#automation

Can we agree that data centers will be be farmed out.

Can we agree that customer facing jobs are safe, but only untill kiosk improvements are completed and we are looking at a wave of cuts there in Q2 of 2026.

What am I missing?

Android Authority (link below)

Rumors suggest Verizon will announce layoffs and store closures around November 20, though details remain unconfirmed. The company reportedly plans to shut down less-profitable stores and cut staff across remaining locations, while expanding AI automation to fill the gaps. It’s unclear if other big changes will be announced around this time, though it’s possible that there’s more to this coming shift than just layoffs.
Last week, I wrote an opinion about the current state of Verizon, as well as some of the moves it might need to make to right the ship. I also mentioned it seemed obvious that store closures would be part of this process and that Verizon’s situation would likely get worse before it got better. It seems this may be happening sooner rather than later, as rumors of imminent closures are flying around on online communities like Reddit and The Layoff. Likewise, a few publications have also picked up on the rumors, such as Phone Arena.

First, it’s important to be clear about this: none of the people I spoke to had specific details, only reports from their managers suggesting layoffs are on the way and likely to be announced on November 20. These cuts will reportedly include both complete store closures and staff reductions in locations that remain open. I also learned of an internal email from the new CEO late last month stating that the company will take “bold actions to make the company leaner,” which was similar to the remarks made during the company’s last earnings call. Like the previous call, the email offered no specifics.

From what little has surfaced, Verizon is expected to close underperforming corporate locations while “optimizing” those that stay open. The total number of affected stores remains unknown. There are also rumors that AI automation will play a larger role in the surviving stores, allowing them to operate with smaller staffs. For those unaware, this sounds somewhat similar to T-Mobile’s recent in-store changes that rely on T-Life.

Verizon has already embraced AI, so this part of the rumor isn’t all that surprising.

Earlier this summer, the company unveiled Project 624, an overhaul of its customer service using AI to streamline the experience. It also introduced an automated shopping tool that attempted to upsell me during a recent line addition for my son. Based on that, I’m skeptical that AI-driven retail changes will do anything other than accelerate the decline of Verizon’s brick-and-mortar business.

Further changes beyond closures and automation are possible, but we’ll have to wait until later in the month to know more. It’s also important to remember this is all rumor for now, and is subject to change.

https://www.androidauthority.com/verizon-shutting-down-stores-3613951/
Joe Maring / Android Authority

https://www.androidauthority.com/verizon-shutting-down-stores-3613951/

• Rumors suggest Verizon will announce layoffs and store closures around November 20, though details remain unconfirmed.

• The company reportedly plans to shut down less-profitable stores and cut staff across remaining locations, while expanding AI automation to fill the gaps.

• It’s unclear if other big changes will be announced around this time, though it’s possible that there’s more to this coming shift than just layoffs.

Can’t wait to see that

https://www.androidauthority.com/verizon-shutting-down-stores-3613951/

Is anyone else experiencing massive data and reporting issues for their LOB? An example would be incorrect regulatory reporting sent externally. It feels like the shift higher up to push for automation and restructure is placing health plans at compliance risk. Are we just going all in here despite legal, regulatory, and future RFP risk? This seems obvious as I'm typing, but more curious if others are seeing this.

I keep seeing post about RIF's / layoffs / etc, but wondering if those have more to do with local field maintenance technicians and not Building Automation staff.

I haven't heard of anyone in the few hundred people I deal with on a monthly basis getting let go. I'm not based out of any major hub.

Agentic AI has a 98-99.5% failure rate.

But business leaders are still pretending (lying) AI is taking peoples jobs.

https://arxiv.org/html/2510.26787v1

The best-performing current AI agents achieve an automation rate of 2.5%, failing to complete most projects at a level that would be accepted as commissioned work in a realistic freelancing environment. This demonstrates that despite rapid progress on knowledge and reasoning benchmarks, contemporary AI systems are far from capable of autonomously performing the diverse demands of remote labor.

