Workers are getting blamed by many for (claimed) low productivity. But why isn't that seen as a managerial failure? Isn't it better to have the same number of people and use them much better than a smaller number of people that are just as poorly used?
Of course! But that is much easier said than done. If it was as simple as just telling managers find a use that will make money, everyone would do that instead.
A great example here is the NUMMI plant. In brief, Totota was kicking the collective asses of US carmakers. The techniques were not a trade secret; indeed, Toyota was happy to teach anybody. As part of that, they did a joint venture with GM called NUMMI, so they could show how they implemented core principles like "respect for people" and "continuous improvement". And it worked! Using the same building and most of the same people, it went from being one of the worst GM plants to one of the best.
Did GM learn anything? Hell no. Because GM executives valued other things more than productivity and quality and worker happiness.
For the curious, this American Life did a great radio story about it: https://www.thisamericanlife.org/561/nummi-2015
This GM/automotive documentary was also interesting: "American Factory"
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt9351980/
(Don't be put off by the dramatized trailer)
Really? I feel most optimize for their short term bonuses. Which makes them take too great risks since they won't owe the shareholders anything if they fail. Like all these overhiring sprees.
If there is a chance that predicted quarterly metrics are impacted, this type bloodletting acts as a hedge. The whole "we understand we're not where we said we'd be at and as a result we're cutting costs".
The issue of course is this is short-sighted thinking.
We’re far too controlled by the short term anxiety of investors. Financiers need to learn more about how the physical world works and not just fetishize abstract math conveniently labeled in politically correct tradition.
The burden should be on finance to prove its value and not be allowed to leverage recent history when the market could only go up as the post-WW2 world was a crater. Other countries have caught up and don’t have to play by the US’s old rules. Why should the next generation within the US? People who lucked into winning have an extraordinary burden of proof their success wasn’t just being born in a time-place.
None of the software CEOs are charting a net new course for tech manufacture; they’re just managing data center footprint that host vapid content.
The older crowd is aging away and the younger crowd that grew up with a Gameboy in their face, not WSJ, can start making their own content with ML (like I am).
The emotional temple that is social media is not interesting to the next generation as they know how to Docker pull Twitter and the like into existence. It’s a solved problem from an engineering perspective. We’re bored serving politically correct capitalist memes.
Intellectual output or technical debt?