Do you think corporations are actually doing more with less?

[Anonymous]

I was listening to the economist Ken Rogoff and he said one of the reasons the stock market has been going up so much is because corporations are being able to do more with less workers.

Do you share his opinion?

If he is correct, then we are in unknown territory. The US no only lacks social safety nets, but Americans hate the idea of helping those who aren't as lucky as them.

[Anonymous]

I was head of dept at my last job with zero staff. It was all AI, automated and did not need staff. Just me. We had several dept heads with no staff

[Anonymous]

The UAW has been trying extremely hard to limit automation on the assembly line.

One critical point that people forget is that the millions of jobs we created in the last few years outside of health care and education have been in the gig economy. Think Uber drivers, food delivery workers, insta cart workers etc.

The US has always given the impression that it's a massive job juggernaut and that's true. But what we don't want to discuss is the quality of those jobs.

Yes in Spain it seems like they are all unemployed, but they have health care. In the US everyone is employed, but they survive on $2 tips here $5 there etc and forgo medical visits because they don't have healthcare.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I was head of dept at my last job with zero staff. It was all AI, automated and did not need staff. Just me. We had several dept heads with no staff

Why don’t you name these departments.

[Anonymous]

I think this is a known fact. Last year we laid off 2 staff and I was bitterly complaining that now I have to do their jobs. 2 years later somehow it seems like I even have less work, no impact whatsoever. Of course the layperson will say we over hired. The thing is I have been hearing this over hiring argument so much and I think it's a BS excuse at least in my team. In our case, we had hired a consultant to automate a lot of the bureaucratic work and it made a huge difference.

[Anonymous]

No, they're doing less with more, but the consumer does not have good options to vote with their dollar.

Yesterday I went to the doctor and instead of 2 or 3 ladies at check-in like usual, there was one (on the phone with a patient) and a bunch of kiosks. The kiosk wanted me to log into an app on my phone to get a QR code to check in. I didn't want to download an app in the waiting room so instead I typed through like 6 screens on a crappy touch-screen keyboard. It was slower and more annoying than if a human used a regular keyboard to check me in, and those touch screens will definitely break. Also, I had to scan in my driver's license into who-knows-what database instead of just showing it to a human.
But the hospital got to fire 1 or 2 receptionists so it's "efficiency."

[Anonymous]

We just got rid of a bunch of functions. Were they extra, did they add value? I dont know, most of them were marketing type functions so hard to tell (at least for me) if we were generating sales or better brand recognition as a result of them. Those functions were not absorbed, they just disappeared.

[Anonymous]

No. I am in accounting and it is trouble waiting to happen. This is one reason there are so many restatements. Not enough time to do reconciliations or proper proofreading

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:No, they're doing less with more, but the consumer does not have good options to vote with their dollar.

Yesterday I went to the doctor and instead of 2 or 3 ladies at check-in like usual, there was one (on the phone with a patient) and a bunch of kiosks. The kiosk wanted me to log into an app on my phone to get a QR code to check in. I didn't want to download an app in the waiting room so instead I typed through like 6 screens on a crappy touch-screen keyboard. It was slower and more annoying than if a human used a regular keyboard to check me in, and those touch screens will definitely break. Also, I had to scan in my driver's license into who-knows-what database instead of just showing it to a human.
But the hospital got to fire 1 or 2 receptionists so it's "efficiency."

+1

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:No, they're doing less with more, but the consumer does not have good options to vote with their dollar.

Yesterday I went to the doctor and instead of 2 or 3 ladies at check-in like usual, there was one (on the phone with a patient) and a bunch of kiosks. The kiosk wanted me to log into an app on my phone to get a QR code to check in. I didn't want to download an app in the waiting room so instead I typed through like 6 screens on a crappy touch-screen keyboard. It was slower and more annoying than if a human used a regular keyboard to check me in, and those touch screens will definitely break. Also, I had to scan in my driver's license into who-knows-what database instead of just showing it to a human.
But the hospital got to fire 1 or 2 receptionists so it's "efficiency."

This is a perfect example OP

Same with customer service phone and chat being replaced with bots. It sucks for customers but there's no recourse - you don't know about all of this on the front end.

[Anonymous]

Demonstrably, yes.

I had a client last year who was incrementally downsizing/offshoring their entire IT department. Totally inefficient, serious communication and accessibility issues, but they saved $$$ (on paper) so what do they care?

[Anonymous]

I don't about "more with less", but it's certainly "the same with less", and AI is just an excuse.

https://www.nytimes.com/2026/03/04/opinion/block-jack-dorsey-layoffs-ai.html

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:No, they're doing less with more, but the consumer does not have good options to vote with their dollar.

Yesterday I went to the doctor and instead of 2 or 3 ladies at check-in like usual, there was one (on the phone with a patient) and a bunch of kiosks. The kiosk wanted me to log into an app on my phone to get a QR code to check in. I didn't want to download an app in the waiting room so instead I typed through like 6 screens on a crappy touch-screen keyboard. It was slower and more annoying than if a human used a regular keyboard to check me in, and those touch screens will definitely break. Also, I had to scan in my driver's license into who-knows-what database instead of just showing it to a human.
But the hospital got to fire 1 or 2 receptionists so it's "efficiency."

I recently had a 15 screen long medical questionnaire that no lie had the finest amount of Hispanic/Latino subcategories I have ever seen. It also included polygamy as a marital option.

And the app dumped my entries three times before I was able to submit.

Even if I was a polygamous Catalan, I would still be enraged by this.

Oh...and the card pictures I uploaded were only for the billing department so I still had to physically present them at check-in.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I was head of dept at my last job with zero staff. It was all AI, automated and did not need staff. Just me. We had several dept heads with no staff

Why don’t you name these departments.

All of them pretty much. I was actually head of three departments all no staff. Everything automated, outsourced or in India and we were all remote. We did not even have IT, marketing, HR at onr point

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:No, they're doing less with more, but the consumer does not have good options to vote with their dollar.

Yesterday I went to the doctor and instead of 2 or 3 ladies at check-in like usual, there was one (on the phone with a patient) and a bunch of kiosks. The kiosk wanted me to log into an app on my phone to get a QR code to check in. I didn't want to download an app in the waiting room so instead I typed through like 6 screens on a crappy touch-screen keyboard. It was slower and more annoying than if a human used a regular keyboard to check me in, and those touch screens will definitely break. Also, I had to scan in my driver's license into who-knows-what database instead of just showing it to a human.
But the hospital got to fire 1 or 2 receptionists so it's "efficiency."

I recently had a 15 screen long medical questionnaire that no lie had the finest amount of Hispanic/Latino subcategories I have ever seen. It also included polygamy as a marital option.

And the app dumped my entries three times before I was able to submit.

Even if I was a polygamous Catalan, I would still be enraged by this.

Oh...and the card pictures I uploaded were only for the billing department so I still had to physically present them at check-in.

And this app was probably way overpriced and cost more than one salary for an admin.