Maker of TurboTax Fires 1,800 Workers, Says It’s Pivoting to AI

Submission statement: How do you think advancements in AI will impact the job market? For tasks humans currently perform, how long might it take for AI to surpass human capabilities?

If Universal Basic Income (UBI) is a potential solution, how would it be implemented? What about nations that didn’t develop the AI technology? How can we prevent a significant concentration of wealth and the resulting inequality and societal issues?

I hope the government makes filing automatic, bypassing these parasitic companies and making them obsolete.

No one’s actually firing people for AI. During the covid wave, plenty of businesses ramped up headcount in anticipation of mainly three events;

1. 100% digital reach will become a reality. Customers will spend most of their time on the net and phone, so by creating enough digital touch points, firms will be able to reach out to customers more and more. What they forgot to take into account is that digital fatigue will set in and eventually customers will go back to their lives when the pandemic gets over.

2. Remote work will become a true possibility. However, the point of interest was that employees will take a pay cut in order to enjoy the flexibility to work for home. What they forgot to factor in is that given the economic condition, even remote workers will not work for lower pay for long. Plenty of them would start returning to the office and demand higher pays.

3. Customers would spend more money on digital channels compared to the other avenues like tourism, dining, logistics as work for home becomes stay at home. That also didn’t work out as the pandemic got over and we’re back to where we were before 2020.

Given the projections all started failing, most firms have had to relook at their strat plans to make adjustments. Service providers also got impacted as the businesses started cutting costs. It’s a chain of events which is resetting the business world back to pre 2020 times. The job cuts are mainly due to that. No one is investing in AI that seriously so as to replace 1800 people. Most use cases are pilots and don’t cost that much to run compared to the MPC.

They sucked that bad with 1800 employees? Lol. A bot really can’t do worse.

I hope they pivot to not existing anymore. (I feel bad for the workers though.)

Welcome to the Future of Jobs/not having jobs. Maybe we can get A.I. to make the tax codes simpler to begin with…. and close the loopholes for the rich that pay the Congresspeople that pass the laws written by…… well… I understand the most common work other than being Congresspeople was their being former lawyers, right? So either they suck at writing laws, or the carefully construct laws that provide loopholes for the rich to begin with. They can write ironclad contracts….. but not laws without loopholes?

This will probably backfire on TurboTax, and that will hopefully be a good thing.

It will be hilarious when they close down because AI causes millions of errors in tax returns. When AI can’t find an answer, it just makes something up… Thats what you want in your tax preparer.

I can’t fathom what value AI can bring to tax filings. It’s a static problem with limited options and exact values, machine learning isn’t going to have any benefit there. Once the business logic is set up, any user should be able to fill it like a static form.

Those employees were there for people with tech illiteracy file their TurboTax through a phonecall etc. Or help people who were having trouble eith the form. You really think some techilliterate grandma is going to be able to communicate with an AI?!

I stopped using TurboTax years ago when I was just giving my damn refund to them just to use the software.

It’s way worse. Intuit purchased T-sheets around 2019 from a Boise Idaho start up. T-sheets was THE place to work in Boise, with a great culture, amazing benefits and overall fantastic leadership. Over the next 5 years Intuit gutted it, forcing most of the leadership out and making everything incredibly corporate. Still a decent job in Boise, but the culture was gone.

Fast forward to Thursday. Intuit closes all of Boise in its lay off. This wasn’t just a 10% reduction across the board, this was a closure of 2 full office locations and laying off everyone who worked there.

Then they release a press statement saying that these were all “people who were failing to meet expectations” so that there share prices don’t drop. Now the 500 plus devs that worked there are struggling to find jobs because some recruiters see Intuit as their most recent area and think they are under performers.

Fuck Intuit.

Good. They were making shitty soft ware. I will never use Turbo Tax again. They were better 20 years ago. They can find better jobs