Accenture To 'Exit' Staff That Cannot Be Retrained For Age of AI (ft.com) 59
Accenture has reduced its global workforce by more than 11,000 in the past three months and warned staff that more would be asked to leave if they cannot be retrained for the age of AI. From a report: The IT consulting group on Thursday detailed an $865 million restructuring programme and an outlook for the year ahead that reflects continuing sluggish corporate demand for consulting projects and a clampdown on spending within the US federal government.
"We are exiting on a compressed timeline people where reskilling, based on our experience, is not a viable path for the skills we need," chief executive Julie Sweet told analysts on a conference call. The company employed 779,000 people at the end of August, it said, down from 791,000 three months earlier, after beginning a round of lay-offs that will continue until the end of November. It did not say how many jobs had gone directly as a result of the restructuring, but said severance payments and other costs totalled $615 million in the quarter just ended and would be $250 million more in the current three-month period.
"We are exiting on a compressed timeline people where reskilling, based on our experience, is not a viable path for the skills we need," chief executive Julie Sweet told analysts on a conference call. The company employed 779,000 people at the end of August, it said, down from 791,000 three months earlier, after beginning a round of lay-offs that will continue until the end of November. It did not say how many jobs had gone directly as a result of the restructuring, but said severance payments and other costs totalled $615 million in the quarter just ended and would be $250 million more in the current three-month period.
What is this "Age of AI"? (Score:5, Insightful)
The age of productivity lost to fighting "prompts" and then sifting through the extra degenerated slop?
Come on.
Re:What is this "Age of AI"? (Score:4, Insightful)
This sounds like "stealth layoffs" again. Except this time, AI is the chosen boogeyman instead of forced work from the office mandates.
In reality, the "I" in AI will probably stand for the cheap Indian labor where the work will be outsourced to. Just as it always has for the past 20 years.
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It sounds like layoffs, not stealthy at all. I am not even sure 'exited' counts as much of euphemism.
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Yes, of course. But we keep seeing the avalanche of stupid cliches and pointless hype AND I'M MAD AS HELL AND I'M NOT GOING TO TAKE THIS ANYMORE!!!!
People love oracles (Score:2)
Mod parent Funny but the new Subject is part of the answer for the original question.
But my muse seems to be napping and I don't feel like letting a genAI do the "work" for me, so.
I think it's a bit of both (Score:3)
At the same time I keep thinking of the CEO of Salesforce talking about the 4000 customer service reps he fired. That's real. He's not important enough or big enough or Elon Musk enough that he can lie about stuff like that and saying something like that has a real
Wealth accessing skill (Score:4, Insightful)
The ruling class has been dependent on the peasantry for as long as we've had a ruling class.
That is not a situation they enjoy and they are taking steps and measures to eliminate that dependency.
I think this is really hard for people to grasp because it means the end of capitalism but not ending in socialism or communism.
I like to call it techno feudalism but you can call it whatever you want. It's an entirely new economic system that exists to service approximately 8,000 people at the expense of 8 billion.
There won't be an economy. It will be automated killbots and drones to kill you if you get in their way and they will be a handful of jobs servicing those 8,000 people and then a handful more as thugs to keep the people servicing the 8000 in line.
There won't be any buying or selling the speak of and there won't be a functional capitalist economy because there doesn't need to be one. The 8,000 will rule by Fiat and violence.
At least that's their plan. I don't really see a lot of reason why it won't work besides coping mechanisms that we all want to use because this world is terrifying to anyone who isn't at the very top of the economy right now.
And know if you are clearing even a few million a year you are not at the top of the economy. You are just a juicier Target for them to chew up and shit out.
I think the problem is that it's so far beyond what we are used to thinking about that we just can't wrap our heads around what's happening. It's like trying to explain general relativity it doesn't make sense unless you actually sit down and really look into it and maybe pick up a bit of math.
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I like to call it techno feudalism but you can call it whatever you want. It's an entirely new economic system that exists to service approximately 8,000 people at the expense of 8 billion.
What's worse about this is that AI does not need to ever need reach "General Intelligence" to reach this outcome. Robots at the level of a WayMo self-driving car are all that is needed. And those are getting cheaper to produce everyday.
The math is easy: Let's say a robot has $100K cost, with $100K maintenance cost over a 10 year life. That's a $20K/year robot.
Will any human here work for only $20K a year?
