[erulabs]

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.

[kokanee]

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.

[erulabs]

> 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.

[tintor]

Humans employees are neither resources, nor capital.

[erulabs]

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.

[happytoexplain]

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...).

[bluefirebrand]

> 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

[happytoexplain]

"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.

[erulabs]

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.