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It depends on what actually happened. I know people who legitimately don't work 4-5 hours/day when working from home. If AI can accurately detect that, they SHOULD be fired. The question is if it is accurate in the detection.
The weird thing is that he didn't even need to justify it- if the work can be done by AI, fire the people. Don't even need to say that it's because the people didn't work hard enough. AI works 24/7/365 and is fantastic at spitting out low-analytic work (like payment processing), so why even have a human for that in the first place.
It's not the work that can be done by AI. They let AI decide which workers should be fired.
It depends on what actually happened. I know people who legitimately don't work 4-5 hours/day when working from home. If AI can accurately detect that, they SHOULD be fired. The question is if it is accurate in the detection.
Hours worked is an irrelevant metric, at least in knowledge work. If you're good at your job and finish all of your work in 2 hours, who cares what you do for the remaining 6? It's not my fault I don't have enough work on my plate. That's a manager's job. Do you really want people doing 2 hours' worth of work in 8? I will let you know I have bandwidth to take on more, but I'm not going to press the issue if you don't find more productive work for me to do.
Last edited by albert648; 08-07-2021 at 08:44 AM..
It depends on what actually happened. I know people who legitimately don't work 4-5 hours/day when working from home. If AI can accurately detect that, they SHOULD be fired. The question is if it is accurate in the detection.
Even if they're doing all of their work in 4-5 hours?
I haven't punched a time clock in a very long time. The amount of time or effort I put in is absolutely irrelevant. All that matters is the output. Some days, I might put in 4 hours at the most. Others, when I'm on travel, I may be up at 5 or 6AM and "on the clock" until 10PM.
I don't understand the controversy. When I was working I was well aware that my company could monitor my online activity during business hours. If I spent all day on social media, as these employees apparently did, well......
It depends on what actually happened. I know people who legitimately don't work 4-5 hours/day when working from home. If AI can accurately detect that, they SHOULD be fired. The question is if it is accurate in the detection.
I beg to differ, although I'm likely the odd man out.
Have you ever heard the airline pilot analogy? "Flying is 95% boredom and 5% sheer terror".
There are specific niches in engineering that are like that. Like, "Houston, we have a problem".
Like, "three terabytes of something have just exited the XYZ network over the past minute and we have no idea what it is and it's gone". Stuff like that.
When I'm working a problem like that, I'm generally up for thirty hours until it's contained.
I'm the one who is directing the action during the 5% sheer terror moments. Otherwise my days would be classified as non-productive.
The weird thing is that he didn't even need to justify it- if the work can be done by AI, fire the people. Don't even need to say that it's because the people didn't work hard enough. AI works 24/7/365 and is fantastic at spitting out low-analytic work (like payment processing), so why even have a human for that in the first place.
I'll be shocked if other companies don't do something similar. Technically, they weren't fired according to a newer article. Company will help them find jobs it says. 6 people from the US
Quote:
Most layoffs happened in Perm, where Xsolla was initially founded. Agapitov fired six people from the US (out of 50 US-based staff) and two people from Asia (out of 12 employees working at the South Korean office).
The company laid off people specializing in different spheres. “Worst programmers, worst marketers, worst office managers, worst admins, and even worst accountants,” Agapitov commented.
Quote:
Originally Posted by K12144
I'm not surprised. I expected that some/many companies would be using some kind of analytics to see who was really working from home and who was just home. I'm sure if they really wanted to, they could tell who was signed on, whose computer was "idle," who spent all of their time chatting on Messenger or drawing pictures in Paint, etc... and I imagine that some day (soon?) they'll have software good enough to analyze that for all of the data they have well enough that it won't be too much of a chore to check up on everyone.
I'm also not surprised to see it. He ripped the band aid off, I have a feeling we're going to be seeing more of this because the technology has been here for many years.
The article I link above is from a press conference he had and is pretty funny, he got rid of people who obviously don't want to work for the company.
Quote:
Originally Posted by jnojr
In this case, it sounded like he let the AI decide who to fire.
That's correct because he said how companies nowadays protect minorities and can be overly cautious with keeping them, so he let AI analyze computers to see who was working and who wasn't. He said that it's better for them to let a person go based on the algorithm than a manager doing it based on their own views. Apparently he plans to keep it up and if anyone doesn't like it, they really don't want to work for the company.
He will continue to lay off 10% of the people if numbers keep declining. The article says other companies like Netflix does the same thing with letting unproductive people go.
Even if they're doing all of their work in 4-5 hours?
I haven't punched a time clock in a very long time. The amount of time or effort I put in is absolutely irrelevant. All that matters is the output. Some days, I might put in 4 hours at the most. Others, when I'm on travel, I may be up at 5 or 6AM and "on the clock" until 10PM.
All that matters is getting the job done.
I understand what you're saying, and in many cases I agree with you. A problem is a lot of people (I'm not saying you specifically) use that logic as an excuse to do less. If your employment agreement states you work 40 hours per week, then screwing around 4 hours per day (and not making it up later) because you work from home and can get away with it is NOT ok. In that case, go to your boss and ask for more to do.
In my opinion, it comes down to this: would you be comfortable telling your boss how many hours you spend NOT working during the workday? If yes, then you're doing nothing wrong. If you know you'd get in trouble if anyone found out how much you don't work during the workday, then firings like those in the OP are justified.
Last edited by Lekrii; 08-08-2021 at 08:23 AM..
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