Michael Burry expects the US labor market to be split in two, with manual and service-industry workers remaining scarce and sought-after, while a surplus of office workers weighs on white-collar wages.
“I see a bifurcated labor market developing as unskilled and semi-skilled remain in short supply, but white collar workers, having proven their redundancy during COVID, will find gross excess in the labor market, pressuring wages at the end,” he tweeted on Tuesday.
he predicts a glut of workers will limit wage growth in industries such as finance, technology, and consulting, as employers shrink their teams to remove weak links they spotted during the pandemic.
Corporations always utilize recessions to cut the deadwood. But Tesla* has closed a office where workers were involved in the Autopilot software. That seems strange due to problems with Tesla’s assisted driving software. Some of the problem are due consumer misunderstanding of Autopilot. Autopilot is an assisted driving tool NOT a fully automated self-driving system.
Retail workers are benefiting in the current economy. WalMart in my area pays $16 to $20 an hour now. And they cannot find enough workers. But WalMarrt is tough. If a worker calls in sick or misses work or is late to work 3 times–they’re fired. WalMart wants reliable workers!
The working class is definitely benefiting in the current economy. And some white collar workers are out the door. But I would have to see many more stories about white collar lay-offs before I buy into Blurry’s thesis.
Corporations always utilize recessions to cut the deadwood. But Tesla* has closed a office where workers were involved in the Autopilot software. That seems strange due to problems with Tesla’s assisted driving software. Some of the problem are due consumer misunderstanding of Autopilot. Autopilot is an assisted driving tool NOT a fully automated self-driving system.
One area that was ripe for cutting is interpreting images for AI. Initially it was all done by humans but Tesla has developed systems that use fewer humans and more AI. This was commented upon recently but I don’t have a link.
But Tesla* has closed a office where workers were involved in the Autopilot software. That seems strange due to problems with Tesla’s assisted driving software. Some of the problem are due consumer misunderstanding of Autopilot. Autopilot is an assisted driving tool NOT a fully automated self-driving system.
I noticed that Tesla recently cut the FSD autopilot price from $12,000 to $6,000 and limits the $6,000 version to the pieces that work reliably. Could explain the software job cuts.
But Tesla* has closed a office where workers were involved in the Autopilot software. That seems strange due to problems with Tesla’s assisted driving software. Some of the problem are due consumer misunderstanding of Autopilot. Autopilot is an assisted driving tool NOT a fully automated self-driving system.
Reportedly, the laid off workers were labelling images in videos. For example, drawing a box around each car, pedestrian, traffic light, etc, in an image and then each subsequent image. Automating this tedious task with software means that the labeller only needs to confirm that the software has done it correctly.
You can also imagine that at some point the architects decided that they needed to modify the labels. An example would be if they started with a label for signs, but later decided it needed to be speed limit signs, detour signs and informational signs. Correcting the entire years of the database would take a long time. But once the process was started, manually, and the AI software took over they would not need as many labellers.
It should also be noted that drawing a box around an object is not the only labeller job. They also do a per pixel mask of irregular shapes.
Michael Burry expects the US labor market to be split in two, with manual and service-industry workers remaining scarce and sought-after, while a surplus of office workers weighs on white-collar wages.
One place I worked RIFed the daylights out of middle management, while the peons, and the “JCs” remained. From mid 2001, to when the company went toes up in early 2006, I don’t think I had a boss. The department manager was demoted to sales, and the one other staffer was let go, making me a department of one.
So that is the future of Shinyland? A plantation with a “Massah”, maybe one overseer, and scores of peons?
Elon Musk has always had a dim view of MBAs.
During the WSJs CEO summit he said, “I think there might be too many MBAs running companies, the MBA-isation of America” … “spend less time on finance, spend less time in conference rooms, less time on PowerPoint [presentations], and more time on just trying to make your product as amazing as possible by spending more time on the factory floor and with their customers."
Elon Musk gets it! Bean counters shouldn’t be running business, they should count beans. In other words, they should not be line managers but advisory staff. Sandy Munro also has a dim view of bean counters running car companies.
But indoctrinating every b-school student, regardless of concentration, into “analytics” forces everyone into the model of reducing everything to numbers, which is what beancounters do.
But indoctrinating every b-school student, regardless of concentration, into “analytics” forces everyone into the model of reducing everything to numbers, which is what beancounters do.
Thanks for that! There is a lot more creativity to building a business than reduction to numbers. The stories of people like Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk, Henry Ford, Andrew Carnegie, John D. Rockefeller, Vanderbilt, Warren Buffett, Steve Jobs, Thomas Watson Sr. and Jr., H. D. Patterson, and many others are much more interesting than reduction to numbers.
Most MBAs simply don’t have the inspiration, the dream, the drive.