On a micro level I work hard for my own dignity and because I like my immediate team, I work for them. On the other side, the macro level, we are constantly clawing to get more than a 2% raise every year while not back filling positions and being told we have to watch every dime for what? The problem is we have seen behind the curtain, we work so that 5 people at the top and our PE owners can make more money than we could ever imagine. Where is the motivation? I labor for a modest salary so that a handful can be absolutely filthy rich. I am not ungrateful but knowing the system takes away from any real motivation.
Not sure that's ever been a good raise, at least US wise inflation going back 20 years (BLS data goes back to 1957 too) has always trended in the 2% range: https://data.bls.gov/pdq/SurveyOutputServlet
Many years it was above 2% too, but just below 3%. Then if you look at recent years, plus things like the 70s + 80s, it's always been a token CoL adjustment at best, at worse not even enough to cover inflation.
I think the difference is in recent years we've actually been talking about this and realizing collectively how fucked we are. I guess the Internet helps with that, this stuff goes viral and people are actually aware of what a shitty deal we all got.
Alternatively since I'm only in my 30s you could just say we've sucked it up and taken this vs the much harder ask of strikes and protests. At least US wise; different story in much of Europe. And of course even US wise we can't forget about stuff like occupy wall street that tried unsuccessfully to advocate for... Something. A better system at least. Kinda fizzled out and idk if they ever had the best messaging besides wall street sucks which we all know.
We hold the power, but we refuse to organize. You seem to be fully aware of the situation, yet you do nothing? Get your co-workers together to discuss this. Do it regularly. A plan will form, i promise.
Hard to be “engaged” when your dollar doesn’t go as far, your bosses are openly promoting and sharing their wet dreams about firing you every day on LinkedIn to replace with AI, and the government is a literal clown show with circus cars. Not even mentioning the climate crisis and the warnings that humanity is gonna be wiped out by AI, while people fund the company promising to do it.
Don’t forget that our news media is operating in rage bait mode and social media is a dumpster fire. Somehow we have done nothing about it and run out of ideas.
So, crude theory is the US will be France in the 1980s…mid economy, rising crime. Other countries who’ve mastered the information revolution will fair much better. American exceptionalism is about to time out, such a shame too.
Republicans haven't believed in American Exceptionalism in a decade now. So, all in all, it's unsurprising that they've led us deeper down this path during that time with their policies.
Disagree. The party has fractured but remained aligned because of shared power and money.
It’s a tiny fraction built around conservatism. Two larger factions with one built around Dixie faux-royalty and religious evangelist who don’t practice what they preach. And then a smattering of other.
The party is a bunch of crooks that care about nothing except money and power. You can't trust literally anything that they say because they will say literally anything to get more money and power.
Same for democrats. The two party system have led to parties with a too wide spectrum of ideas and that agree on little except that the other party is the most evil thing in the world. They are more akin to coalitions.
In other countries those same parties would be fragmented into smaller but more homogeneous parties .
Those remote workers will be the first on the chopping block too. There is going to be a lot of pissed off white-collar workers fighting over fewer jobs leading to lower pay.
Did American exceptionalism time out? Or was it unintentionally killed and mismanagement by the very people that parroted its exceptionalism? From where I am sitting we gave up being exceptional when we decided that what makes America exceptional is its things and its ability to project its strength/power across the world. As opposed to the reality that it’s exceptionalism comes from the people, its culture and our foundations/values in western democratic enlightenment that inspired to world to liberty.
I’d say China. Mainly because they’ve built the foundational infrastructure to support the necessary growth to navigate the information revolution. The US doesn’t have the capacity and neither does the EU.
As long as immigration of H1B and O1 remains, American exceptionalism will not end. Though, if US continues to reject highly educated researchers and cut more of the research funding for colleges, it will. If it makes life harder for top scientists and engineers, and these people starting moving to China or stay in their countries, the gap will close. Taking mostly best of the best of other countries is what has been keeping US above others for sometime.
I think it’ll be closer to the American economy in the 1970’s mixed with the shock bubble pop of the late ‘90s but on a larger scale. America will bounce back, they’ve overcame worse, but it will have to go thru some pain first.
A shame for whom? For affluent Americans who are unaware of all the unimaginable pain and suffering their country has caused so they can drive their Benz? Nobody else is benefiting from the US sitting atop the heap.
When France moved from an industrial power churning out STEM graduates to arts/humanities churning out handbags. There's so many LV bags on can buy right .
Question is what's American churning out ?
I'd say media "culture" content
Watching my supervisor tape up AI generated posters about safety tips when we have a fully staffed graphic design department at the main office that can easily make and ship posters to us to use instead is quite symbolic of how the company is being run currently.
And I don’t really like how it’s being run. I am very checked out and I don’t see myself checking back in.
Edit: The company has a print shop in house that’s utilized by the graphic production department. We have the resources to not rely on AI.
Counterpoint is that internal design teams exist because you need to generate collateral that support your go to market activities.
It is rarely the most effective use of their time to focus on internal activations.
I'm in the UK, but our design team are basically banned from internal work without specific leadership approval because otherwise they get too many internal asks for their time and it detracts from work that might drive outcomes.
That's not to say internal stuff isn't important, but things like tips or good to knows feel pretty low on the list for having polished and appropriately branded.
My wife works in the graphics department of the same company at the office and it’s not an issue of the safety tips being an internal design. I understand your perspective but that’s not what’s happening here. It’s a lazy supervisor typing shit into ChatGPT and having it make slop instead of communicating with the graphics production team.
I really don’t like letting major companies like the one I work for be let off the hook when it comes to cost cutting measures for the sake of saving a few bucks. I think integrity matters and this is a pretty bad look for us.
> It’s a lazy supervisor typing shit into ChatGPT and having it make slop instead of communicating with the graphics production team.
I feel like this is one of those situations where the perception is "it takes about the same effort to communicate it clearly enough to AI as the internal team, and the AI will turn it around faster so less overall work"
this is what i assume is pre-AI, but i am a mortgage broker. i am licensed in pennsylvania. i tried running some google ads targeting philadelphia, but they were not approved because i excluded NJ.
the automated response from google was it is illegal to discriminate in housing.
i know this isn't some ground breaking example, but i would be more careful about compliance than just letting AI do it.
My point is it still ultimately comes down to a human to approve the message, just as it would were the ad made by your design team. There is no added compliance or liability risk in this specific use case assuming it covers whatever point you are trying to get across.
If you say "Chatty make me a safety poster," and don't actually check on the results, that's a bad manager period.
i mean i can, but only if they're considering moving to PA. like i said, not some kind of crazy ground breaking issue, just something a person can easily understand while a computer cannot.
No person easily understands mortgage compliance, there’s entire departments to manage and lots of CE. Not complicated on an individual level, but complicated on a marketing level. I was licensed in 18 states including NJ btw. You?
And yea it is illegal to discriminate in housing. If you’re choosing high income zip codes across the border into NJ to market to in addition to PA, you might be excluding lower income NJ zip codes. That would be housing discrimination.
There aren’t different laws per se when it comes to housing discrimination. They follow federal laws first, which state CE is only partly based on. At the end of the day even if you only market in PA, NJ, or both, you’ll be governed by federal law first and foremost in addition to whatever the state imposes.
The posters may not actually align with standard operating procedures, if they're only being reviewed by some random low level manager. Then something happens and it's exhibit A in the lawsuit.
