Want to hold on to your job? Get to grips with generative algorithms
The number of people who have been laid off in the first five months of this year in the United States is the highest since the 2009 crisis: more than 417,500 redundancies between January and May, and a significant proportion of them white-collar, administrative and managerial jobs, especially in the technology industry, but also in banking, distribution and the media. People who used to do everything from proofreading to translating, data processing, information searches or generating and transcribing documents of various kinds are now victims of a new way of doing things that is still in its infancy and is reflected first in those markets where regulation of labor rights is more lax.
Among technology companies, the number of layoffs is the highest since the dotcom crisis in 2001: then, 168,395 people lost their jobs in the year as a whole, while in 2023 we have already seen 136,831 people sacked, and we are only five months into the year.
The quest for efficiency and “doing more with less” in the industry is in large part due to the huge leap forward in the sophistication of generative algorithms, and points to the future: if an algorithm can do your job, then you’ll have to try your hand at something else.