An aside: rsilvergun, Have you noticed that your Score:5 posts are reduced to -1 shortly after they no l
Re:Wealth accessing skill (Score:4, Interesting)
I don't know if he's noticed, but I've noticed it happening to my popular posts. They go up to 4 or 5 and then a few days later they drop to 2 or 3. Or very commonly, they start at 2, go up to 3, and then get dropped back down to 2. Nobody's nuking me all the way down to -1, but it's still unpleasant.
I presume they are using a bot farm to get mod points.
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Mod point problems are older than the prior owner, let alone this one.
I don't assume positive intent from crypto scammers, either.
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It's impossible to "wipe out comments" since you can always just browser at -1, which I do since it seems a large portion of people on here don't understand how the moderation system is suppose to work. They mark you troll just because they disagree with your post.
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Indeed. Evidence is mounting that for anything besides "somewhat better search", LLM-type AI decreases productivity. And has other problems on top of that.
Re: What is this "Age of AI"? (Score:2)
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This is the first step in convincing the public that they shouldn't trust their own knowledge since the artificial intelligence is superior. It might not work on you but it will on the next generation raised that way by the schools.
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It depends a bit on perspective and what you want/need. Maybe "more powerful, but far less dependable search" would be more accurate.
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The bean counters have determined its cheaper to use AI and hire a janitor compared a team of programmers.
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That would be an improvement for Microsoft.
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I thought the company formerly known as Andersen Consulting only hires fraudsters and bean counters. What would they need programmers for, they used to outsource these to India and Bulgaria.
Chief executive Julie Sweet uses AI (Score:5, Insightful)
Fancy term for downsizing (Score:5, Insightful)
This is just an excuse to fire employees who might otherwise be functioning normally. How can they know these people can't be trained to operate in the world of AI?
Re: Fancy term for downsizing (Score:2)
No one really knows the skills accenture consultants will need to prove added value on the age of AI. Or if there is any value to add when the LLMMs commoditize the market of generated pabulum.
So they're not really wrong...
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No one really knows the skills accenture consultants will need to prove added value on the age of AI. Or if there is any value to add when the LLMMs commoditize the market of generated pabulum.
So they're not really wrong...
Sure they do. The skills needed is to be cheaper than the current workforce so you have a much larger margin.
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I cannot read the main article since it is paywalled. This may not be the intent, but tut the first thought that popped into my mind is that this is a way to rationalize age discrimination. Who cannot be trained for the age of AI? Probably all the oldies that are too set in their ways.
However, if this is the intent, it may backfire. Those same oldies are the people who can judge if the output of the LLM is good. They may not wish to leverage the AI because for whatever reason it is not that useful in the
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Exactly my first thought too. This was thinly veiled ageism.
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How can they know these people can't be trained to operate in the world of AI?
Attitude. Accenture is a consulting firm. They make money by pushing clients into the new hot things (rinse and repeat). If an employee is not all-in on the hype train pushing AI, then they are not doing their job. If you don't love the AI and live the AI lifestyle, how can they trust you to push the AI?
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Same way a lot of Linux/Unix administrators couldn't be trained to operate in the world of IaC years ago : sheer fucking hubris.
Had a few folks at my job like that. "I'm not a programmer, I'm not writing code to start a daemon or create a volume". Completely useless when we're trying to automate every bit of server configuration centrally.
Now that AI is a thing, people will be expected to write prompts and MCP interfaces. We won't have use for a guy who knows every option to every LVM command. We'll hav
Barf (Score:2)
Pardon me while I clean up the sick that was violently produced while I was reading that gross piece of corporatespeak nonsense...
AI has been oversold (Score:3)
Businesses are scaling back on all the AI nonsense that companies like Accenture have been pushing. Hence the need for fewer employees. "Can't be retrained for the age of AI" probably means "can't successfully peddle the snake oil."
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Yeah. There have been productive uses of AI, like that protein folding project, but those generally are limited to very specific datasets, very specific objectives, and professionals who already know what the end goal is, they're using it as a tool and have the capability to discern quickly if what they're getting back is plausible and accurate.
But that said, there are still cases where professionals within a limited field have tried and failed to use AI. The most visible of these is the practice of law,
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That's a whole lot of market-speak. (Score:4, Insightful)
Let's translate this into normal human English: "Train your future AI replacement or you will be replaced now. Fuck you for working here."
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Pretty much. Anybody with some sense will activate their secondary job options now. Only those with no such options (and no sense) will remain.
