Corporate jobs are threatened by AI because bots provide AVAILABILITY and workers don’t.
Any organization employing over a thousand people (let alone 5k, 10k, 50k+) relies on bulletproof repetitive processes to scale.
This means that FTEs are bogged down by flow charts and diagrams and it takes 25 people to complete a job together (a traditional factory line process).
We resemble that same line factory experience, but agents are taking care of all the work (which I get in my inbox 7 days a week by 9am):
We talk about LLMs improving the pace of getting the job done, but corporations gain a ton by not hiring excessively and even cutting FTEs down:
- Manageable office space (still on-site but saving tens of millions and larger pool of locations/buildings)
- Lower admin/recruitment fees – fewer HR/recruiters, office managers, extra fees and licenses, gym cards, health insurance
- Fewer management layers – this is why Amazon, Microsoft, Google are all trimming down the fat in the middle
- Fewer surprises with sick leaves
- Fewer risks of accidents (office injuries, lobbies, syndicates)
FLEXIBILITY is one of the factors that simply provides a larger know-how pool for FTEs used to performing 5 tasks a day, 5 days a week. It’s easier to build new workflows and automate them.
But what I rarely hear about is AVAILABILITY.
The startups and agencies I work with are already used to having most people on call. Doesn’t mean that people work crazy hours, but getting an escalation at 8pm is not uncommon. Some folks cover weekends or at least need constant Slack access to reboot a service or respond to a higher level ticket.
This is barely a thing outside of CX departments in corporations.
This means that, out of 168 hours in a week, companies lose 75% of calendar hours outside of the established 9 to 5 of a worker.
An agent works 168 hours a week, doesn’t take PTOs, won’t get the flu, won’t complain about mundane tasks, and needs fewer syncs with other agents.
When humans need prep time for a presentation or a meeting – during business hours again – agents can get that all sorted over the weekend or at night.
When human executive assistants start with clearing up business emails and appointments at 10am on a Monday, Lindy and other agents keep that 24/7 and CXOs already have their schedule set and emails responded before 7am on Monday when they start.
AVAILABILITY stretches the business week, doesn’t waste business hours, doesn’t require additional human capital to cover for sick leaves and delays, and can react on a Friday at 8pm instead of losing 60 hours before Monday morning.
Agents shine in areas where a corporate worker won’t. People used to all the work-life balance of 20ish billable hours a week delivered from home between lunch breaks and hairdressers are clearly not competitive against the power of tech.
Startup and agency employees are still holding the front simply by not shutting down at 6pm on a weekday and understanding that weekend pings may come up. Spending 15 minutes in a day to cover the full day of escalations isn’t rocket science, but means a ton.
