Comment on VCs are starting to partner with private equity to buy up call centers, accounting firms and other "mature companies" to replace their operations with AI

Melvin_Ferd@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago

• dantheclamman@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago

  Have you ever used a chatbot for technical support? It’s infuriating. Yet the industry is barreling in that direction before the tech is ready, customers be damned. This is not what VC should do.

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  • Melvin_Ferd@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago

    Have you ever had to use an indifferent college student that barely speaks English for technical support

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    • dantheclamman@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago

      Sometimes the people who barely speak English are more technically competent than English speakers. Sometimes not. They are just people. But I’d rather work with a person

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      • Melvin_Ferd@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago

        I wouldn’t

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• MentalEdge@sopuli.xyz ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago

  Then you need to look into how private equity works.

  They buy mature companies, often with borrowed capital, and then place the debt on the purchase company. They essentially make companies take on a massive loan to buy themselves from themselves, except the private equity firm ends up the owner.

  The company then goes into overdrive trying to pay off the debt, while the firm makes changes intended to make the company “more efficient”. All while paying themselves “consulting fees” and “bonuses” for stepping in and “helping” the company do better.

  This usually means mass layoffs, dumping assets, paycuts, restructuring…

  Best case scenario, they company was already failing, and now it fails faster.

  Worst case… The company was doing perfectly fine, making a sustainable living for its employees. And then it gets purchased by a private equity firm.

  Suddenly everything is on fire. Not a single penny can go unpiched, workplace comfort unsacrificed, or employee unoverworked. And that that is the new norm, is the good ending.

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  • Ledericas@lemm.ee ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago

    example of a parasitoid, unlike parasites, they kill the host.

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  • Melvin_Ferd@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago

    I don’t know much about private equity. So I appreciate the explanation. But that all just sounds like modern business to me. It’s a product of who we are and what we allow.

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    • Ledericas@lemm.ee ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago

      thats whats happening to red lobster, SEARS was done by scummy parasitic ceo of sears, toysrus,kmart?,etc

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    • MentalEdge@sopuli.xyz ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago

      What do you mean “but”?

      This doesn’t produce anything. It removes jobs instead of creating them. And by the end there is one less company in the system.

      I wrote in response to you saying this is what they “should” be doing.

      It most certainly isn’t.

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