code as you walked through the hallways so they could track you as you went to a different area. The COBOL programmers each had a light installed in their office that let them know when their print job was done, so they wouldn't get up from their desk and stop coding. Once the light turned green you could go pick up your printout.

Logged every telephone call and reported it at the end of each month. You were given a list of all calls sent and received and had to notate what they were. They were big brother before big brother was cool.

The company still exists in College Station under a different name, Reynolds & Reynolds.

We installed solitaire on a remote computer and played it during our downtime. You can't beat college kids (especially a bunch of CS majors) with your outdated tracking technology.

As for software development, the field seems to be dead. I just had a CS major from A&M that graduated with honors and has two years of real experience apply for a job. His desired salary was $60k.

I know a couple of people that were making $60k in their first job out of school in 1998!

aggiehawg said:

---

Quote:

---

Related to thread topic, Deloitte just announced they are cutting pensions (understandable), PTO (wow), and parental benefits (wow) for their employees while at the same time announcing the largest corporate real estate deal in America, since COVID, by leasing 800k sq ft in a new ultra high end spot in Manhattan for their new US HQ.

---

Interesting choice there. Assume they are getting a great break on the price per square foot and the buildout expenses for a long term deal but still surprising.

---

From what I read, the Manhattan RE market is hot right now despite Mamdani. I think people must be betting on him crashing out, or they are true believing dumbasses. Who knows.

Or, maybe they are getting tax breaks on the backend which I highly doubt Mamdani would publicize. He may be doing that to signal NYC is open for business while simultaneously going after HNW individuals. Dunno.

Burpelson said:

---

The Tech CEO'S especially the ones that have subscriptions that prop up there profits have said there is NO amount of subscriptions the can give the ROI on A.I. investment. LET THAT SINK IN!

---

Which is why I think many of these articles are of course agenda driven to try and scare everyone into adoption while at the same time pumping up the valuation of these same AI companies.