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#capital#value#human#more#business#why#labor#lower#company#where

Discussion (60 Comments)Read Original on HackerNews

etgpaoabout 23 hours ago
Calling employees 'lower-value human capital' reveals a lot about a company's internal culture, regardless of the PR walkback. Even if AI can automate certain tasks, language like this completely destroys team morale and trust. Good leaders should view automation as a tool to empower their team, not just a weapon to cut costs.
ryandvmabout 21 hours ago
Especially when it comes to CEOs. I have worked at companies where the CEOs literally offered nothing but the skill of being friends with other CEOs.
SoftTalkerabout 21 hours ago
CEOs are there for the board to throw under the bus when necessary.
DerArztabout 1 hour ago
And get a huge severance package that can set the average person for life.
dijksterhuisabout 20 hours ago
“skills not required” but they will throw their weight around as if they have them.
mbestoabout 22 hours ago
Yes and no. The company is a bank - it's job is to take money and make money with that. I'm not surprised executive management is publicly saying they want to make investments in assets that will help their clients and they themselves make more money.
happytoexplainabout 21 hours ago
That's not what the parent commented on.
mbestoabout 21 hours ago
"Even if AI can automate certain tasks, language like this completely destroys team morale and trust. "

That's what the parent commented on and that was my response.

asdffabout 21 hours ago
Where does it stop? Slavery would be fine if only it were legal? I mean that is the logical conclusion of a lot of business efficiency thinking. Business efficiency in a lot of ways is inhuman and against the spirit of "the collective tribe," which was originally about mutual wellbeing, not the ever more efficient extraction of resources to the benefit of the chosen few, although it was perverted that way at some point by those with the relevant mutations predisposing them to sociopathy.
mysteriaabout 21 hours ago
Considering the unethical practices done in the name of money I wouldn't be surprised that some companies would make use of slaves if it was legal to do so.
RiverCrochetabout 20 hours ago
Slavery is actually legal. The 13th Amendment banning it has the explicit exception "except as punishment for a crime". Prison labor is used by a number of industries.
krappabout 20 hours ago
>Where does it stop? Slavery would be fine if only it were legal? I mean that is the logical conclusion of a lot of business efficiency thinking.

Yes. Numerous corporations use outsourced slave labor in places where it is legal, or where bribery makes it easy to look the other way. Many of the rare earth elements in your electronics were mined and the devices assembled by slave labor. Agricultural companies United Fruit Company and Nestle are notorious for teaming up with local criminal groups and kidnapping locals in various countries and running slave labor camps.

fullsharkabout 20 hours ago
The CEO has a fiduciary duty to act in the best financial interests of the company and its investors. So if slavery were legal and the company weren’t using slaves the CEO would be in violation of that responsibility and would be thrown out by the board.

It’s best just to view these organizations and the people who run them as immoral and sociopathic money printing machines. Expecting morality is just going to disappoint you.

Henchman21about 20 hours ago
Why is it that the C-suites, etc., have so much fucking zeal for hurting normal people? Why is it that these folks are champing at the bit for layoffs? Why do they refer to people as "human resources" or almost unimaginably worse "lower-value human capital"?

And why, why sir, do you enjoy the taste of boot so much?

kyborenabout 19 hours ago
I believe "dark triad" personality traits are significantly over-represented among CEOs vs. the general population. IMO it's likely that these traits are positively selected by shareholder capitalism and traditional corporate structures.
slaterabout 20 hours ago
Because they live in a different world.
NDlurkerabout 22 hours ago
That bank needs a mass exodus of human capital, either from the top or bottom.

Reminds me of a much smaller scale event at my job recently. A manager who was not liked lost all their staff from their small department and is now stuck with all the work until those positions are filled.

catigulaabout 20 hours ago
Companies don't have a duty to their employees.

They should, but they don't.

Use and abuse is lawful and expected.

elzbardicoabout 21 hours ago
Oh man. It is a bank, Most finance people think exactly like that.

They just pretend most of the time they don't and we also pretend that we believe them most of the time.

