Zoom CEO Latest Executive To Forecast Shortened Workweeks From AI Adoption (fortune.com)
- Reference: 0179282236
- News link: https://slashdot.org/story/25/09/16/0842248/zoom-ceo-latest-executive-to-forecast-shortened-workweeks-from-ai-adoption
- Source link: https://fortune.com/2025/09/15/zoom-ceo-eric-yuan-three-day-workweek-ai-automation-human-jobs-replaced-future-of-work/
[1] https://fortune.com/2025/09/15/zoom-ceo-eric-yuan-three-day-workweek-ai-automation-human-jobs-replaced-future-of-work/
Obvious questions (Score:3)
1. Will employees still be paid for full time, or (US esp.) will they be shifted to part-time, and so all their benefits dropped?
2. Exactly where will they get new employees, if HR requires new hires to have x years of experience? (No, they won't get it from other companies, who'll do the same damn thing.)
Re: (Score:2)
1. Obviously not.
2. They'll add a 5-year AI bonus so people can claim 5 additional years of experience, if they know how to use AI. Of course!
Who's going to pay for it? (Score:3)
Why would I pay somebody to work fewer hours if I don't have to?
Plus anyone who is still working 996 is going to be super pissed off at anyone working three days a week.
Americans do engage in class warfare only it's just the lower classes to do it and they only fight each other.
I don't see us getting over the deep cultural conditioning that tells you the moment you see somebody happier than you that you're supposed to get angry at that person for being happy instead of upset at the system keeping you miserable.
Re: (Score:2)
Shit, why pay them at all 'if I don't have to' ?
That's the end point utopia they are working towards.
Seems they all have in common some weird 'if I was the last man on earth' syndrome.
We're only about 20% there, but they're accelerating with all the effort and focus they can muster.
Re: (Score:2)
One Man sitting on a pile of 8 billion plus skulls, secure in the knowledge that he has WON.
Re: (Score:2)
> One Man sitting on a pile of 8 billion plus skulls, secure in the knowledge that he has WON.
The Doctrine of Competition, sold as the ultimate means to every end and preached as if it were religion by many, is driving that "need to win." Combined with the greed that so many in power positions seem completely obsessed with, and the end-goal is always the same. Kill or be killed isn't a civilized way to view society, but we're far beyond the need to pretend to be civilized.
A mind for the bicycle (Score:2)
Steve Jobs famously stated that the computer is like 'a bicycle for the mind'.
But now, we're the bicycle, for their mind.
Funny, that.
Yeah sure (Score:1)
They'll just fire 3rd of the workforce and force everyone left to push 60h weeks instead. The CEO will be working 3 day weeks.
Profits will soar!
Senior Level Engineers Don't Grow On Trees... (Score:3, Interesting)
How do we grow mid and senior level engineers if we eliminate the entry-level level engineer positions? When the senior level engineers retire, who's replacing them if there are no engineers behind them? AI? (can't wait to see how that goes)
Re: (Score:3)
> How do we grow mid and senior level engineers if we eliminate the entry-level level engineer positions? When the senior level engineers retire, who's replacing them if there are no engineers behind them? AI? (can't wait to see how that goes)
I think the AI true believers really have the C-suites convinced that this will be the exact scenario. Don't hire new people now, just keep around senior staff to supervise the AI and train it up. As they age out, the AI "should" be trained to take their work as well.
Or at least it seems that's the way they are behaving. Granted, it's not like focusing on the short term and completely ignoring the long term is a new phenomenon. That's been going on for decades now.
It's going to be very interesting to see if
Technological progress (Score:2, Informative)
Did the loom make it so a clothier only works 1 day a week instead of 6?
Did the tractor make it so a farmer only needs to work a fraction of the time?
Automation gives a person leverage to multiply their labor. So one excavator operator can do the work of 40 shovel ditch diggers.
At the company I work at, we automate tasks all the time and we've never worked less for it, it just means we do other things.
I don't think anything different will happen with AI. Some jobs might be eliminated, workers will be able t
Re: (Score:2)
> Did the loom make it so a clothier only works 1 day a week instead of 6?
> Did the tractor make it so a farmer only needs to work a fraction of the time?
> Automation gives a person leverage to multiply their labor. So one excavator operator can do the work of 40 shovel ditch diggers.
> At the company I work at, we automate tasks all the time and we've never worked less for it, it just means we do other things.
> I don't think anything different will happen with AI. Some jobs might be eliminated, workers will be able to do more with less, and they'll either still be asked to work 40 hours a week because that's what they're being paid for, or they'll only be paid for what's needed (24 hours a week, say) which may not be enough to make ends meet. Oh, they thought they were going to get paid not to work those extra two days when AI is doing the job? How quaint.
> And most of us have to do something to make ends meet because we're slaves to banks and debt.
