Shopify Employee Breaks NDA To Reveal Firm Quietly Replacing Laid Off Workers With AI

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Shopify Employee Breaks NDA To Reveal Firm Quietly Replacing Laid Off Workers With AI::In a Twitter thread, a Shopify (TSX: SHOP) employee has broken their non-disclosure agreement (NDA) to shed light on the

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I really hope the paradigm shift happens soon. If it only takes a few devs to make a company run like this, there is no reason for the devs to work for these companies that churn them for imbecilic investors. The real "unnecessary overhead" is all of corporate America. We are a society of ship captains too stupid to realize they are piloting canoes.

Take possession of that state house, that ground is yours. (Someone interrupted, and the speaker said "Shut your mouth.") You built that state house, didn't you? You pay the public officials, don't you? You paid for that ground, didn't you? (Cries of: "Yes," "yes.") Then, who does it belong to? Then why did the militia chase you off? You have been hypnotized. The trouble has been that they wanted the slave system to continue. They have had a glass for you and your wives and children to look into.

-- Mother Jones, Speech to Striking Coal Miners (1912)

This is an excuse to lay off employees, no AI break through replaced good customer service this technology existed a long time ago that just put customers in an endless circle regurgitating policy disguised as customer service, this is to reduce production cost and the bottom line. this 'chatbot'/ai is an excuse to lower quality for a customer experience and lower production cost to increase/maintain profits while passing blame on the shitty ai/technology. (after they blame the do nothing employees and ppl realise what they replaced it with was shit/'AI')

this is not advancement/progression this is a regression

budget cuts for a dying corporation

edit: did my own LLM research

I feel like an AI could easily replace some basic scripted jobs one Tier-1 helpdesk, but anything beyond that is diminishing returns

This sounds good just saying it but in practice it's not possible for AI to fully replace these types of jobs. ::: spoiler spoiler At least not yet. :::

"basic scripted jobs" can replace CEO/C exec/HR too this has nothing to do with it now.

No, a basic scripted jobs cannot replace HR. Maybe they can supplement some functions of management or HR type jobs.

Tier-1 helpdesk though - for example for some ISP's - literally work from a script. They have a fixed set of questions or workflows they can answer, and aren't supposed to deviate from such.

Think "Have you restarted your modem? What lights are showing? etc"

Shopify became noticably shittier when they started pushing their useless shitty app that just makes things more of a hassle and no businesses ever get better after they peak

no businesses ever get better after they peak

I’m in no way arguing or refuting anything you said, but isn’t it standard for something to not get better after it peaks? Maybe I misunderstood that part of your comment.

Lol. I mean I suppose it could come back up to another peak but that seems unlikely. As far as the company being not shitty goes anyways. Shareholder profits probably peak multiple times...

Once peaked, one should plateau and attempt to keep status quo, whilst looking for other places in which to grow

Damn it. My shop has used Shopify for years. One reason I chose it was the excellent customer service and help I received as a new small business owner.

Greedy people at the top of companies are always trying to squeeze more money out of their operation, to the detriment of everyone.

Perhaps employees should co-own the companies they work for so they can be part of the decision-making process.

All of the CEOs and C Suites generally, who are screwing over every human they have previously built positive relationships with, may be creating a vacuum for some bright activist investor type who despise these post modern C Suite’s lazy self-serving greed. Edit: this was just posted on Twitter, obviously I am not alone in my posted comment from yesterday. https://twitter.com/phantomblack691/status/1683127958888755201?s=46&t=0c17uBeIHaP3Nw63hslqAw

And just like that, uninstalled their app from my Android mobile device. It wasn't that great anyway.

Yeah that always goes well for your company when you replace customer service with bots and outsource labor to cheap markets. But then the customer is always shit, so standard practice.

Be interesting to see how LTT responds to this. Their whole online store is powered by Shopify.