Then that sounds like an organizational management issue and poor management/training issue then. Like if you have an AI make you a graphic and it doesn't say what you legally know it must say then that is not an issue with the AI... The issue is human laziness. You can have the AI say exactly what you tell it to say.
This is not the same issue with like... putting customer info into unlicensed products or into retail licensed products versus commercial.
> it detracts from work that might drive outcomes.
This is main problem with AI in my opinion. We're having fun integrating into our lives, but it's not the promise that we're told. It's only another tool in the toolbox.
It's exhausting to talk to something when you have to constantly doubt and double check because it gets So. Much. Wrong, and when it isn't wrong, it's monotonous.
This is true in and out of work. If I have busy work that should never have been assigned and nobody will ever value, that's a good use case for AI, and an even better reason for me to move on from whoever is requiring that slop in the first place.
> It's exhausting to talk to something when you have to constantly doubt and double check because it gets So. Much. Wrong, and when it isn't wrong, it's monotonous.
It's being pushed on us far too much. It does solve small tasks easily, but having to sit there and talk to it when you can be doing something more productive IS exhausting. That's where I agree with it distracts us from productive work.
Again I see it as a tool not super intelligence, AGI, etc
In a ton of cases, it's also clear that it's not being pushed to improve a company's or organization's work quality or create more-competitive products, i.e. it's being pushed so that useless C-suite parasites can sop up more money and so inept managers can go from working 3 days a week to only working 2.
Absolutely this. I work on my company’s go to market team. We have an amazing team of designers that create all of our public assets.
We don’t waste their time on internal event flyers, meeting PowerPoints, and other assets that never make it to the public.
Most private companies are the same way: spend money and human capital on revenue generating activities, and automate/streamline the admin stuff that has to get done but doesn’t need to be polished.
Might depend on where you work. But even with extremely lean marketing teams, it really takes us no time at all to throw together an internal flyer because most marketing teams make templating a priority. Even in cases where we are too busy to manage all the internal asks, there are often templates they can use. Somehow, they all prefer to ask ChatGPT to do it, and then it takes up even more time because I have to find out why this unbranded asset is being disseminated, why it does not meet accessibility guidelines, and why the templates were not used. When if I had done it myself from the outset, it would've taken no time at all. Graphic design is already not really taken seriously as something that requires domain expertise, and so we already have to deal with rogue colleagues who try to take matters into their own hands and lack the expertise to know they are bad at it, and AI has only made this issue significantly worse.
I work as an EHR analyst and sat through a presentation for one of the more notable EHR companies, they have a full on art department and chose to fill their presentations with full on slop while touting AI functions that were being demonstrated in a very closed environment. It looked terrible, I wasn’t impressed.
My organization isn’t taking their AI license yet, because it’s fucking expensive and doesn’t move the needle at all in terms of improvements to functionality. Thankfully they haven’t introduced analyst-replacing functions yet but I just know it’s coming down the line. Things just look bleak.
Hi everyone! I'd like to chime in as I'm the wife in the graphics department lol 👋👋. I'd like to add from a standpoint of a designer that I agree with the fact that using AI in the warehouse and out in the trade is the laziest and worst thing that you could possibly choose to do. Not only does it create a compliance and legality issue with safety posters and stuff like that, but it also creates a very gray watered legality and trademark issue with our brands that we work with. Running their logos through AI and not using compliant brand guidelines that myself and my other graphic designer peers know is a very large issue that can lead to us getting in trouble.
Just like he mentioned, we have a entire print shop as well as the graphics team. I recognize and understand that a lot of companies do not have this luxury, however it takes five seconds to open Canva and throw something together that you know actually makes sense.
It costs your boss time, effort, and likely some amount of political capital to have a team do those designs. He can have something barely passable mocked up within minutes and for free... what do you think he'll choose?
It doesn't cost "political" capital to use corporate assets to follow corporate rules.
And it likely generates goodwill at the graphic design department, since this request can be used to justify their continued funding and existence.
So the people there will be predisposed to be more helpful in the future. Even after they (in this case, the manager of the department) move onto other jobs in the corporation.
> And it likely generates goodwill at the graphic design department, since this request can be used to justify their continued funding and existence.
Maybe...but it's more likely that they need to justify their continued funding and existence by showing how they have made money for the company. And this would detract from that.
Yes, and each department has a funding allowance for things like printer paper, staples etc. Part of that is used to pay for the posters made by the graphics design team.
So they make money from the transaction.
And since the office is required by HR and the law to put up these posters, it's expected that the department order them. And it's expected that those posters will come from the internal graphics design team, to keep the money within the company.
I've seen some AI posters at work. The common sentiment is that while they may be faster and give you something right now, employees will see right through it. This is especially so when there's a graphic design department.
From a logical perspective this is a great justification for using AI, but I'm guessing based on your tone that you're suggesting having an entire department in a different city take the time and effort to produce and ship something that the supe can produce with 30 minutes in front of an AI and another 30 minute run to a print shop.
We already have an entire graphics department. Theres a weekly truck that takes POS from the office to the warehouse. AI slop looks bad and doesn’t make any sense if you look at it for more than 10 seconds. I don’t care if it costs the company a little more time and money, the posters look like crap. What happened to industry standards?
I don't think the aesthetic pleasure of an infographic chart that could just easily be displayed in raw text has anything to do with industry standards.
Unless you're talking about graphic design industry standards and pretty clearly the average joe doesn't give a shit about those.
The C suite needs a lesson on what AI is actually capable of doing present day. I see it in my job all the time.
A worker leaves or gets laid off, and the workload is transferred to an employee that already has a full time role. The communication from management is that you should be able to automate this role and improve the business process to increase your shot at a promotion. The reality of the situation is you just get bombarded by stakeholders because the human being previously in the role had to maintain relationships to be successful.
Corporate has lost its humanity and the workforce is stressed beyond belief. When organizations are figuring out how to get rid of you behind the scenes, you’re more inclined to value your personal peace. Is being an engaged employee in this era worth it?
I see more and more single person startups as people rather work for themselves using ai the way they want to , instead of being paid a pittance and being told how to use ai
Maybe they can have an LLM summarize studies like this for them:
Chen, Fiona, and James Stratton. 2026. "Artificial Intelligence in the Firm: Bottlenecks in Software Production." Harvard University Job Market Paper. https://fion.ac/jellyfish.pdf.
> A worker leaves or gets laid off, and the workload is transferred to an employee that already has a full time role. The communication from management is that you should be able to automate this role and improve the business process to increase your shot at a promotion. The reality of the situation is you just get bombarded by stakeholders because the human being previously in the role had to maintain relationships to be successful.
This isn't unique to AI or even novel in the last few years. It's how executives with poor vision have their incompetence trickle down through management.
I was absolutely ecstatic over an 8% raise I fought tooth and nail for this year. I've been asking for a significant raise for 3 years, since I do much, much more than what is detailed in my role description. I just did open enrollment for health insurance and my new premium is essentially the same amount as my raise per year.
How the fuck is that going to keep me engaged or excited lmao. An almost 10% raise doesnt even do shit anymore. I work my ass off, got a degree, and did everything they told me to. And I'm still one emergency away from being out on the street.
Let alone across the board so many corporations making record profits yet claiming not having budget for fair raises and all deserved promotions, even in environment of high increases in cost of living. Why should employees put extra into their work under these conditions.