Super sad to see what TR is becoming and just corporate in general. I can’t say who or how I know due to confidentiality but I found out some managers goals are to reduce people on their team by implementing AI/automation. It is literally apart of their performance review. I was sad to find this out. My morale is shot.

F5 is poised for recovery as it doubles down on the technologies that power and protect today’s digital world. With businesses rapidly adopting hybrid and multi-cloud strategies, F5’s expertise in application delivery, security, and traffic management has never been more relevant. The company’s transition toward software and SaaS-based models ensures sustainable, recurring revenue while its Distributed Cloud platform expands reach beyond traditional load balancing into full-stack app security and observability. By embracing automation, AI-driven insights, and edge computing, F5 is positioning itself as a trusted leader in simplifying and securing complex application ecosystems—laying the groundwork for renewed growth and investor confidence in the years ahead.

Kudos to FLD and executives focusing on XC(SaaS) and not just sticking to legacy system.

Verizon reported $33.8 billion in total operating revenue for the third quarter of 2025, not $34 billion in profit. Its consolidated net income (profit) for the quarter was $5.1 billion.
Verizon is currently in the process of reducing its workforce as part of a voluntary separation program and wider cost-cutting initiatives:
Job Reductions: In September 2024, Verizon announced a voluntary separation program for approximately 4,800 U.S.-based management positions as part of a cost-saving plan aiming to save up to $3 billion by 2025. Over half of these employees were expected to leave by September 2024, with the remainder departing by March 2025.
Technician Layoffs: The recent job cuts primarily targeted management positions, not specifically technicians, although overall headcount has been shrinking across the company and industry due to automation and digitization.
Financial Context: Despite strong quarterly revenue and profit, which actually increased year-over-year, the company has significant long-term debt (net unsecured debt of $112 billion as of Q3 2025) and operates in a highly competitive market. The cost-cutting measures are part of a broader strategy to manage debt, improve operational efficiency, and remain competitive.
The decision to cut jobs despite high revenue is a strategic business move aimed at long-term financial health, operational efficiency (partially through automation and AI), and managing a large debt load, rather than a reflection of immediate financial distress.
What a bunch of Dou--e Bags!!!

Story by Justin Lahart

Corporate America has ended its firing freeze.

Companies scrambled for years after the pandemic to build back their workforces, learning a simple lesson along the way: Keep the workers you’ve got, because if you lose them you will have a hard time getting them back.

The job market has softened in recent months, however, marking a safer environment for companies to start streamlining their workforces. A host of them have pounced, including Amazon.com, UPS, Target and Meta Platforms, which have announced tens of thousands of layoffs in recent weeks.

It is a shift that could have major repercussions for U.S. workers. Over the past two years, U.S. businesses have become increasingly reluctant to bring new employees on, especially as more recent uncertainty over the direction of tariffs made it harder to plan ahead. But they have also been hesitant to cut the employees they already have, an example of what economists term “labor hoarding.”

The result has been a low-hire, low-fire environment, in which recent graduates and others trying to break into the job market have struggled, but workers who are already employed have been largely insulated.

Now things are looking a bit more like the 1990s, when many big companies were focused on eliminating workers they felt were no longer needed, according to Joseph Brusuelas, chief economist at RSM.

Back then, “we used to reward companies for letting people go,” he said

A number of things could be at play in companies’ increasing comfort with layoffs, including optimism over artificial intelligence, but they all come down to the bottom line. Labor is a major cost, and cutting it is one way to bolster profit margins. Tariffs could be adding to the urgency, especially for companies weighing whether and how to pass through the higher costs they are paying for goods on to consumers.

Some companies also added to their payrolls as they moved to keep up with the surge in demand that came in the pandemic’s wake, and may now feel that they are bloated. Amazon had about 800,000 employees at the end of 2019, and about 1.5 million at the end of last year.

In a memo to staff last week explaining Target’s plan to cut 1,800 corporate roles, incoming chief executive Michael Fiddelke said, “Too many layers and overlapping work have slowed decisions, making it harder to bring ideas to life.”

