Look at. There is hardly anyone there. (A screenshot from a Microsoft video.) Chris Matyszczyk/Screenshot
When tech companies start telling the truth, something is up.
Or, rather, down.
If they need to bare their souls, cast omens of despair, and sound gongs of woe, you really have to worry about the dangerous state of the world.
So it is when listening to the dire and desperate forecasts that emerge from Microsoft.
No, the company isn’t concerned that the Surface will never become the world’s dominant computer, laptop, tablet, or whatever it is. Microsoft is worried that it won’t have enough people to do it that way.
This is not a COVID-induced upset about the so-called Great Renunciation.
Instead, as Microsoft Chairman Brad Smith said told Reutersthis is the fear that Microsoft will have to pay employees a lot of money.
Oh, I skipped a bit when I said that.
You see, you’re worried that the number of people who want a job is shrinking. This means that corporations must bend and scrape to hire and retain.
One of the best ways to do this is to pay employees loads of money. Perhaps not the best, of course. Corporations would prefer to pay employees the lowest levels possible for the highest levels of production.
But if more employees than ever before get to choose where to work, and for how much, the problem may become big.
Smith explained that the number of new humans entering the workforce, and expanding it, is getting smaller and smaller.
“That helps explain part of why there can be low growth and a labor shortage at the same time. There just aren’t as many people entering the workforce,” she said.
There are many reasons why modern adults have decided to have fewer children. Some may be related to the fact that corporations have used their power to generate huge profits for too long, at the expense of offering a fairly decent quality of life.
Many more families were forced to have two heads of families. Governments didn’t exactly encourage child production, either. If they don’t even offer you paid maternity leave, why would you have the three children that corporations need to keep their labor costs down?
Imagine, then, the future that Smith paints.
Also: Microsoft investigated what really made employees happy. One result was surprising.
No one will want a career with any corporation, not even Microsoft. As Smith himself admits, companies are likely to have to pay employees more and more. The competition for competent personnel will become increasingly fierce.
As for the employees, why would they want a career anywhere when they can finally earn huge amounts in short periods and take months or even years off? Even more exciting for them, if they can choose what kinds of jobs they want at what kinds of companies they want, they can finally feel productive, and maybe even happy, without feeling indebted.
I hesitate to mention Golf LIV at this point, but I feel weak. If you’ve missed this worrying phenomenon, here’s a new golf tour that pays golfers simply to attend, offers bigger prize money, shortens tournaments and fuels your need for more time to, oh, who knows, win. more money. creating their own brands of whiskey and hunting clothes.
LIV Golf has financing from the worrying source of the Saudi Arabian government. But its principles, distorted as they are, can be applied to the corporate job market for decades to come.
Why take risks? Why work for bosses you don’t like? Why spend your whole life working when you can do other things without worry? Why don’t they actually get paid just to show up for, say, a year or two?
It is a real conundrum for corporations.
And it is, of course, the reason why many invest so heavily in robots.
Robots don’t want vacations, kids, or big raises.
At least not yet.