This is /r/Economics, not /r/politics. Your personal basket of goods is not how we calculate inflation. Yes, it is possible your specific spending habits mean you experience more inflation than others. No, that doesn't mean the government is "lying" about inflation.
It was stupid when Republicans claimed Democrats were lying, and it's stupid now.
Brother I spent 10 years getting a masters degree in economics while working as a part time marketing manager with a $2M budget—
I just applied to over 450 jobs in 2 years. 15 interviews. No offers. A few freelance contracts here and there. Dogshit. Depressing. I can’t even begin to imagine a raise.
I’m 36, and already experiencing some bizarre limbo where I’m too old and a bit over educated to pivot to entry level work and a bit too inexperienced for senior level work — so I’m sort of doomed to lie my way up or down — all the time — just to be invited to a job interview.
Take the 8% and just invest in your health more. Smell some flowers. It can all be gone tomorrow and you might not get it back for years.
If I’m qualified, I’d take a decent % paycut to do YOUR job, and there’s an army of Gen Z kids behind me who’d do it for less.
For me, it's how quickly work expectations have risen over the last decade. I work in M&A and across the board teams are expected to do the same work level of work as we did in 2019 with less than half the team now. AI has helped massively, but it still puts unbelievable amounts of pressure on teams. More than ever before. I'm pretty burnt out for the first time in my life.
Now take how I feel as a senior leader and apply it to fresh grads who know their days are numbered with AI. I can see why people want to tap out.
I feel you, I'm a Compliance Director. We're expected to assess the Enterprise, our critical business systems (300ish apps and systems), and a pipeline of 150 M&A's against a control framework of 1200+ controls with a team of 5. I told my boss that if they don't want to hire enough heads to cover the needs then don't be surprised when they see contractor costs through the roof. We're at $700k for 2026 alone and I project nearly double that costs next year as we include CMMC into the mix.
This is not surprising. Alot of this can be attributed at least recently to corproate cost cutting due to AI with companies expecting more out of their employees with smaller team sizes and in the c-suite mind set AI filling the gap. Problem is with more meeting and teams being done over applications like microsoft teams, google meets, slack etc this problem is just gonna get worse
My boss calls me all the time like "hey remember [x] that you used to do for me? You should see how quickly and awesome AI just did that!"
And i'm just supposed to be amazed that i'm now completely left out of every conversation, cut off from any growth opportunities, left to optimize my own department and then rot
"Stupid, delusional, and useless boss whose job is so easy and simple it can be done by an LLM -- who previously dumped all his work on lower-level employees -- believes employees fundamental to operation are more replaceable than him."
Once they get rid of everyone who actually runs their companies, they will start to fail but are too stupid and vain/up their own asses to realize they're the problems.
This is me. I work for a software company. We had a physical office until after the pandemic. Now, I'm wholly remote. Then about a year ago, everything my work pushes is the use of AI internally and externally.
There's never been a time when I feel less cared for by my employer and vice versa.
Chen, Fiona, and James Stratton. 2026. "Artificial Intelligence in the Firm: Bottlenecks in Software Production." Harvard University Job Market Paper. https://fion.ac/jellyfish.pdf.
Over the past year AI went from barely useful for software development to being pretty good at actually writing code(it's still not good at design). A lot of people set their views on AI and then just never updated them
Delusional beliefs work pretty well until the delusion collides with the real world.
Not liking ai is one thing, but if you believe the technology is just a fad like VR and we will eventually go back to normal then you are in for a rude awakening.
Interesting paper, albeit too small-scale in both time and sample-size to show long-term impacts.
"People could make a huge number of commits quickly, but code review was still the bottleneck. On one project, only one senior engineer was allowed to approve changes because he was the expert on the codebase. He was so bandwidth constrained that he could only review my code once a week. After some outages that were caused by AI-generated commits, there were also new rules requiring senior engineer approval for AI-generated code, which created even more review bottlenecks.” — Junior Software Engineer
Yikes... if this is how modern junior software engineers think then we are all doomed.
I have noticed this at work, people who usually show up and make things run have been a lot less proactive. Nothing going on with the company to encourage that, in fact our company is run by decent human beings not ghouls, so I concluded this just be the impending doom of the elections.
People are in a full on CPTSD mode because our entire futures are hanging by a thread.
You want productivity and engagement? Bring back hope, stability and security.
Used to love the work I do, being excited for new projects and features, wanting to learn and be better / more knowledgeable. Even with the corporate BS.
Now, I hate my job so much. I'm depressed every day. I hate everything we're doing. It's straight garbage, and I'm being told that this is somehow better than what we were doing before, as things are literally falling apart. I don't care about any of it anymore. Lost respect for a lot of people. Don't want to get on calls or help people anymore. I used to love helping others at work. I feel like I don't know anything now anyway.
On top of that, I got a low review score because, even though I did so much and my manager and team relied on me a lot, I didn't embrace AI enough. Meanwhile, I'm doing the actual work, while people who know and do less were rewarded for using AI... to do nothing. I'm doing your work and having to help you, because you're too busy playing around with AI agents, and I was reprimanded for that. And they were rewarded.
I don't care anymore. I'm completely disconnected from everything. I hate this company and I hope they fail miserably.
Average pay gets average effort. I can’t expect a more than 1-3% raise either, which doesn’t get even close to inflation rates. Why should I be more engaged?
Why should I engage? What motivation or inspiration is there? I used to take pride in doing a good job. Yes, portions of my job have been replaced (poorly) by AI. I also got a 0.4% raise this year, which is an insult. This is a Fortune 100 company.
Many of us don't do any work that matters in any real measurement. Tossing AI into that mix only drives the point home that a script can do most of the work you do. And that we, humanity, don't really need your work. Do we really need a zillion people making ads or bad TV or web apps for sharing your latest fart collection? Not really. Lots of the employment that the dotcom era generated is luxury work. Well-paying jobs that support an industry niche that could just as easily disappear with little or no impact on the world around them.
But we don't pay the jobs that we do actually need; medical, elder care, education, agriculture, commensurately to their societal importance while these luxury jobs proliferate and pay significantly more for significantly less effort. And to further waste everyone's efforts, we fill those industries with hangers on that often get paid more than the people who do the actual job. Education admin, hospital admins, c-suites in any insurance company, just so many people making mint compared to the actual job needed who do pretty much nothing. Welfare programs for rich kids and smart middle class kids.
Exactly. If we got paid based on value of our work to society; teachers, grocery store employees, farmers, social workers, nurses, and sanitation workers would be the well off in society.
Should a loser influencer who cannot provide any value aside from pretty babies be paid more than the "ugly" geophysicist that helps save our planet from global catastrophe?
Yeah I’m ready to revolt. The power dynamic between employer and employee has gone way out of wack. Someday someone very smart and very angry is going to take back their rights by any means necessary
Distrust is reasonable because you really have to look into what options were given, how things are phrased, and how those things change from year to year and poll to poll.
But if Gallup starts literally lying, they are very likely to lose their reputation, and their reputation is the basis for their business. Their workers would be able to call them out and they'd be consistently off from other polls.
>> The share of actively disengaged employees rose from 17% to 18%, while 53% were not engaged.
