Comment Re:McKinsey ? (Score 1) 127
In the eternal words of a German comedian: Consultants are a lot like eunuchs. They know how it's done...
In the eternal words of a German comedian: Consultants are a lot like eunuchs. They know how it's done...
can we replace CEOs with ChatGPT please?
Sure. But it won't happen, if companies wanted to replace CEOs, they could have done so ages ago.
The Magic-8-ball was invented in 1946.
Rejoice, believers, we are heading into a productivity boom! Preach the prosperity gospel of how more productivity means we're better off!
Are we?
What good is a good that I cannot have?
The irony here is that we're working hard on failing for the exact opposite reason of why communism failed eventually: We will have the goods that people crave. But people will not have the means to buy them. Our economy will not collapse because of a lack of supply, we will break down under a lack of demand. Because if you concentrate the means to consume in a few grubby, greedy hands, you will notice that this will not produce a demand that a strong economy needs to prosper.
Back in the good old days of kings and queens and an aristocracy that pointed to god instead of their bank account when asked who died and made them king, it was no problem that they alone could live in splendor while the plebs plodded along somehow (or just died of dysentery) because the economy was based on subsistence. There wasn't any relevant "surplus", in general you could consider yourself lucky if you managed to produce what was needed. There was no need for a strong demand side. If anything, that would have caused a situation similar to what happened in the East Bloc in the late 1980s: A lot of people who have money and then realize that this money is no good because they don't get jack for it.
We don't live in a subsistence economy, though. Our economy depends on a strong demand to survive. We already produce a surplus of goods that we cannot sell, not because the products wouldn't satisfy the wants of the consumers (again, one of the reasons the communist systems failed, they produced crap nobody wanted) but because too few of these consumers would have the means to satisfy that want and create the demand our economy needs.
So don't rejoice over a productivity boom. If anything, it will create a very pissed population that sees how things will go to waste that they'd need and cannot have. Imagine a starving person watching you dump food (or dump bleach on the food you trash to spite them), just instead of three hobos gritting their teeth in front of your local megastore, you're looking at 30+% of your population.
Which is armed.
It didn't. It should, but it didn't.
In what we call "developed" countries, famines were a past already half a century ago. Yes, until then, that equation held true: More productivity meant more food, more food means more people don't starve. That was for a very long time a critical factor in our economy. It hasn't been for more than half a century now.
What can be said, though, is that certain foods kept their price despite inflation. The price of sugar for example barely moved since the 1970s, at the very least not even remotely at the same pace as inflation. Beef on the other hand got five times as expensive since the 1990s alone.
We don't have a problem keeping our stomachs filled. Yes. With what... well, that's an entirely different matter.
And by the way, food isn't even remotely a relevant factor in today's everyman's budget anymore. Yes, we used to spend more of our money on food than we do today. But we also spent way, way less on shelter.
Get better employers, or negotiate better. I have an annual training budget at my disposal.
That's pretty much what we've been doing for a couple decades.
Now kindly piss off.
It's more that this is the group that is the most curious about it and that also may have questions where you can't easily google the answers.
Is there a way to opt out of this protection racket?
Is it illegal in the UK to spy on the US?
If not, what exact reason would there be to extradite him? Even the accusation is rubbish.
Well, ok.
If it's just yet another key that you have to pay a premium for a keyboard where you can turn it off so you don't accidentally press it, no thanks.
"You're welcome. Just
Quite simple: "Hey, competitor? The guy you shanghaied from us? Yeah, allow me to let you in on a secret, that guy bailed and stiffed us with the training costs. Just a heads up in case you plan to qualify them..."
1. It's less a lack of ambition and initiative, if my company doesn't want to invest in me, why the hell should I be invested in my company? Because if I train on my dime, I'll get the training I want that will provide me with the skills that I need to go somewhere else for greener pastures. If my company trains me, they can decide what they think will be useful for them and choose the training depending on their needs.
2. I dare say it's not more cost effective to hire outside. Yes, a better trained employee will want more money. But the key difference is that the existing employee already knows your company and the people in it. I know that C-Levels think that people are fungible and that they're plug and play, but they are not. Depending on the complexity of the job and the company business red tape, it can take months until a new hire is up to speed with company processes and procedures, both official and inofficial ones.
Zero carbon?
Dude, flat beer is the worst!
You have no idea how many horses you just offended...
"Conversion, fastidious Goddess, loves blood better than brick, and feasts most subtly on the human will." -- Virginia Woolf, "Mrs. Dalloway"