I find it fascinating how the same people can be selfishly interested in their own finances, find bigger numbers (those that a CEO has to care about by mandate) dirty, and square that.
I think you're suggesting there is some cognitive dissonance there. I think there's some truth to that, but it's also ignoring a true difference.
Personal finances can be viewed (somewhat incorrectly) as not being zero-sum. Me making more for my work or investments seems like it doesn't take from anyone else.
While a CEO deciding that AI should handle as much of the labor in a company as possible seems like a decision that benefits the company and it's shareholders directly at the expense of its workers.
I think in actual fact both sides here are zero-sum, but when the worker makes more personally, there are only diffuse and marginally-affected losers (the company, its shareholders, consumers and customers experiencing higher prices, etc.). The company's actions would affect people that can be directly named and are terribly affected.
It's unfortunately the difference between stealing 5¢ from 10,000,000 people or $100k from 5 people.
I don't think I am. You put the facts pretty succinctly. I just evaluate them differently.
Having thousands of smart humans optimizing for their personal goals in their individual ways, at the expense of company goals, is an issue that exists in every company, bankrupts companies and super frightening to deal with as a CEO.
People are not obviously more noble, when working towards personal goals instead of company goals, and a lot of people working towards their personal goals instead of company goals, is a serious issue for any company. Not having a single entity and one big number to deal with makes it actually much more powerful and scary.
Then you might think they'd be scared of handing over the keys to their company to an inscrutable AI working towards OpenAI's goals, but I guess the money is too good.
> While a CEO deciding that AI should handle as much of the labor in a company as possible seems like a decision that benefits the company and it's shareholders directly at the expense of its workers.
Many businesses are low profit margin with very price sensitive customers. There is reasonable concern that if they don’t follow competitors’ in efforts to reduce pricing, the whole business might fail.
See outsourcing textile manufacturing and other manufacturing to Asia. See grocery stores that source dairy and meet from local producers only rather than national operations with economies of scale. See insurance companies where the only concern is almost always lowest premium, not quality of customer service or claims resolution.
Almost every employee starts out believing the spiel about mission, team, and caring for workers (to some degree) and personally invest care in the endeavor.
Up until they are fired for the first time seemingly in contradiction to what was promised.
Companies and employers do not and have never cared for employees personally. They can not.
Eventually, most workers gain a much more pragmatic understanding of how the world works.
At that point, they are at best equal.
> Companies and employers do not and have never cared for employees personally. They can not.
Being an employer (small medical business, 10ppl), I can tell you that one of two things must be true: Either I am delusional or you are at least in part wrong.
1. I care a lot more about employees than they care about the company, or me (of course not in total, probably). I don't find this surprising, but you seem to think that it is not true.
2. The amount of time I personally spent thinking about personal issues of employees (in addition to their professional issues) far exceeds the time I spend thinking about my own personal issues. That's not by choice, really. It's just that people have stuff and when you do something for 8 hours a day, a lot of your stuff impacts that. Again, not surprising to me, but it is something I care about.
3. I spent way more time thinking about using/abusing my own power and responsibilities, than I am certain any of my employees does about using/abusing theirs. For example, while I have yet to fire anyone, people quitting their job is fairly normal. But neither is to me. Both of these options are stuff I do lose sleep over. You might argue that that's just part of the job, but idk what special sauce people dream "CEOs" are made of. I care about other humans, from what I can tell more than average (I attribute that, again, not to being special but because there is a lot of surface area), and the people I work with are no exemption.
I don't think any of the above is unique to me in any way.
> Being an employer (small medical business, 10ppl)
This may not be an edge case in terms of # of employers that fit your description, but is very likely an edge case in terms of # of employees with an employer that fits your description.
You’re the exception that proves the rule.
—————
Edit: Looking into it more, the margin is closer than I assumed; ~half of employees work for a “small business”, that term meaning <500 employees (1). Of those, ~80% are for a “small business” with <10 employees (2).
So you’re representing the majority of half the employment marketplace. That said I’d still argue that conversations about labor relations are focused on the subset of companies with many hundreds, thousands, and/or hundreds of thousands of employees.
—————
Interestingly, the majority of small business revenue is generated by the extreme minority of small businesses—per (2), the “small businesses” with >50 employees (so, 50<employees<500) represent just 3.3% of “small businesses”, but generate 53% of the revenue among all “small businesses”