It probably helps, too, that investors have appeared to welcome job cuts. Target’s stock edged up on the day it announced layoffs. When Amazon on Tuesday said it was laying off 14,000 workers, with more to come, its stock rose 1%. When UPS disclosed it had cut 48,000 management and operations positions when it reported earnings on Tuesday, Wall Street’s focus was on its strong results, and its stock rallied 8%.

Nor are companies any more in an environment where hiring back workers would be anything like the struggle it was after the economy began to reopen from the Covid crisis. Then, workers could largely pick and choose between competing offers.

The unemployment rate, which fell to a multidecade low of 3.4% in April 2023, was 4.3% as of August. Many Americans are operating under the assumption that the jobs picture will get worse: 64% of consumers polled by the University of Michigan this month said they expected higher unemployment over the next 12 months, compared with 32% in October 2024.

One risk for the broader economy: In an environment where employment growth is already low, any increase in layoffs could lead the economy to start shedding jobs. In August—the last month of available data before the government shutdown delayed Labor Department economic releases—the U.S. added just 22,000 jobs.

Whether the recent run of layoff announcements augurs a downturn in the job market isn’t clear, said Jed Kolko, senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics. While those layoff numbers are eye-catching, they don’t necessarily reflect what is going on in a labor force of over 170 million people, he said.

“You need the whole picture, and that whole picture comes from data that are not being released during the shutdown,” Kolko said.

For companies, enthusiasm over the possibility to automate more work with AI is also playing a role. The Federal Reserve’s latest beige book, which compiles economic anecdotes from the 12 regional Fed banks, reported that more employers were reducing head counts through layoffs and attrition “with contacts citing weaker demand, elevated economic uncertainty, and, in some cases, increased investment in artificial intelligence technologies.”

While there is evidence that AI is cutting into demand for certain jobs, such as software development, the degree to which it is more broadly automating away jobs is difficult to tease out, points out Kolko.

But even if they haven’t been able to widely implement AI yet, a belief that they someday will could increase some employers’ comfort with abandoning labor hoarding. Companies including Walmart, Ford, JPMorgan Chase and Amazon have said that they expect AI will allow them to eliminate jobs.

“Labor hoarding was especially pronounced in higher-wage jobs, where employees are harder to find and therefore more costly to lose,” he said. “Those tended to be tech industries and other professional industries, and those overlap with some of the industries that could be most affected by AI.”

Write to Justin Lahart at Justin.Lahart@wsj.com

https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/markets/why-companies-are-no-longer-hanging-on-to-employees/ar-AA1PDQy6?ocid=msedgntp&pc=W230&cvid=9d7c22f078db4c4cad85cabf269b82b1&ei=11

it’s all of our fault for picking up the mistakes, flaws or fundamental errors from the BTC. stop, Stop, Stop before they take all our jobs. If it’s wrong, send it back and ask for the rework. Don’t fix it for them and unless it’s dangerously wrong, go ahead and let the plants feel the pain.

AI benefits for Indian Public- Tata cars prices to slashed by 70%, Tata steel at half prices thanks Robots.

Tata Homes Spacious 2 BHK in Pune at 25 lakh, build by AI and robots using advanced materials developed TIFR , that cost a fraction of current material.
4 lakh CTC in for Tech lead job in TCS will let you all these benefits -so easy

AI does (not) -

Pay Tax revenues.

On the (exponentially rising) U.S. National debt of $38.0 Trillion whereby U.S. taxpayers pay approximately ($969.3 Billion in Interest a year) to outside Investors (almost a Trillion a year) that are both U.S. based, and foreign like Japan; and China; for example.

AI won't replace (anything) that is (not) computer driven.

CEO Elon Musk recently made a (Very incompetant) statement that it would replace (all) jobs.

It won't, but it will replace a lot of entry-level white collar jobs; and a lot of manufacturing; though.