What sets AI apart from historical precedence is the immortalization of "dead labor". When it can do everything living labor can do and for free the whole technology creating opportunity thing goes out the window. While this is far from what AI currently is a system that lives up to the hype sure as hell would be.
news flash (Score:2)
Billionaire CEO touts something that sounds good but for workers will mean part-time hours with benefits stripped away, making the billionaires more while shifting "work" to unreliable technology for mission-critical functions. Story at 10.
Equilibrium of production and consumption. (Score:2)
[1]https://www.scry.llc/2025/01/2... [scry.llc]
[2]https://www.scry.llc/2024/12/2... [scry.llc]
Keynesian theory is right. The real cause of economic depressions is the mismatch between production time and consumption time which occurs gradually as productivity rises. Governments then create make-work jobs in a haphazard attempt to maintain consumption (equilibrium). Eventually, the impedance mismatch leads to collapse and a new system. We are probably on the verge of that change.
[1] https://www.scry.llc/2025/01/27/equilibrium/
[2] https://www.scry.llc/2024/12/27/work-week/
Re: (Score:2)
in one sense, Trump's tariffs are an attempt to create equilibrium by pushing the disparity back onto to other countries, who would need to increase wages to maintain consumption. ultimately, two things will probably happen - real wages go up and real estate prices go down.
UBI? (Score:2)
The problem is that the capitalists will take all the profits from "efficiencies" in AI just as they have taken all of the benefits in worker productivity for the past thirty years.
Our resident Nazi tech oligarch, Musk, has told us not to worry since when AI takes over we will all have universal "high" income.
It's not clear how this will work since the ruling class has been using all of its political power to cut any benefits for the peons and transfer all wealth to themselves.
Musk himself was instrumental
Re: (Score:2)
> The problem is that the capitalists will take all the profits from "efficiencies" in AI just as they have taken all of the benefits in worker productivity for the past thirty years. Our resident Nazi tech oligarch, Musk, has told us not to worry since when AI takes over we will all have universal "high" income. It's not clear how this will work since the ruling class has been using all of its political power to cut any benefits for the peons and transfer all wealth to themselves. Musk himself was instrumental in the Dodgy program to cut billions in government spending that would have gone to help regular folks so that they could give tax cuts to the rich.
At a guess, Musk's vision for "universal high income" is based on the assumption that the lower classes can simply be gotten rid of, leaving only the ultra-rich and the automation to take care of them. There seems to be zero plans to allow anyone not already fairly well off to partake of any part of the economy as AI and automation take larger and larger chunks of the available work. At some point, even consumerism will collapse as there won't be any income left for the traditional middle class and down. Hi
Re:UBI? (Score:4, Funny)
I mean, in Star Trek, you never see more than a few hundred people at a time. That's the future, right? RIGHT?!!
it may go down with some high profile jury nullifi (Score:2)
it may go down with some high profile jury nullification cases before the right to jury trail is taken away.
Re: (Score:2)
I was waiting for this one.
Whenever I see this proposed as a solution or the coming AI apocalypse, I know it's coming from somebody who has bought the AI hype.
I use AI every day, so I'm not an AI "denier." What I do deny, knowing the limitations of AI, is that it's going to put us all out of work. This is despite the predictions of a CEO who runs a remote work company (but doesn't let his own workers work remotely).
Promised for decades (Score:2)
Tech almost never delivers its promises. Social media was supposed to unite society, but it made society more polarized and divided than ever. The internet was supposed to make information more accessible and provide benefits to move society forward, but instead its generated paywalls and fueled the outrage economy in the name of clicks. Shorter work weeks and more leisure time have been promised for decades, and never delivered. People routinely work 50+ hours per week. In the 1990s, the buzz was paperless
just like many people can wfh (Score:2)
but alas the overlords won't allow us to
Most people don't want shorter work weeks (Score:2)
I expect that if if you give most people the option of a 4 day week for X$ or a 5 day week for X*1.25 dollars they will take the latter. In reality it will probably be > X*1.25 because all jobs have some "fixed costs" for things like training that mean that the work done in 5 days is > 1.25 the work done in 4 days.
Some will take the option, some will decide to work even less, but my guess is that the majority are willing to work more hours for more $
3 - 4 Day Weeks (Score:2)
And everyone just has to work 2 - 4 jobs.
The tech-brahs never mention the pay being increased to make up for less time worked.
Re: (Score:2)
> And everyone just has to work 2 - 4 jobs.
Think of the knock-on effect of businesses no longer needing to help cover benefits for people now working 2-4 part-time jobs instead of one full time job with decent pay. It'll be an amazing boost to the economy, and it will target the benefits at the only people that matter: C-Suite and up. It'll make the profit line go up, until nobody can afford to buy anything.
Put your money where your mouth is (Score:3)
Instead of predicting 3 or 4 day work weeks, why hasn't he implemented 3 or 4 day work weeks at Zoom? Since he hasn't, he is just spouting complete, utter bullshit.