What's the difference between "disengaged" and "not engaged"? And when did these terms become commonly used over "job satisfaction" or other more obvious, straightforward, and clear terminology? Honestly, these terms just sound like trendy corporate jargon. Honestly, I thought "engagement" would be measuring how many people were actively employed to some degree -- y'know, "engaged" in employment -- but instead it's some bullshit about worker enthusiasm (as defined under one of their graphs).
>> Gallup defines employee engagement as the involvement and enthusiasm of employees in their work and workplace.
Great. Great. So, now... what does "involvement" mean?
This is not an all-time low. All-Time Low: 26% (recorded in 2000, when tracking first started, and remaining in a 26%–30% range through 2013). Not so long ago it was worse than today.
Is this related to Gen Z? They are famously anti-work and quiet quitting. Most would rather be on social media and dream of being influencers. They see their real jobs as short term jobs and not careers to invest in.
Really why can't they buckle down and stay in their stable jobs in order to afford a rented one bedroom forever while being priced out of health insurance and children?
Theres not a role for me to move into unless the people above me die or get fired. Nither of which looks to be on the horizon. So ill just cruise untill my manager is right for cutting down and taking his job.
Its hard to disagree with them too, when working hours are flexible, the pay is better and not to mention the social validation. you should see how many silver haired professionals are now Tiktok podcasters and mommies giving childrearing advice on Tiktok.v
The young are always claimed to be lazy and unmotivated. I really, really doubt that the media is correct for the first time in millenia.
Quiet quitting is a new word for an old practice that always happens when humans feel compelled to engage in work they have weak motivations to carry out.
For me to believe anti-work, I'd have to see a strong employment market where young people are bragging about being lazy, not a weak market where they're frustrated by the lack of opportunities.
ParkerLewis527 | 18 hours ago
On a micro level I work hard for my own dignity and because I like my immediate team, I work for them. On the other side, the macro level, we are constantly clawing to get more than a 2% raise every year while not back filling positions and being told we have to watch every dime for what? The problem is we have seen behind the curtain, we work so that 5 people at the top and our PE owners can make more money than we could ever imagine. Where is the motivation? I labor for a modest salary so that a handful can be absolutely filthy rich. I am not ungrateful but knowing the system takes away from any real motivation.
frongles23 | 18 hours ago
Friendly reminder that a 2-3% raise isn't a raise. It's the same or less money for more experienced work.
fuzzygoosejuice | 18 hours ago
It’s a cost of living adjustment, nothing more. And these days, even if you’re lucky enough to get one, it doesn’t keep up with the cost of living.
Coldsmoke888 | 18 hours ago
Yeah… Company I work for, it’s been 3% for decades. Was pretty good 20 years ago… Now, it’s whatever.
Master_Dogs | 12 hours ago
Not sure that's ever been a good raise, at least US wise inflation going back 20 years (BLS data goes back to 1957 too) has always trended in the 2% range: https://data.bls.gov/pdq/SurveyOutputServlet
Many years it was above 2% too, but just below 3%. Then if you look at recent years, plus things like the 70s + 80s, it's always been a token CoL adjustment at best, at worse not even enough to cover inflation.
I think the difference is in recent years we've actually been talking about this and realizing collectively how fucked we are. I guess the Internet helps with that, this stuff goes viral and people are actually aware of what a shitty deal we all got.
Alternatively since I'm only in my 30s you could just say we've sucked it up and taken this vs the much harder ask of strikes and protests. At least US wise; different story in much of Europe. And of course even US wise we can't forget about stuff like occupy wall street that tried unsuccessfully to advocate for... Something. A better system at least. Kinda fizzled out and idk if they ever had the best messaging besides wall street sucks which we all know.
Broken_Atoms | 16 hours ago
It’s less money. A 3% raise is absolutely a large pay cut relative to inflation right now.
Excellent-Phone8326 | an hour ago
Really frustrating when we don't even get that and are told off when we ask about it.
hw999 | 10 hours ago
We hold the power, but we refuse to organize. You seem to be fully aware of the situation, yet you do nothing? Get your co-workers together to discuss this. Do it regularly. A plan will form, i promise.
AdministrationIll619 | 9 hours ago
One of the few reasons the public/non profit sectors > private sector
otheraccountisabmw | 17 hours ago
Are you me?
CyberSmith31337 | 19 hours ago
Hard to be “engaged” when your dollar doesn’t go as far, your bosses are openly promoting and sharing their wet dreams about firing you every day on LinkedIn to replace with AI, and the government is a literal clown show with circus cars. Not even mentioning the climate crisis and the warnings that humanity is gonna be wiped out by AI, while people fund the company promising to do it.
Not sure how people are staying engaged.
OK_x86 | 19 hours ago
Probably knowing that you are one medical emergency away from bankruptcy doesn't help either.
joepez | 18 hours ago
Don’t forget that our news media is operating in rage bait mode and social media is a dumpster fire. Somehow we have done nothing about it and run out of ideas.
seaQueue | 3 hours ago
That's because both mass and social media are 100% devoted to making us angry at each other and distracted so we can't organize
RealSlyck | 19 hours ago
So, crude theory is the US will be France in the 1980s…mid economy, rising crime. Other countries who’ve mastered the information revolution will fair much better. American exceptionalism is about to time out, such a shame too.
austinbarrow | 18 hours ago
Republicans haven't believed in American Exceptionalism in a decade now. So, all in all, it's unsurprising that they've led us deeper down this path during that time with their policies.
joepez | 18 hours ago
Disagree. The party has fractured but remained aligned because of shared power and money.
It’s a tiny fraction built around conservatism. Two larger factions with one built around Dixie faux-royalty and religious evangelist who don’t practice what they preach. And then a smattering of other.
Agamemnon323 | 3 hours ago
The party is a bunch of crooks that care about nothing except money and power. You can't trust literally anything that they say because they will say literally anything to get more money and power.
Frequently_lucky | 17 minutes ago
Same for democrats. The two party system have led to parties with a too wide spectrum of ideas and that agree on little except that the other party is the most evil thing in the world. They are more akin to coalitions.
In other countries those same parties would be fragmented into smaller but more homogeneous parties .
AppropriateKey4905 | 19 hours ago
This is it. I can’t help but feel like I’m on borrowed time. The second AI and sufficient automation is put in place, I will be shown the door.
Knowing this future is not so distant makes it hard to stay motivated.
Maxpowr9 | 15 hours ago
Those remote workers will be the first on the chopping block too. There is going to be a lot of pissed off white-collar workers fighting over fewer jobs leading to lower pay.
DanangBobby | 17 hours ago
Aint nobody going to figure it out for you
Available_Card_6907 | 16 hours ago
>So, crude theory is the US will be France in the 1980s…mid economy, rising crime.
This is rich comparing the US to France because France's economy is in the shitter right now in 2026.
TheTimberFactory | 10 hours ago
This. What a bad take.
France is going to be a dumpster fire for a few decades at this point. They did it to themselves.
McCool303 | 16 hours ago
Did American exceptionalism time out? Or was it unintentionally killed and mismanagement by the very people that parroted its exceptionalism? From where I am sitting we gave up being exceptional when we decided that what makes America exceptional is its things and its ability to project its strength/power across the world. As opposed to the reality that it’s exceptionalism comes from the people, its culture and our foundations/values in western democratic enlightenment that inspired to world to liberty.
Toptomcat | 16 hours ago
> Other countries who’ve mastered the information revolution will fair much better.
