Cisco to lay off more than 4,000 employees to focus on artificial intelligence::Cisco revealed plans to slash its headcount by 5% on Wednesday, which will affect roughly 4,250 employees across the tech behemoth’s global workforce.
“AI isn’t good enough to replace workers yet, but it’s good enough to convince CEOs it can.”
AI isn’t good enough to replace workers, but it could probably replace C-suite executives at astronomical savings to the company
One of the truest things I know about AI is: “we’re nowhere near a place where bots can steal your job, we’re certainly at the point where your boss can be suckered into firing you and replacing you with a bot that fails at doing your job”
https://pluralistic.net/2024/01/11/robots-stole-my-jerb/#computer-says-no
i hope they rightfully lose a lot of money over this
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/feb/16/air-canada-chatbot-lawsuit
Convinced the Air Canada CEO who just lost a court case over it
With all these companies pivoting to the creation of AI products, this seems like a great opportunity for someone to step in and create … Checks notes … absolutely anything else.
I can’t wait to watch these companies all get their marketshare eaten by “ToddCo”, a company where a guy named Todd figures out that be can poach Starbucks employees and get better results than these AI deliver.
The sixty minutes interview is going to be epic:
“Then it struck me! Sure, James writes my name wrong on my cup every day, but he’s never once misjudged how many limbs I have!”
poach Starbucks employees and get better results than these AI deliver.
Newsflash: Starbucks coffee already isn’t that great. Then they’ll take the savings from firing all the baristas and buy out “ToddCo”.
How do you lay off people to focus on something?
Did they went “daaaamn, we want to focus on AI, but we already have people for that job, let’s fire them”?>> "We are an AI company now! Hey Bob, do you know AI?" ## "No... ?" >> "FIRED! Joe, do you know AI?" ## "I can learn about..." >> "FIRED! Bill, do you know AI? ## "... yes?" >> "You can stay. I'm heading to the next floor to ask if they know AI!"
They asked ChatGPT for a good explanation of why people are getting laid off.
Really kind of them to let their investors know first, rather than the people impacted. I bet morale there is wonderful.
One of my friends is a developer there, they knew vaguely it was going to happen after a town hall meeting, but didn’t know who was going to make the cut.
I feel like the smart move is to find AI tools that are actually good and help your workers be more productive, then use all that extra productivity to smoke your competitors but what do I know I’ve only been in management 15 years now.
That’s how you get thrown out a 6th story window
Has “laying off staff to focus on AI “ become a common euphemism for “we hired too many people”?
No, it’s a euphemism for “screw the people who are left, we need a quick reduction in our cost structure so that we can take bigger bonuses”
I mean, I’m all for reducing cost and optimizing efficiency. We’ve been doing that in every industry since the dawn of time. Coal miners hopefully don’t exist in a decade from now.
But it’s stupid to think AI is already there for most things, and it’s bad to lay off people who could easily be working on things AI can’t.
AI is going to be awesome, and I am so down for it.
But today, the emperor has no clothes.
Butt naked.
Not a fucking scrap of clothing is on that guy.
Good luck Cisco, you’re going to need it.
Another idiot company who seriously thinks this will work. All that will happen is the remaining employees will have to work twice as hard to keep things afloat but the CEO will give Ai the credit…
Padme: But then you’ll hire some back right? Right?
This is probably them trimming their Splunk acquisition
I stopped ordering Cisco hardware for my customer’s stacks. Too expensive and they are pushing everyone towards subscription models. If you don’t have $300 a month your wireless access points brick themselves. Fuck that noise. Fuck Cisco.