Cutting roles that deal directly with clients and partners is especially short-sighted, but it won’t stop there. Even the so-called “mundane” jobs carry institutional knowledge that doesn’t show up on a spreadsheet. The idea that AI can just step in and replace people is laughable. AI can barely function without constant babysitting, and it certainly can’t replicate judgment, context, or experience. Every role has its unwritten rules, workarounds, and hard-earned skills. Throwing all of that away and hoping to replace it with cheap offshore labor, half-baked automation, or nothing at all isn’t strategy but laziness and greed. And in the long run, it’s one of the most expensive mistakes a company can make.
4 replies (most recent on top)
Just fine. You must not have PepsiCo stock in your 401k investments. It’s not doing just fine, it’s stagnant.
It may be a bitter pill to swallow, but the company will bounce back. After every round of these layoffs, there is speculation that it's the end. It never is. They will make it just fine without the hard workers, by watering down the work and sending it offshore.
Actually they will push those left twice as hard.
@OP It is an expensive mistake. Face-to-face relationship builders are an essential. How long will it take to rebuild relationships after they are nearly destroyed? We are already experiencing the effects of the errors made in at least the last 5-10 years.
Hiring inexperienced contractors, who need extensive business training, is not going to stop the sinking, nor hiring focused on age or DEI criteria, which is mainly used to pad the financial accounts of those doing the hiring and not about raising the boat.
Does anyone want to talk about the serious lack of communication from the “hubs”? Will communication improve with near shoring? Will the Greek Outsourcing Goddess improve it?
Is it truly feasible for a person to be both the CEO of LATAM and the head of Strategy & Transformation? Was the CEO title given to hide the, most likely, reason she is in LATAM — to find ways to eliminate USA positions by hiring lower-than-average pay employees or (Accenture?) contractors? Will she and Accenture have the Board move the East Indians (no Visa worries?) to LATAM, where they could potentially spend zillions on AI to fill customer service roles? Maybe PepsiCo, itself, will turn into an outsourcing company?
I can say we desperately needed improved technology — a change from pen and paper and data entry to automation (fruit so low-hanging it almost touches the ground).
Tech cannot replace all people in customer- and supplier-facing roles. Relationship building is still primarily a human-centered and core role.