Anybody in Finance worried? They have automated so many reports it feels like they are preparing to RIF us.

White-collar workers across the U.S. are facing mass layoffs as companies such as Amazon, UPS, and Target cut thousands of corporate jobs while embracing AI and cost-saving measures. Tens of thousands of office workers, from new graduates to seasoned professionals, are entering a stagnant job market with fewer opportunities and increasing competition.

Companies are automating white-collar tasks through AI, driving investor-backed efficiency but leaving fewer managerial and midlevel roles. Nearly two million people have been unemployed for 27 weeks or more, and confidence in finding good jobs has dropped sharply.

While blue-collar fields like construction, healthcare, and trades face labor shortages, white-collar employees are being displaced, overworked, or forced into unrelated jobs. Many laid-off professionals report draining savings and facing housing insecurity, while employers demand increasingly specific qualifications from fewer hires.

Economists warn that AI-driven restructuring is reshaping the nature of office work, eroding stability for middle- and upper-income earners, and deepening inequality in the U.S. labor market.

Source:

https://www.wsj.com/economy/jobs/white-collar-jobs-ai-324b749c

Best use of AI

The corporate bloodbath picks up speed with Amazon's announcement today to layoff 14,000 corporate employees (following their announcement to replace 600,000 warehouse workers with AI driven robots over the next 24 months) and following mass layoff announcements other major technology/retail brands; Target, Meta, Accenture, Rivian, Paycon, etc.

I would suggest everyone update their resumes but if, like mine, your skillset is corporate related, it hardly seems like there is a point.

Good chance Canon could get involved again during slow time in January / February. Anyone know if the numbers have improved? My small division is doing okay, but not reflective of company-wide hardware sales.

I've been seeing more companies laying off employees blaming AI. Amazon laying off 14K corporate jobs. So many roles within Fidelity seem very robotic to me as it may be easy to utilize AI to cut overhead the question is on timing? If you work in one of the call centers you will notice what ever role the employees are in they are following a script, oh excuse me a call model for that role. There's very little self thinking within Fidelity so it seems would not be too far off when AI could easily learn the call models and also how to sound human to a client on the other end. Just the thought for the day

One Two Gunjan is coming for you
Three Four swipe your badge at the door
Five Six layoffs is how she gets her kicks
Seven Eight your job she’s gonna automate
Nine Ten time to make a friend

If not you better get on it because you can bet they are busy right now training AI to replace you! It should go without saying that they will try to hide this from you by saying they are "swamped with work" after the last RIF, or that they "have decided not to work hard anymore", etc

Meanwhile, the more co-workers that you show management you can replace, the more valuable you look to Team Oracle

Looks like they want to replace a lot of claims positions and coding roles with this new AI system Optum Real?

Bucket 1 — Already, approximately 35% of health insurance and technology worker’s jobs have been transferred from Americans to non-American workers (e.g., H-1B Visa, Offshored).

Bucket 2 — By end of 2026, AI (artificial intelligence) will replace 45% of the Human workforce, eliminating their life sustaining employment.

The big question, where does that leave you, if you do not belong to one of those two buckets?

Yes, this keeps getting repeated over and over but it is very important persons realize what is going on in our very own country and the repercussions it will have on unemployment and our way of life BEFORE it is too late.

To make a difference, consider writing your Congressman and tell them that you are for American (human) employment. And ask them, “are they?!”

Do you think the QAs and testers roles are saved or are planned to be replaced by AI?

https://www.cnbc.com/amp/2025/10/15/jpmorgan-chase-goldman-sachs-ai-hiring.html

JPMorgan said Tuesday in its third-quarter earnings report that while profit jumped 12% from a year earlier to $14.4 billion, head count rose by just 1%.

The bank's managers have been told to avoid hiring people as JPMorgan deploys AI across its businesses, CFO Jeremy Barnum told analysts.