Maybe it is about time we stop with all those pretend pleasantries and face the reality: when mega finance CEOs talk about our glorious UBI feature, they are not planning an idilic post-work world that looks like a Jehova's witness book illustration where we all spend our days writing poetry, painting and making music, they are planning something more like Soylent Green.

gedyabout 20 hours ago
> they are planning something more like Soylent Green

Or even just Children of Men.

bdangubicabout 21 hours ago
"lower-value human capital" sounds like a compliment to me, would expect a lot worse from an average CEO
cyanydeezabout 20 hours ago
I don't think it's just internal culture. It's the epstein culture. We're watching the rise of the 'permanent underclass' and debating about what color of underclass everyone wants to be.
rgloverabout 21 hours ago
Humans are humans. Not "capital." Not "resources." They're f*cking people.

Business is business and you have to be mindful of costs. But good lord, is it that hard to understand that treating your employees with basic decency is positive for your company?

SoftTalkerabout 21 hours ago
The decline started when "Personnel" departments were replaced by "Human Resources"
catigulaabout 20 hours ago
This is what happens when you live in an economy, not a country.
rambojohnsonabout 21 hours ago
Do you realize the level of sociopathy it takes to become CEO at certain companies?
Henchman21about 20 hours ago
Why do we continue to allow sociopaths and psychopaths to run everything?
cybercatgurrlabout 10 hours ago
because they’re naturally predispositioned to move and climb faster without the affective emotional response. they’re more effective and efficient and are unbothered by the emotions of others in their pursuit of their goals thus giving them an advantage. it will always be this way
rgloverabout 20 hours ago
Because there's a severe lack of education (in the school sense) on personality disorders. I was in a relative hell for nearly a decade until I learned about the Cluster B spectrum of disorders. Once I had an answer to "what the hell was that all about," everything changed.
iugtmkbdfil834about 20 hours ago
I am not always certain if the people who are ostensibly in charge recognize how much anger exists in the society already ( though I can only offer anecodotes ). There absolutely is zero need to antagonize them further in such a manner. Add to this other stressors, throw in midterms and you have a recipe for a disaster.
bluefirebrandabout 20 hours ago
I'm pretty strongly convinced that the people making comments like this have become so disconnected from the average person and insulated among their like minded peers that they have no idea how they come across

I'm wondering what it is going to take to get them to pay attention.

0gsabout 20 hours ago
i still can't believe "labor capture" has not caught on as a resistance slogan yet.
shem73about 21 hours ago
“If someone calls you a resource, call them overhead”
stalfosknightabout 22 hours ago
That phrase "lower-value human capital" fills me with rage.
delichonabout 21 hours ago
If I replace a crew of ten ditch diggers with one guy and an excavator, I have replaced lower-value human capital with higher-value mechanical capital for that task. Does the replacement enrage you in that case, or just the phrasing?

Should we be using spoons instead of excavators, and abacuses instead of computers, in order to maintain a high value on human capital?

kennywinkerabout 21 hours ago
Depends, was ditch-digging a well paid job that people enjoyed? Did your business grow 10x and you offered excavator training for those 10 ditch-diggers to become machine operators?
delichonabout 21 hours ago
Ditch digging is a crap paying job that most people hate, they just need it for food and stuff. After the mechanical resource arrived, I didn't need the other nine guys and just let them go, since I didn't suddenly get 10x the business. How does that change the calculation? Should I have kept paying them until I could find them work?
agentultraabout 20 hours ago
People might think twice about digging a ditch if they had to do it with a shovel and hard labor. Might appreciate it more. Price a ditch accordingly.

Now we have more ditches than we need, the environmental damage from building the machines, extracting fuel, burning that fuel... never been cheaper to dig a ditch but who the hell needs one? Business shuts down, people lose jobs, the market re-adjusts... but the damage remains.

Capitalism isn't the end of economics. It's certainly not the most efficient means to ensure the needs of everyone are met and that the environment in which we depend is kept safe from destruction. Great at maximizing the production of ditches and paperclips though.

Although technology doesn't necessarily need to displace labor. We didn't invent compilers and stop hiring and training programmers. We hired more programmers. We invented better compilers and new programming languages.