Why would anyone believe a prediction that is being made by the exact person that is preventing it from being a reality?
lack of unions is why working time has not gone do (Score:2)
lack of unions is why working time has not gone down + OT with no pay.
We really need to move full time to 34-30 hours and add an X2 OT level at 50, 2.5 At 60, X4 at 80.
"The dental insurance... of DEATH!!!" (Score:2)
All these tech CEOs saying that AI is going to shorten the workweek is like when the supernatural villain in a fantasy movie says "I will bring you peace... the peace of DEATH!!!".
Having a laugh? (Score:4, Informative)
We've been hearing that forever. Let me know when it actually becomes mainstream.
Add to that AI has yet to prove itself. This just sounds like a line they're giving for investors.
Re:Having a laugh? (Score:5, Insightful)
We can have shorter work weeks right now. Technological advances have enabled that long ago. The reason we don't have shortened workweeks has absolutely nothing to do with how productive tech has made workers, and everything to do with employers wanting long workweeks.
To most employers, the phrase "short workweek" means "I pay the same but get less out of my people, meanwhile my competitors pay the same but get more from their people." It is simply not rational for them to go for that.
If we want shorter workweeks in America, the means to obtain it is not new tech, but new legislation.
Re: Having a laugh? (Score:2)
A doofus in an office has a spreadsheet that says you deliver more value when youre in the office longer
Re: (Score:2)
> If we want shorter workweeks in America, the means to obtain it is not new tech, but new legislation.
Or we could just let workers and employers sort it out. Why would I get involved in your negotiating a four-day week and four-day wage with your boss? Why would you expect you and I to have the same preferences?
That said, there are reasons employers might want one full-time person over two half-timers. First there's communication overhead. Pretty much every job involves communication and that's overhead. Second, every employee creates overhead (payroll, reporting, scheduling, mandated benefits, and the like
Re: (Score:2)
> Or we could just let workers and employers sort it out.
In practice, "let workers and employers sort it out" means, "let employers dictate whatever terms they want." That's especially true in this case. If new technology lets them get more work out of fewer employees, then employers have all the leverage and workers have none. Cutting workers is what the employers want to do anyway. Workers are left desperate for work. They either accept whatever terms the employers dictate, or they starve.
You could have made the same argument against almost any worker prot
Re: (Score:2)
> In practice, "let workers and employers sort it out" means, "let employers dictate whatever terms they want."
That is not literally true, not in labor markets and not in virtually every other market. If employers could offer anything they wanted, they'd pay me $1/year. They do not, they offer much more than the minimum wage for something like 97% of hourly jobs. Salaried jobs have no minimum wage and yet we don't get poverty wages. Clearly the same supply/demand curves which control other markets are at play here.
> That's especially true in this case. If new technology lets them get more work out of fewer employees, then employers have all the leverage and workers have none.
That's been the story of industrialization since the 1750s. Every productivity enhancement has been dec
Re: (Score:2)
> That is not literally true, not in labor markets and not in virtually every other market. If employers could offer anything they wanted, they'd pay me $1/year. They do not, they offer much more than the minimum wage for something like 97% of hourly jobs. Salaried jobs have no minimum wage and yet we don't get poverty wages. Clearly the same supply/demand curves which control other markets are at play here.
They offer you more than minimum wage because of the existence of a minimum wage. Otherwise they'd offer you not $1 per year, but just enough to afford to return to work when added to whatever welfare they can squeeze out of government and society. Minimum wages do apply to salaried jobs as well. Check out what you can earn in countries that don't have them, and then thank a union. Or throw off the shackles of the minimum wage and get into a type of work that really doesn't have one, gig work, and let us kn
Re: (Score:2)
>> If we want shorter workweeks in America, the means to obtain it is not new tech, but new legislation.
> Or we could just let workers and employers sort it out.
That could make sense, if you completely ignore facts and history.
> If we reduce the per-employee overhead, that would make employers (on the margin) more willing to have shorter hour employees
That's a good argument for single-payer health care.
Re: (Score:2)
>> Or we could just let workers and employers sort it out.
> That could make sense, if you completely ignore facts and history.
The history I look to is 250 years of productivity improvements leading to economic growth and rising standards of living. I also look at the history of not having hordes of unemployed weavers, farmers, longshoremen, and office clerks roaming the streets when their jobs were automated away.
Which historical trends are you looking at?
>> If we reduce the per-employee overhead, that would make employers (on the margin) more willing to have shorter hour employees
> That's a good argument for single-payer health care.
Well, it's a good argument of separating employment from health insurance. It's a good argument for separating employment from retirement planning (that is to say, company provid
Re: Having a laugh? (Score:2)
"Which historical trends are you looking at?"
People only getting more days off through social unrest and violence.
freedom to starve (Score:2)
Or, hear me out, we fire 80% of our workforce, degrade quality, and make the remaining 20% work 10 hours a day.
[1]ha ha, only serious [epi.org]
[1] https://www.epi.org/productivity-pay-gap/