Standard Chartered CEO walks back comment about 'lower-value human capital' | Hacker News Reader

Standard Chartered CEO walks back comment about 'lower-value human capital'

wsj.com

57 pointsBrajeshwar80 comments

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.

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.

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.

That's not what the parent commented on.

"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.

Saying ‘banks exist to make money’ in response to criticism of dehumanizing language is like responding to criticism of factory pollution with ‘factories make products.’ Yes. That’s the premise...

Well, it did provide valuable insight into what possesses these executives to talk that way

Once again, I was not responding to the "dehumanizing language" aspect of it, yet here you are focusing on that...odd.

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.

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.

In the US, slavery is still legal and allowable (federally -- some states don't allow it) as long as the slaves are inmates. Many companies use that labor for profit.

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.

>It’s best just to view these organizations and the people who run them as immoral and sociopathic money printing machines.

People say this a lot, but that is exactly what we are doing.

We criticize their behavior and words. We are disgusted by them. We want things to change. We write about and speak about it. We vote (hopelessly). That is exactly how normal humans behave in regard to those they view as "immoral and sociopathic", as you say. "That's how the system works" is a fine thing to point out, but it's not some kind of evidence that people shouldn't react they way they do - that they should just accept it forever.

We are already doing what you are suggesting.

The logical next step is then regulation is it not? I don't hear a lot of clamor for regulation on these boards.

>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.

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.

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?

Because they live in a different world.

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.

I think what he said is deplorable (hence "yes and no"). However I'm speaking specifically to the premise of what the parent said around "it destroys team morale". What I'm saying is that your team's morale may not necessarily be hurt if you are a team member at a bank full of investment bankers, capital financiers, etc. if the promise to them is that many of them can make more money with AI.

Because their job, definitionally, is to increase profit. If you increase efficiency, you've done your job well. The people who hire and fire CEOs care primarily about this metric.

There's no need for insults. Have you considered that "the boot" in this case is the structure of market capitalism itself and that this structure has benefited humanity immeasurably? It could be argued heartless bankers have done more to reduce human suffering than any other group of people to have ever lived. If bootlicking means "maybe its not so bad that humanity allocates resources rationally instead of based on some arbitrary sense of fairness" than show me the boot and I'll lick. At least this boot generates excess grain and beef.

All that said, of course it was highly stupid to say this in a place that would be heard be people outside the capital allocation system and whose feelings would be hurt by the unfuzzy truth that banks exist to make money.

"lower-value human capital" sounds like a compliment to me, would expect a lot worse from an average CEO

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.

CEOs are there for the board to throw under the bus when necessary.

“skills not required” but they will throw their weight around as if they have them.

And get a huge severance package that can set the average person for life.

"its a big club and you're not in it"

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.

> they are planning something more like Soylent Green

Or even just Children of Men.

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.

Companies don't have a duty to their employees.

They should, but they don't.

Use and abuse is lawful and expected.

They're saying the quiet part out loud.

I would be wary as a customer too because there is little doubt he sees them the same way. Although perhaps their style of customer even appreciates this.

Still, a responsible CEO would resign after such a blunder because he has become a liability for business.

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?

Do you realize the level of sociopathy it takes to become CEO at certain companies?

Why do we continue to allow sociopaths and psychopaths to run everything?

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.

seeing it as a personality disorder is part of the problem. it is a social advantage and a form of neurodivergence. just as many autistic people lament being called defective or disordered many of these people feel it is a super power just like autism. you wouldn’t call your ER doctor disordered while they calmly repair you while you’re bleeding out and yet that is where people with these traits cluster because the job demands it

Lacking empathy is a defect.

false. this is parasitic kind of thinking. you’re absolutely willing to benefit from people who operate like this but will take the first opportunity to call it problematic. tell me it’s defective to burst into tears when someone is bleeding out on the operating table. if a surgeon did this they’d be shaking, an absolute mess and would nick an artery. your logic does not hold up. it is an evolutionary advantage that enables people to make tough decisions under pressure

We are all capable of acting through our emotions. The people we're describing actively choose to discard their emotions to gain some advantage in the world. This is not evolution. Its just greed.

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

The decline started when "Personnel" departments were replaced by "Human Resources"

This is what happens when you live in an economy, not a country.

That phrase "lower-value human capital" fills me with rage.

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?

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?

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?

You don't have to keep paying them, but you probably shouldn't sneer down at them and call them "low value human capital" or whatever

Exactly. What most humans value highly (though not always highest) is being treated with dignity.

> Should I have kept paying them until I could find them work?

Yes.

Do you view yourself as lower-value human capital? Why or why not?

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.

I didn't ask if you were lower capital for digging ditches or moving things. I was asking if you were low value for your current job or not. Why shouldn't you be replaced?

It's incredibly easy to make these arguments about how it's good to replace humans until it comes around to you.

It's incredibly easy to presume hypocrisy to avoid engaging with an argument. Yes, I was let go and replaced with nobody, and they now use AI much more heavily. One year ago next week. How does that change the arugment? If that's a hard question it may be easier to presume that I'm lying.

Baby's first Milton Friedman copy paste reductio ad absurdum.

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

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?

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.

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.

> 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.

When I read it first, I appreciated the honesty, though probably unintended. The facade of fake niceness is tiring. This personally feels much better.

Yes. Check out www.lvhc.co.uk hilarious and banging song about lower value human capital

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.

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.

I think he just proved that it's the C-suite who are lower-value human capital.

“If someone calls you a resource, call them overhead”

i still can't believe "labor capture" has not caught on as a resistance slogan yet.

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.

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.

Christ, what an asshole.

That’s how all executives feel. Workers are beneath them, just chattel.

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.

Humans employees are neither resources, nor capital.

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.

It is demeaning, obviously (sorry to be blunt). Some people have jobs that involve speaking about people in a demeaning way - that doesn't make that terminology not demeaning. It just makes those jobs inherently demeaning to humans in the operations of those jobs.

The human condition is inconvenient for people who benefit from speaking in this demeaning way for efficiency. It's better to accept this and adjust than to try to convince yourself and others that we can somehow stop being human (much better, considering how people react to being treated inhumanly...).

"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.

By that measure anyone who manages employees must be a psychopath. You must consider employees as a resource, in both the positive way (these are my teammates and owners of my company and human beings with lives of their own) and in the resource allocation way (how can I make my business survive and prosper).

If you think anyone who employs people is a psychopath and deserves ire, you're more or less condemning capitalism itself. If that's the case, well then my defense of the banking CEO is strongly justified and I'll sleep well at night knowing _at least some jobs exist_ because of capital allocators who can make tough decisions.

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.

> 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.

> 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

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