Can you be more specific about who you think is in a notably better position to actually do that?
myWeedAccountMaaaaan | 13 hours ago
I’d say China. Mainly because they’ve built the foundational infrastructure to support the necessary growth to navigate the information revolution. The US doesn’t have the capacity and neither does the EU.
Thistlemanizzle | 19 hours ago
You underestimate America's ability to "get away with it."
No-Journalist-9036 | 18 hours ago
you mean like the bond crisis and national debt ?
Thistlemanizzle | 18 hours ago
Yes
TheTimberFactory | 10 hours ago
They'll just print more lmao
adeniumlover | 18 hours ago
Nothing shameful about it. This is what people wanted.
BrotherLout | 19 hours ago
Did you even bother to look up US crime statistics before posting your genius theory?
dontknow_anything | 14 hours ago
As long as immigration of H1B and O1 remains, American exceptionalism will not end. Though, if US continues to reject highly educated researchers and cut more of the research funding for colleges, it will. If it makes life harder for top scientists and engineers, and these people starting moving to China or stay in their countries, the gap will close. Taking mostly best of the best of other countries is what has been keeping US above others for sometime.
TheTimberFactory | 10 hours ago
H1Bs need to end.
Its a terrible racket.
TrumpChildOnahole | 19 hours ago
Two more weeks.
IKnewThat45 | 8 hours ago
??? crime is at a historic low. like the lowest ever in US history
SeaweedLevel1937 | 15 hours ago
I think it’ll be closer to the American economy in the 1970’s mixed with the shock bubble pop of the late ‘90s but on a larger scale. America will bounce back, they’ve overcame worse, but it will have to go thru some pain first.
Patient-Bowler8027 | 17 hours ago
A shame for whom? For affluent Americans who are unaware of all the unimaginable pain and suffering their country has caused so they can drive their Benz? Nobody else is benefiting from the US sitting atop the heap.
No-Journalist-9036 | 18 hours ago
When France moved from an industrial power churning out STEM graduates to arts/humanities churning out handbags. There's so many LV bags on can buy right .
Question is what's American churning out ? I'd say media "culture" content
Hexagonalshits | 18 hours ago
Small communities. Basically narrow your focus to your immediate friends, coworkers and family. Your immediate neighborhood
Your boss might be an ass. But you can still mentor younger workers. You can still go out and start your own thing. In my field at least
No-Journalist-9036 | 18 hours ago
Live this idea, we have more agency and independence than many doomsayers bemoan
goddamnmoose | 19 hours ago
Watching my supervisor tape up AI generated posters about safety tips when we have a fully staffed graphic design department at the main office that can easily make and ship posters to us to use instead is quite symbolic of how the company is being run currently.
And I don’t really like how it’s being run. I am very checked out and I don’t see myself checking back in.
Edit: The company has a print shop in house that’s utilized by the graphic production department. We have the resources to not rely on AI.
GeraldJimes_ | 18 hours ago
Counterpoint is that internal design teams exist because you need to generate collateral that support your go to market activities.
It is rarely the most effective use of their time to focus on internal activations.
I'm in the UK, but our design team are basically banned from internal work without specific leadership approval because otherwise they get too many internal asks for their time and it detracts from work that might drive outcomes.
That's not to say internal stuff isn't important, but things like tips or good to knows feel pretty low on the list for having polished and appropriately branded.
goddamnmoose | 15 hours ago
My wife works in the graphics department of the same company at the office and it’s not an issue of the safety tips being an internal design. I understand your perspective but that’s not what’s happening here. It’s a lazy supervisor typing shit into ChatGPT and having it make slop instead of communicating with the graphics production team.
I really don’t like letting major companies like the one I work for be let off the hook when it comes to cost cutting measures for the sake of saving a few bucks. I think integrity matters and this is a pretty bad look for us.
Not_FinancialAdvice | 11 hours ago
> It’s a lazy supervisor typing shit into ChatGPT and having it make slop instead of communicating with the graphics production team.
I feel like this is one of those situations where the perception is "it takes about the same effort to communicate it clearly enough to AI as the internal team, and the AI will turn it around faster so less overall work"
Solvent_Soul | 17 hours ago
Yeah I can’t imagine being in a graphic design office for a company and then asked to make flyers for safety tips and what’s up for lunch next week.
mortgagepants | 16 hours ago
when on the job training was still a thing i bet a very junior person would do this kind of stuff.
biting-the-bullet | 18 hours ago
Using AI willy nilly for safety posters actually sounds like a compliance/liability nightmare
GhostofBeowulf | 16 hours ago
... Please explain how you think this works.
mortgagepants | 16 hours ago
this is what i assume is pre-AI, but i am a mortgage broker. i am licensed in pennsylvania. i tried running some google ads targeting philadelphia, but they were not approved because i excluded NJ.
the automated response from google was it is illegal to discriminate in housing.
i know this isn't some ground breaking example, but i would be more careful about compliance than just letting AI do it.
GhostofBeowulf | 16 hours ago
My point is it still ultimately comes down to a human to approve the message, just as it would were the ad made by your design team. There is no added compliance or liability risk in this specific use case assuming it covers whatever point you are trying to get across.
If you say "Chatty make me a safety poster," and don't actually check on the results, that's a bad manager period.
mortgagepants | 16 hours ago
if managers checked results of AI we wouldn't see a lot of the stuff we're seeing.
madeapizza | 13 hours ago
Like what? Any specific examples
mortgagepants | 12 hours ago
"make a response to this redditor but put it in a nicer tone..."
kingkeelay | 16 hours ago
Yea you can’t market to consumers that commute from NJ in your PA ads.
mortgagepants | 16 hours ago
i mean i can, but only if they're considering moving to PA. like i said, not some kind of crazy ground breaking issue, just something a person can easily understand while a computer cannot.
kingkeelay | 16 hours ago
No person easily understands mortgage compliance, there’s entire departments to manage and lots of CE. Not complicated on an individual level, but complicated on a marketing level. I was licensed in 18 states including NJ btw. You?
And yea it is illegal to discriminate in housing. If you’re choosing high income zip codes across the border into NJ to market to in addition to PA, you might be excluding lower income NJ zip codes. That would be housing discrimination.
mortgagepants | 16 hours ago
i'm saying a person can easily understand there are different laws on different sides of a river.
i'm only licensed in PA so having ads and dealing with potential clients from NJ made it both a waste of time and of money.
kingkeelay | 15 hours ago
There aren’t different laws per se when it comes to housing discrimination. They follow federal laws first, which state CE is only partly based on. At the end of the day even if you only market in PA, NJ, or both, you’ll be governed by federal law first and foremost in addition to whatever the state imposes.
biting-the-bullet | 16 hours ago
The posters may not actually align with standard operating procedures, if they're only being reviewed by some random low level manager. Then something happens and it's exhibit A in the lawsuit.
GhostofBeowulf | 10 hours ago
Then that sounds like an organizational management issue and poor management/training issue then. Like if you have an AI make you a graphic and it doesn't say what you legally know it must say then that is not an issue with the AI... The issue is human laziness. You can have the AI say exactly what you tell it to say.
This is not the same issue with like... putting customer info into unlicensed products or into retail licensed products versus commercial.
jingqian9145 | 15 hours ago
Using AI to create a little safety poster like “Dont forget to flush” or “Dont microwave fish in the company microwave Dave” is valid imo
Using it for external & client facing is atrocious
Lovestick | 13 hours ago
> it detracts from work that might drive outcomes.