Soon PXT will get their permanent RTO! AI automated HR.

to reduce pay levels & boost profits all firms using AI scare mongering. Long way to go before is reliable

Acrisure is right now cutting 400+ accounting jobs. Good jobs, well paid (relatively) - this is all gone - last day will be in Q1 2026... they are saying it's AI, workflows, tech advancements, etc... it's about 2% of the totalk workforce but I think it'll be more than this. They are just starting and it'll get worse.

I also think it'll get even worse.

These are dark times.

Acrisure, a global insurance brokerage, financial services and technology company based in Grand Rapids, plans to cut 400 accounting positions in the first quarter of 2026, the company announced Wednesday.

Roughly half the positions set to be eliminated are based in West Michigan, with the rest stretching across Acrisure’s global footprint.

https://www.mlive.com/news/grand-rapids/2025/10/major-grand-rapids-company-laying-off-400-people-due-to-ai-200-in-west-michigan.html

Accenture has reduced its workforce by more than 11,000 employees in the past quarter, spending over $2 billion on severance in recent years as the company undertakes a major restructuring driven by automation and changing industry demands.

https://www.msn.com/en-in/money/topstories/accenture-has-laid-off-over-11000-employees-it-has-spent-over-2-billion-in-severance-cost/ar-AA1NZs2v?ocid=finance-verthp-feeds

https://www.indiatoday.in/technology/news/story/accenture-layoffs-11000-jobs-cut-2-billion-severance-ai-shift-2798987-2025-10-07

Accenture layoffs: How much did IT consulting firm spend to reduce its workforce?

In fiscal 2024 and 2023, Accenture recorded business optimisation costs of $438 million and $1,063 million, respectively, primarily for employee severance, according to the company's annual report.

https://www.livemint.com/companies/news/it-layoffs-how-much-did-accenture-spend-to-reduce-its-workforce-11759850757340.html

I just spoke with DAS. Back in June 2022 it looks like they uploaded Maurice to the cloud. This explains the robotic answers, the bad writing and his inability to read. It also explains any future attempts to automate your work and work we so that you make less money and work less hours.
He will be put back in his body when his total income exceeds $100 billion per year.
This is all pretty hush hush but on good authority.

Better buckle up.

https://youtu.be/1cp09eLVE20

Not close. It's a smart idea. AI can automate repetitive, manual tasks like data entry, scheduling with speed and consistency. This reduces a company's labor costs. Senior workers can increase their own productivity and focus on higher-value activities. AI can also train the "would be" junior employees into becoming more senior employees.

Actual d-mbest things: how about replacing remote work arrangements with RTO5? And RTT? And RTH? And then complaining that launches are too slow? And violating the rights of disabled employees? Shame!

https://www.beckerspayer.com/executive-moves/unitedhealth-group-taps-ai-chief/

TCS offer some of the lowest billing rates to clients- only robots can ensure profitability -humans staff cant, if humans then they should be like slaves/bonded labor.

Go figure what will happen next...

Ford CEO Jim Farley is issuing a wake-up call to America: the country’s economic strength depends not just on the innovation hotspots of Silicon Valley, but on the everyday industries that get things “moved, built, or fixed.” In a series of recent commentaries and interviews, Farley has been highlighting the mounting crisis in the “essential economy”—sectors like manufacturing, skilled trades, and infrastructure—and outlines how automation and artificial intelligence threaten to upend the white-collar workforce while blue-collar fields face unprecedented shortages. In late August, he authored an op-ed for Yahoo Finance outlining ways to close the essential economy’s productivity gap.

Farley’s warning is twofold: as artificial intelligence rapidly advances, up to half of all white-collar jobs in the United States could disappear within the next decade. He’s echoing warnings from other business leaders, like Amazon CEO Andy Jassy and Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei, who forecast major reductions in corporate and entry-level jobs as AI systems increasingly handle coding, legal, and administrative tasks. Farley points out that many entry pathways for young professionals—such as junior programming and clerical positions—are at high risk as AI tools become more capable, potentially raising unemployment rates to historic highs.