Understandable (Score:2)
Even the people commenting on irrelevant news are getting replaced by AI bots.
such is life, adapt or perish
Julie ... (Score:2)
Alternately, you may turn in your badge on your way out.
Age of AI? PLEASE! (Score:2)
so-called AI is a fucking computer program, numbnuts.
Often with a garbage UI, like every other piece of crap app that we are required to learn in order to do our job.
Nothing has improved in that respect.
Bullshit-driven company needs bullshit workers (Score:2)
Why have a bunch of do-nothing dullards generate bullshit when the computer can do it for them?
cannot be (Score:2)
age of AI X cannot be retrained = Age .gt. 40.
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Probably more like "cannot be retrained" = "has enough sense to see how crappy AI is".
Nobody to blame... (Score:2)
A consultancy that didn't see AI company? They didn't hire and train their own resources accordingly?
The layoffs are the fault of the employees and AI, not management. I assume that is why the senior leadership will be untouched?
What's the difference between AI and a consultant? (Score:2)
You get slop either way.
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The consultant will probably waste more of your time. So this is actually an improvement. From "exceptionally bad" to "very bad"....
So everybody that still has some sense? (Score:2)
I guess Accenture will not be around anymore in 10 years or so. Good.
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I guess Accenture will not be around anymore in 10 years or so. Good.
I would not bet on it. They used to be called Arthur Andersen and yet they are still here somehow.
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Not quite. They actually split from Arthur Andersen and Arthur Andersen then died (while being one of the 5 largest multinationals) due to their criminal conduct regarding Enron. That did give us SOX, so something useful came out of it.
So anyone over 45? (Score:2)
Iâ(TM)m sure they will thoroughly test their workers ability to use a chat-bot, then determine that each one who doesnâ(TM)t use it properly happens to be born before 1990.
Is this a slam on the company? (Score:4, Informative)
"We are exiting on a compressed timeline people where reskilling, based on our experience, is not a viable path for the skills we need," chief executive Julie Sweet told analysts on a conference call.
Silly, stupid jargon. You're not fired! You're exited!
What does all this mean? Are the needed skills simply not possible for workers to acquire? If skilled and experienced workers cannot be trained for these new skills, wouldn't that imply that new college graduates with no experience should have an even harder time being trained?
My reading is that all of this is a reflection of financial realities. It has nothing to do with training and everything to do with a drop in customer contracts due to the worsening economic outlook. Admitting those financial realities would tank their stock, so instead the executives blame worker incompetence. But this doesn't make sense. If workers could be trained but Accenture can't do the training, that means that Accenture is incompetent. If workers can't be trained, that means that Accenture's business model is not viable. Either way, Accenture's stock should be dinged.
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No necessarily. It often took many months for a Fortran IV programmer to adapt to structured programming. Habits can be hard to break.
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"We are exiting on a compressed timeline people where reskilling, based on our experience, is not a viable path for the skills we need," chief executive Julie Sweet told analysts on a conference call.
Silly, stupid jargon. You're not fired! You're exited!
Back in the old days, firms mad either a point to stay in touch with former employees and ease their exit; if only to ensure ethe had a favorable impression of their old firm if and when they were in a corporate position to hire consultants. They had alumni networks and events, and even offered some benefits such as corporate discounts, etc. Leaving need not be permant, I knew people who had left, done a corpoarate giog, and came back at a higher level. Sounds like those days are gone.
Accenture does the software I work in (Score:2)
Accenture is the contractor which develops the web-based software I do my work in.
It is absolute shit.
They literally designed the software initially such that if things were done late they wouldn't process correctly.
I knew it was a shitfest when I first got to it because every page you see is a special case. For example, on some pages you can submit the form by hitting enter in a field, and on some you cannot.
Again literally, they have hired zero people who do my job as consultants, so they don't have anyon
Accenture is a joke (Score:2)
Everybody can be "retrained" on new technology, this is a weak excuse to get rid of people. I'm going to email my congress member and ask them to look into the shady behavior of Accenture.
I taught a 73 year old retired chef how to use Linux's CLI, he had only ever used Windows, everybody has the potential to continue learning new things.
"Based on our experience..." (Score:2)
"Based on our experience..." means they aren't using performance tests or actually trying to reskill anyone. They are just citing 'experience' to proactively fire those who they want to fire--probably anyone born before 1990.