This is main problem with AI in my opinion. We're having fun integrating into our lives, but it's not the promise that we're told. It's only another tool in the toolbox.
FeatherlyFly | 11 hours ago
I'm well over it being any sort of fun.
It's exhausting to talk to something when you have to constantly doubt and double check because it gets So. Much. Wrong, and when it isn't wrong, it's monotonous.
This is true in and out of work. If I have busy work that should never have been assigned and nobody will ever value, that's a good use case for AI, and an even better reason for me to move on from whoever is requiring that slop in the first place.
Lovestick | 10 hours ago
> I'm well over it being any sort of fun.
I can definitely see how you feel.
> It's exhausting to talk to something when you have to constantly doubt and double check because it gets So. Much. Wrong, and when it isn't wrong, it's monotonous.
It's being pushed on us far too much. It does solve small tasks easily, but having to sit there and talk to it when you can be doing something more productive IS exhausting. That's where I agree with it distracts us from productive work.
Again I see it as a tool not super intelligence, AGI, etc
A_Monster_Named_John | 4 hours ago
In a ton of cases, it's also clear that it's not being pushed to improve a company's or organization's work quality or create more-competitive products, i.e. it's being pushed so that useless C-suite parasites can sop up more money and so inept managers can go from working 3 days a week to only working 2.
OkArt1350 | 16 hours ago
Absolutely this. I work on my company’s go to market team. We have an amazing team of designers that create all of our public assets.
We don’t waste their time on internal event flyers, meeting PowerPoints, and other assets that never make it to the public.
Most private companies are the same way: spend money and human capital on revenue generating activities, and automate/streamline the admin stuff that has to get done but doesn’t need to be polished.
cybunnies_ | 16 hours ago
Might depend on where you work. But even with extremely lean marketing teams, it really takes us no time at all to throw together an internal flyer because most marketing teams make templating a priority. Even in cases where we are too busy to manage all the internal asks, there are often templates they can use. Somehow, they all prefer to ask ChatGPT to do it, and then it takes up even more time because I have to find out why this unbranded asset is being disseminated, why it does not meet accessibility guidelines, and why the templates were not used. When if I had done it myself from the outset, it would've taken no time at all. Graphic design is already not really taken seriously as something that requires domain expertise, and so we already have to deal with rogue colleagues who try to take matters into their own hands and lack the expertise to know they are bad at it, and AI has only made this issue significantly worse.
THECapedCaper | 13 hours ago
I work as an EHR analyst and sat through a presentation for one of the more notable EHR companies, they have a full on art department and chose to fill their presentations with full on slop while touting AI functions that were being demonstrated in a very closed environment. It looked terrible, I wasn’t impressed.
My organization isn’t taking their AI license yet, because it’s fucking expensive and doesn’t move the needle at all in terms of improvements to functionality. Thankfully they haven’t introduced analyst-replacing functions yet but I just know it’s coming down the line. Things just look bleak.
Not_FinancialAdvice | 10 hours ago
Where is AI being applied? Like, for what functionality? Epic already integrated it for physician visit transcription/summarization.
brianna7803 | 15 hours ago
Hi everyone! I'd like to chime in as I'm the wife in the graphics department lol 👋👋. I'd like to add from a standpoint of a designer that I agree with the fact that using AI in the warehouse and out in the trade is the laziest and worst thing that you could possibly choose to do. Not only does it create a compliance and legality issue with safety posters and stuff like that, but it also creates a very gray watered legality and trademark issue with our brands that we work with. Running their logos through AI and not using compliant brand guidelines that myself and my other graphic designer peers know is a very large issue that can lead to us getting in trouble.
Just like he mentioned, we have a entire print shop as well as the graphics team. I recognize and understand that a lot of companies do not have this luxury, however it takes five seconds to open Canva and throw something together that you know actually makes sense.
gimpwiz | 17 hours ago
It costs your boss time, effort, and likely some amount of political capital to have a team do those designs. He can have something barely passable mocked up within minutes and for free... what do you think he'll choose?
Happy_Feet333 | 17 hours ago
It doesn't cost "political" capital to use corporate assets to follow corporate rules.
And it likely generates goodwill at the graphic design department, since this request can be used to justify their continued funding and existence.
So the people there will be predisposed to be more helpful in the future. Even after they (in this case, the manager of the department) move onto other jobs in the corporation.
thewimsey | 15 hours ago
> And it likely generates goodwill at the graphic design department, since this request can be used to justify their continued funding and existence.
Maybe...but it's more likely that they need to justify their continued funding and existence by showing how they have made money for the company. And this would detract from that.
Happy_Feet333 | 15 hours ago
Yes, and each department has a funding allowance for things like printer paper, staples etc. Part of that is used to pay for the posters made by the graphics design team.
So they make money from the transaction.
And since the office is required by HR and the law to put up these posters, it's expected that the department order them. And it's expected that those posters will come from the internal graphics design team, to keep the money within the company.
Yopu | 16 hours ago
What if that time collaborating was good?
Thistlemanizzle | 19 hours ago
I use AI similarly. I would like something right now instead of waiting on someone else.
It's easy to spot AI slop, but so much is passing through undetected now...
I take the effort to deslop it at least.
ThanosSnapsSlimJims | 18 hours ago
I've seen some AI posters at work. The common sentiment is that while they may be faster and give you something right now, employees will see right through it. This is especially so when there's a graphic design department.
Thistlemanizzle | 18 hours ago
If it's undetectable/indistinguishable is that OK?
ThanosSnapsSlimJims | 18 hours ago
It's almost always detectable.
Thistlemanizzle | 18 hours ago
But IF it was undetectable would that make it OK?
ThanosSnapsSlimJims | 17 hours ago
If the company doesn't have a graphic design department, then sure.
Thistlemanizzle | 17 hours ago
That's reasonable.
Daily-Lizard | 17 hours ago
If you’re going to all of that effort to de-slop, to make it “undetectable”, why not make the designs yourself?
Thistlemanizzle | 17 hours ago
Because it takes far less time? I'm not a graphic designer?
GhostofBeowulf | 16 hours ago
Because these things cost resources and pretty much everything in the business world is based on the value-added principle?
Essentially it costs more to have a graphic design team perform this task than any added benefit from having them perform this task.
No-Journalist-9036 | 18 hours ago
I agree with making the effort to deslop, but we can only do so much with rising bills and your clients pile on more work
goddamnmoose | 15 hours ago
Eh. I think that’s lazy. But get your bag.
ZionistsWillBanYou | 16 hours ago
From a logical perspective this is a great justification for using AI, but I'm guessing based on your tone that you're suggesting having an entire department in a different city take the time and effort to produce and ship something that the supe can produce with 30 minutes in front of an AI and another 30 minute run to a print shop.
goddamnmoose | 15 hours ago
We already have an entire graphics department. Theres a weekly truck that takes POS from the office to the warehouse. AI slop looks bad and doesn’t make any sense if you look at it for more than 10 seconds. I don’t care if it costs the company a little more time and money, the posters look like crap. What happened to industry standards?
ZionistsWillBanYou | 14 hours ago
I don't think the aesthetic pleasure of an infographic chart that could just easily be displayed in raw text has anything to do with industry standards.
Unless you're talking about graphic design industry standards and pretty clearly the average joe doesn't give a shit about those.
themlaundrys | 18 hours ago
The C suite needs a lesson on what AI is actually capable of doing present day. I see it in my job all the time.
