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I'm writing on a throwaway account for obvious reasons. I run a mid sized software company that does a mix of software consulting and saas. Quite common these days.
I want to share a real story about how chatgpt eliminated a marketing job. I have a full time marketing person who writes content (case studies, blog posts, client testimonials etc) and does SEO optimization for our website. He's not technical, but understands the problem we are solving and knows how to talk to customers.
Writing a case study, blog post or a marketing tweet took a bit of work. I'd brainstorm with him what topics to write about, he'd run some drafts by me and then after 2 - 3 revisions we'd publish it. With chatgpt I'd just write what I wanted in point form and get back a polished product in a few seconds. It gives you exactly what you wanted but puts it across in a way that's much better quality than what what the marketing person could do. Most importantly, none of the key points I wanted to make get lost in translation.
I decided last week to lay off the marketing person (2 months full pay severance) because I did not see the value in paying for a full time marketer when I can do a better/faster job with AI. I think this is the new reality that a lot of sales/marketing jobs will face.
This is a good thing. One more bullshit job eliminated that only exists to make the numbers go up.
This will be hard, but as a society, we need to examine the entire reasoning behind "jobs" and why "more jobs = more gooder". The entire foundation of that line of thought is fundamentally flawed.
Where I live, at lest in a medium-sized town in the US, there's a huge amount of work in hospitality, construction, skilled trades, healthcare, and every other field you can imagine. The only commonality is that none of those careers include "making content" or "social media". It's like at some point during the COVID pandemic people forgot that everyone can't sit at a computer.
Hospitality and healthcare occupations are doing badly in much of the Western World. Construction is highly seasonal, and arguably much of it is currently driven by an investment bubble rather than organic demand which could pop, ending in a long winter. Skilled trades, maybe, but you need a healthy job market so that people can afford these.
While these occupations are safe from AI, for time being, they're not safe per se.
> you need a healthy job market so that people can afford these.
So much this. I was reading recently about how remote white collar work has strongly stimulated trades workers like electricians and plumbers. Once all of the high-paying remote work is gone, who is going to be able to pay for that sort of work outside of doctors?
> there's a huge amount of work in hospitality, construction, skilled trades, healthcare, and every other field you can imagine.
These are mostly bottom-of-the-barrel jobs that can't find and hold on to good people. I worked in hotels back in high school and I wouldn't wish that experience on my worst enemy. Broadly speaking, these industries are hiring a ton right now because they've historically underpaid employees and struggle to find people who are willing to work for poor wages and toxic cultures.
Said elsewhere previously[0] but the reason is simple: because the only way we as a society have to distribute a stable supply of food and shelter is for (most) every individual to have a job. "more jobs = more gooder" flows directly from that: "people need food → food requires job → we need jobs".
Changing that has to come before the bullshit jobs are wiped out or there will be an even worse situation.
If a job makes the "numbers" (by that I assume you mean revenue or profit) go up, then by definition, it's not a bullshit job, it's a productivity enhancer.
'Bullshit jobs' is an indictment of the socioeconomic system that enables such jobs to exist in the first place. It is not an indictment of the individual doing the job; the psychological association between oneself and their bullshit job is at the heart of the analysis. I like this definition:
>"a form of paid employment that is so completely pointless, unnecessary, or pernicious that even the employee cannot justify its existence even though, as part of the conditions of employment, the employee feels obliged to pretend that this is not the case."
Right, which is why, by definition, if a person's job improves revenue or profit (i.e. "numbers go up") then it isn't "pointless" or "unnecessary," therefore it isn't a bullshit job. Thanks for clearing that up.
From experience, when working with clients on case studies and testimonials the individual concerned will often talk to the marketing team and then the marketing team will transform their comments into something short and snappy for approval before publishing. Perhaps that’s what is meant by ‘writing testimonials’ in this case?
Sure, maybe he does, but if that's so then we should read that and respond. Down voting and flagging such a comment isn't helpful. It's not even an opinion people don't like, it's something that has happened, and, if true that's very relevant.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35484643
---- I'm writing on a throwaway account for obvious reasons. I run a mid sized software company that does a mix of software consulting and saas. Quite common these days. I want to share a real story about how chatgpt eliminated a marketing job. I have a full time marketing person who writes content (case studies, blog posts, client testimonials etc) and does SEO optimization for our website. He's not technical, but understands the problem we are solving and knows how to talk to customers.
Writing a case study, blog post or a marketing tweet took a bit of work. I'd brainstorm with him what topics to write about, he'd run some drafts by me and then after 2 - 3 revisions we'd publish it. With chatgpt I'd just write what I wanted in point form and get back a polished product in a few seconds. It gives you exactly what you wanted but puts it across in a way that's much better quality than what what the marketing person could do. Most importantly, none of the key points I wanted to make get lost in translation.
I decided last week to lay off the marketing person (2 months full pay severance) because I did not see the value in paying for a full time marketer when I can do a better/faster job with AI. I think this is the new reality that a lot of sales/marketing jobs will face.