“There’s more than one way to the American Dream, but our whole education system is focused on four-year [college] education,” Farley said during the Aspen Ideas Festival this summer. “Hiring an entry worker at a tech company has fallen 50% since 2019. Is that really where we want all of our kids to go? Artificial intelligence is gonna replace literally half of all white-collar workers in the U.S.”

The skilled trades gap

Contrast this with blue-collar and skilled trade sectors, where demand is booming but the labor supply is shrinking. Farley estimates the U.S. is already short around 600,000 factory workers and nearly half a million construction workers, with shortages projected to worsen as infrastructure and manufacturing investments grow. Despite a surge in U.S. manufacturing jobs—up nearly 3.8 million by 2033, according to Deloitte—the nation’s vocational education and apprenticeship programs remain outdated and underfunded.

Farley laments that America’s focus on four-year college degrees comes at the expense of trade careers—even though these jobs are now among the most secure and essential in a changing economy. He compares the U.S. unfavorably with countries like Germany, where apprenticeships and early skills training are the norm and help sustain a stable, highly trained workforce.

Ford’s response and Farley’s playbook

Faced with worker burnout and wage dissatisfaction, Farley—taking a lesson from Henry Ford’s historic wage-doubling move in 1914—pushed to convert temporary employees to full-time status faster, unlocking higher pay and benefits. This decision was both costly and controversial, but Farley insists it’s the only way to make industrial jobs attractive and financially viable for today’s youth. The move reflects broader disputes in the industry, including last year’s UAW strike, which highlighted deep worker resentment over slow wage growth and job insecurity.

While AI may decimate many office-based roles, Farley sees hope in the essential economy. He urges young Americans and policymakers to recognize skilled trades as a viable—and necessary—pathway to the American Dream. “We need a new mindset, one that recognizes the success and importance of this essential economy,” Farley recently told an audience.

He’s advocating for a national strategy: greater investment in vocational education, apprenticeship pipelines, and pro-trade policies to close the looming skills gap and secure the nation’s economic foundations. Only by revamping priorities across government, industry, and education, Farley argues, can the U.S. both cushion the blow of AI’s advance and restore vibrancy to the sectors that keep daily life running.

For this story, Fortune used generative AI to help with an initial draft. An editor verified the accuracy of the information before publishing.

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com

“As an application company, we knew we had to start generating our applications. We just couldn't do it with armies of people anymore. We still need people, don't get me wrong, but the number of people we need is substantially less. We can build/generate much better applications than we can hand-build. We've been working on these AI application generators for some time, and we're actually using them. The thing is, we're not just building application generators. We're building application generators, and then we're building the applications, which gives us insights to make the application generator better.”

Conlusuin:,Most laid offs employees have been replaced by AI

• Driving
  Self-driving becomes ubiquitous. 12 million drivers unemployed. Uber/Lyft/trucking dead.
  When: 2028-2030

• Doctors
  AI diagnoses better, prescribes perfectly, never forgets symptoms. MDs become liability managers.
  When: 2027-2032

• Surgeons
  Robotic surgery with zero tremor, perfect precision. Human surgeons watch screens.
  When: 2029-2034

• Soldiers
  AI-controlled drones and robots fight wars. Humans become collateral damage, not combatants.
  When: 2030-2035

• Coders
  AI writes, tests, deploys, maintains all code. "Programmers" become prompt engineers, then nothing.
  When: 2026-2029

• Teachers
  Personalized AI tutors for every student. Classrooms obsolete. Education becomes purely digital.
  When: 2027-2030

• Lawyers
  AI reads all case law instantly, writes perfect contracts, argues better. Courts run by algorithms.
  When: 2028-2033

• Artists
  AI generates any image, song, movie on demand. Human creativity becomes niche luxury.
  When: 2028-2032

• Factory Workers
  Total automation. Lights-out manufacturing. Humans can't even enter production floors.
  When: 2029-2033

• Military
  Autonomous drones, robot soldiers, AI command systems. Human generals obsolete. Wars fought by machines.
  When: 2030-2035