A worker leaves or gets laid off, and the workload is transferred to an employee that already has a full time role. The communication from management is that you should be able to automate this role and improve the business process to increase your shot at a promotion. The reality of the situation is you just get bombarded by stakeholders because the human being previously in the role had to maintain relationships to be successful.
Corporate has lost its humanity and the workforce is stressed beyond belief. When organizations are figuring out how to get rid of you behind the scenes, you’re more inclined to value your personal peace. Is being an engaged employee in this era worth it?
No-Journalist-9036 | 18 hours ago
I see more and more single person startups as people rather work for themselves using ai the way they want to , instead of being paid a pittance and being told how to use ai
Putrefied_Goblin | 17 hours ago
Maybe they can have an LLM summarize studies like this for them:
Chen, Fiona, and James Stratton. 2026. "Artificial Intelligence in the Firm: Bottlenecks in Software Production." Harvard University Job Market Paper. https://fion.ac/jellyfish.pdf.
Accidental-Genius | 17 hours ago
The C suite needs lead flavored koolaid.
shallowshadowshore | 15 hours ago
Or just lead. IMHO.
bodyguard1974 | 16 hours ago
Don't they have enough brain damage already?
theriskybusinesscar | 14 hours ago
> A worker leaves or gets laid off, and the workload is transferred to an employee that already has a full time role. The communication from management is that you should be able to automate this role and improve the business process to increase your shot at a promotion. The reality of the situation is you just get bombarded by stakeholders because the human being previously in the role had to maintain relationships to be successful.
This isn't unique to AI or even novel in the last few years. It's how executives with poor vision have their incompetence trickle down through management.
Red-little | 17 hours ago
I was absolutely ecstatic over an 8% raise I fought tooth and nail for this year. I've been asking for a significant raise for 3 years, since I do much, much more than what is detailed in my role description. I just did open enrollment for health insurance and my new premium is essentially the same amount as my raise per year.
How the fuck is that going to keep me engaged or excited lmao. An almost 10% raise doesnt even do shit anymore. I work my ass off, got a degree, and did everything they told me to. And I'm still one emergency away from being out on the street.
chrisk9 | 17 hours ago
Let alone across the board so many corporations making record profits yet claiming not having budget for fair raises and all deserved promotions, even in environment of high increases in cost of living. Why should employees put extra into their work under these conditions.
Broken_Atoms | 16 hours ago
The number I came to was 17% raise a year just to stay the same. The government is lying about how bad inflation really is right now.
dyslexda | 10 hours ago
This is /r/Economics, not /r/politics. Your personal basket of goods is not how we calculate inflation. Yes, it is possible your specific spending habits mean you experience more inflation than others. No, that doesn't mean the government is "lying" about inflation.
It was stupid when Republicans claimed Democrats were lying, and it's stupid now.
serious_sarcasm | 6 hours ago
Inflation doesn’t directly measure health insurance premiums.
awesome-alpaca-ace | 11 hours ago
For real. My groceries have not changed. I know this for a fact, but they are 50% more expensive
Animus_Antonius | 8 hours ago
Brother I spent 10 years getting a masters degree in economics while working as a part time marketing manager with a $2M budget—
I just applied to over 450 jobs in 2 years. 15 interviews. No offers. A few freelance contracts here and there. Dogshit. Depressing. I can’t even begin to imagine a raise.
I’m 36, and already experiencing some bizarre limbo where I’m too old and a bit over educated to pivot to entry level work and a bit too inexperienced for senior level work — so I’m sort of doomed to lie my way up or down — all the time — just to be invited to a job interview.
Take the 8% and just invest in your health more. Smell some flowers. It can all be gone tomorrow and you might not get it back for years.
If I’m qualified, I’d take a decent % paycut to do YOUR job, and there’s an army of Gen Z kids behind me who’d do it for less.
FocsSus | 12 hours ago
So are 84% of Americans.
5partacus69 | 11 hours ago
"Did everything they told me to" is literally a line from the movie Falling Down... just interesting
ThrowRawayacctr | 14 hours ago
I thought the US was great. What happened?
I make less money than you probably but I'm a millionaire now and I am likely 10 to 50 emergencies away from being on the streets. Whats up USA?
sdpthrowaway3 | 19 hours ago
For me, it's how quickly work expectations have risen over the last decade. I work in M&A and across the board teams are expected to do the same work level of work as we did in 2019 with less than half the team now. AI has helped massively, but it still puts unbelievable amounts of pressure on teams. More than ever before. I'm pretty burnt out for the first time in my life.
Now take how I feel as a senior leader and apply it to fresh grads who know their days are numbered with AI. I can see why people want to tap out.
Fearstruk | 16 hours ago
I feel you, I'm a Compliance Director. We're expected to assess the Enterprise, our critical business systems (300ish apps and systems), and a pipeline of 150 M&A's against a control framework of 1200+ controls with a team of 5. I told my boss that if they don't want to hire enough heads to cover the needs then don't be surprised when they see contractor costs through the roof. We're at $700k for 2026 alone and I project nearly double that costs next year as we include CMMC into the mix.
Spiritual-Maybe-6720 | 19 hours ago
This is not surprising. Alot of this can be attributed at least recently to corproate cost cutting due to AI with companies expecting more out of their employees with smaller team sizes and in the c-suite mind set AI filling the gap. Problem is with more meeting and teams being done over applications like microsoft teams, google meets, slack etc this problem is just gonna get worse
penguin808080 | 18 hours ago
My boss calls me all the time like "hey remember [x] that you used to do for me? You should see how quickly and awesome AI just did that!"
And i'm just supposed to be amazed that i'm now completely left out of every conversation, cut off from any growth opportunities, left to optimize my own department and then rot
But eNgAGeMeNt yeah
Putrefied_Goblin | 17 hours ago
All I'm hearing is:
"Stupid, delusional, and useless boss whose job is so easy and simple it can be done by an LLM -- who previously dumped all his work on lower-level employees -- believes employees fundamental to operation are more replaceable than him."
Once they get rid of everyone who actually runs their companies, they will start to fail but are too stupid and vain/up their own asses to realize they're the problems.
user485928450 | 17 hours ago
Yeah but AI won’t cut the crust off your sandwiches big boy
olliew72 | 18 hours ago
This is me. I work for a software company. We had a physical office until after the pandemic. Now, I'm wholly remote. Then about a year ago, everything my work pushes is the use of AI internally and externally.
There's never been a time when I feel less cared for by my employer and vice versa.
Putrefied_Goblin | 17 hours ago
Show them this paper:
Chen, Fiona, and James Stratton. 2026. "Artificial Intelligence in the Firm: Bottlenecks in Software Production." Harvard University Job Market Paper. https://fion.ac/jellyfish.pdf.
Altavious | 13 hours ago
I skimmed the paper - from the conclusion it doesn’t sound like the paper would discourage further adoption?
Frigorific | 11 hours ago
Over the past year AI went from barely useful for software development to being pretty good at actually writing code(it's still not good at design). A lot of people set their views on AI and then just never updated them
UncleIrohsPimpHand | 10 hours ago
> A lot of people set their views on AI and then just never updated them
Seems like a good thing as long as they believe that it sucks.
Frigorific | 7 hours ago
Delusional beliefs work pretty well until the delusion collides with the real world.