The language that AI folks are using and the choices and policies they support show that they're not philanthropists or even interested in capitalism. They're trying to monopolize their businesses and remove competition. They don't see the value in labor and innovation and competition.

JohnFenabout 19 hours ago
> Does the replacement enrage you in that case, or just the phrasing?

Neither. It's the inhuman attitude that people have little inherent value that enrages me.

catigulaabout 20 hours ago
Baby's first Milton Friedman copy paste reductio ad absurdum.

Why have any labor protections whatsoever? Are we to use horses instead of cars?

delichonabout 20 hours ago
Yes, I agree with Friedman that excavators are better than spoons. Could you explain why that implies that I'm a baby who opposes all labor protections?
fzeroracerabout 21 hours ago
Do you view yourself as lower-value human capital? Why or why not?
delichonabout 21 hours ago
I am far lower-value capital for tasks like digging ditches, moving things from point to point and proof reading documents than available non-human capital. Now non-human capital out performs me on many more tasks than a few years ago. I don't like it, but don't find it helpful to deny.
Henchman21about 20 hours ago
You've put 9 people out of work so you can make more money. I think we should send those 9 hungry people round your place for an explanation. Why do you deserve more than anyone else?

It isn't necessarily the language that is the problem, its your transparent motives that place you above others.

spiderxxxxabout 22 hours ago
Imagine someone telling you that their cousin who convinced someone to off themselves and may hallucinate occasionally that they should be the person dealing with your customers. You'd flat out tell them to go f themselves. But if their 'cousin' was an AI you wouldn't bat an eye.
josefritzishereabout 22 hours ago
I think he just proved that it's the C-suite who are lower-value human capital.
jeffrallenabout 22 hours ago
Christ, what an asshole.
mschuster91about 20 hours ago
Yeah, fuck that guy. There used to be a time when such statements would warrant a visit from an angry mob with pitchforks, it's time for actions to have consequences again. Simply because if this kind of pressure is not relieved, eventually there will be a repeat of the infamous plumber's brother incident.
madnewgrad26about 22 hours ago
That’s how all executives feel. Workers are beneath them, just chattel.
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erulabsabout 22 hours ago
Obviously a stupid thing for a leader to say about his own employees but I think getting emotionally upset about this statement is also pretty silly.

Having employees represents deployed capital. Some of that "human capital" is lower value than others. Obviously AI will replace the lowest segments first. Call it heartless or accurate, you're correct either way, but these are not words that cut deep into the heart of heads of banks - its more or less their entire job to be heartless and accurate.

I've worked for companies who have kind, sensitive, and inaccurate leadership. The result was everyone was out of a job, rather than just the low performers. Pick your poison.

kokaneeabout 20 hours ago
This is the kind of thinking that has resulted in an economy where losses are socialized and gains are privatized. There is strategic business value in managing your company in a way that doesn't contribute to the collapse of the middle class.
erulabsabout 12 hours ago
> This is the kind of thinking that has resulted in an economy where losses are socialized and gains are privatized

Socializing losses is definitionally a byproduct of government action, not of a private business.

> There is strategic business value in managing your company in a way that doesn't contribute to the collapse of the middle class.

I genuinely don't know what this means, and I'm not trying to be snarky. People, and Americans in particular, are considerably more wealthy today than they were in some imagined golden age of the middle class. If you want to keep your capital in a bank that is out for some imagined social restructuring, by all means go ahead, but I do not think a compelling banking product that will make.

tintorabout 21 hours ago
Humans employees are neither resources, nor capital.
erulabsabout 12 hours ago
They are, and being a resource does not make something less valuable.

A nuclear bomb and Jesus Christ are both resources and capital. The denotation is not demeaning.

happytoexplainabout 21 hours ago
"But it's true" is nonsensical as evidence for "it's silly to get upset about", unless one is a psychopath by the common definition.
bluefirebrandabout 20 hours ago
> I've worked for companies who have kind, sensitive, and inaccurate leadership

Being Kind and Sensitive does not exactly mean you're a bad leader or you can't build a successful business

You're grouping traits that aren't necessarily related