Not liking ai is one thing, but if you believe the technology is just a fad like VR and we will eventually go back to normal then you are in for a rude awakening.
UncleIrohsPimpHand | 7 hours ago
Never said it was a fad. What I said was is that it sucks. It fundamentally destroys what it means to be a human at an elementary level.
Frigorific | 6 hours ago
??? That's kind of a strange take. Elaborate.
NovarKalar | 11 hours ago
Interesting paper, albeit too small-scale in both time and sample-size to show long-term impacts.
"People could make a huge number of commits quickly, but code review was still the bottleneck. On one project, only one senior engineer was allowed to approve changes because he was the expert on the codebase. He was so bandwidth constrained that he could only review my code once a week. After some outages that were caused by AI-generated commits, there were also new rules requiring senior engineer approval for AI-generated code, which created even more review bottlenecks.” — Junior Software Engineer
Yikes... if this is how modern junior software engineers think then we are all doomed.
Skinny-on-the-Inside | 17 hours ago
I have noticed this at work, people who usually show up and make things run have been a lot less proactive. Nothing going on with the company to encourage that, in fact our company is run by decent human beings not ghouls, so I concluded this just be the impending doom of the elections.
People are in a full on CPTSD mode because our entire futures are hanging by a thread.
You want productivity and engagement? Bring back hope, stability and security.
Table-Rich | 9 hours ago
Used to love the work I do, being excited for new projects and features, wanting to learn and be better / more knowledgeable. Even with the corporate BS.
Now, I hate my job so much. I'm depressed every day. I hate everything we're doing. It's straight garbage, and I'm being told that this is somehow better than what we were doing before, as things are literally falling apart. I don't care about any of it anymore. Lost respect for a lot of people. Don't want to get on calls or help people anymore. I used to love helping others at work. I feel like I don't know anything now anyway.
On top of that, I got a low review score because, even though I did so much and my manager and team relied on me a lot, I didn't embrace AI enough. Meanwhile, I'm doing the actual work, while people who know and do less were rewarded for using AI... to do nothing. I'm doing your work and having to help you, because you're too busy playing around with AI agents, and I was reprimanded for that. And they were rewarded.
I don't care anymore. I'm completely disconnected from everything. I hate this company and I hope they fail miserably.
psychedelicdevilry | 18 hours ago
Average pay gets average effort. I can’t expect a more than 1-3% raise either, which doesn’t get even close to inflation rates. Why should I be more engaged?
SimpleVegetable5715 | 10 hours ago
Why should I engage? What motivation or inspiration is there? I used to take pride in doing a good job. Yes, portions of my job have been replaced (poorly) by AI. I also got a 0.4% raise this year, which is an insult. This is a Fortune 100 company.
the_blastomatic | 14 hours ago
Many of us don't do any work that matters in any real measurement. Tossing AI into that mix only drives the point home that a script can do most of the work you do. And that we, humanity, don't really need your work. Do we really need a zillion people making ads or bad TV or web apps for sharing your latest fart collection? Not really. Lots of the employment that the dotcom era generated is luxury work. Well-paying jobs that support an industry niche that could just as easily disappear with little or no impact on the world around them.
But we don't pay the jobs that we do actually need; medical, elder care, education, agriculture, commensurately to their societal importance while these luxury jobs proliferate and pay significantly more for significantly less effort. And to further waste everyone's efforts, we fill those industries with hangers on that often get paid more than the people who do the actual job. Education admin, hospital admins, c-suites in any insurance company, just so many people making mint compared to the actual job needed who do pretty much nothing. Welfare programs for rich kids and smart middle class kids.
SimpleVegetable5715 | 10 hours ago
Exactly. If we got paid based on value of our work to society; teachers, grocery store employees, farmers, social workers, nurses, and sanitation workers would be the well off in society.
the_blastomatic | 10 hours ago
Should a loser influencer who cannot provide any value aside from pretty babies be paid more than the "ugly" geophysicist that helps save our planet from global catastrophe?
InsatiableYeast | 18 hours ago
I work hard because I care about my clients and my coworkers. If I did not care about the work or my coworkers, I’d not do it. Either way I’m broke.
Curious-Baseball-65 | 16 hours ago
Yeah I’m ready to revolt. The power dynamic between employer and employee has gone way out of wack. Someday someone very smart and very angry is going to take back their rights by any means necessary
Thick_Income_8647 | 7 hours ago
They call it 'engagement' while my raise is eaten by inflation. Disengaging is a rational financial survival strategy, not an attitude problem.
NovarKalar | 12 hours ago
Am I the only one here who distrusts proprietary metrics like this?
What is stopping Gallup from changing the metric however they like? No one would be able to call them out.
But yes, I suppose my heightened cynicism is further anecdotal evidence of the conclusion, regardless.
FeatherlyFly | 11 hours ago
Distrust is reasonable because you really have to look into what options were given, how things are phrased, and how those things change from year to year and poll to poll.
But if Gallup starts literally lying, they are very likely to lose their reputation, and their reputation is the basis for their business. Their workers would be able to call them out and they'd be consistently off from other polls.
NihiloZero | 5 hours ago
>> The share of actively disengaged employees rose from 17% to 18%, while 53% were not engaged.
What's the difference between "disengaged" and "not engaged"? And when did these terms become commonly used over "job satisfaction" or other more obvious, straightforward, and clear terminology? Honestly, these terms just sound like trendy corporate jargon. Honestly, I thought "engagement" would be measuring how many people were actively employed to some degree -- y'know, "engaged" in employment -- but instead it's some bullshit about worker enthusiasm (as defined under one of their graphs).
>> Gallup defines employee engagement as the involvement and enthusiasm of employees in their work and workplace.
Great. Great. So, now... what does "involvement" mean?
Jellyfish2017 | 8 hours ago
This is not an all-time low. All-Time Low: 26% (recorded in 2000, when tracking first started, and remaining in a 26%–30% range through 2013). Not so long ago it was worse than today.
Candid-libertarian | 18 hours ago
Is this related to Gen Z? They are famously anti-work and quiet quitting. Most would rather be on social media and dream of being influencers. They see their real jobs as short term jobs and not careers to invest in.
purplescrubs | 18 hours ago
Really why can't they buckle down and stay in their stable jobs in order to afford a rented one bedroom forever while being priced out of health insurance and children?
jamesdmc | 16 hours ago
Theres not a role for me to move into unless the people above me die or get fired. Nither of which looks to be on the horizon. So ill just cruise untill my manager is right for cutting down and taking his job.
No-Journalist-9036 | 18 hours ago
Its hard to disagree with them too, when working hours are flexible, the pay is better and not to mention the social validation. you should see how many silver haired professionals are now Tiktok podcasters and mommies giving childrearing advice on Tiktok.v
FeatherlyFly | 11 hours ago
The young are always claimed to be lazy and unmotivated. I really, really doubt that the media is correct for the first time in millenia.
Quiet quitting is a new word for an old practice that always happens when humans feel compelled to engage in work they have weak motivations to carry out.
For me to believe anti-work, I'd have to see a strong employment market where young people are bragging about being lazy, not a weak market where they're frustrated by the lack of opportunities.
mistressbitcoin | 16 hours ago
The most succesful people i know in person are from crypto and porn, and had the ability to retire before 30.
And I should be grinding away decades at a career, worked to the bone, so I can retire at 60? Hmmmm