Mid-Year Check-In: Revisiting My 2024 People Predictions

So In December of 2023, I made 10 people predictions for 2024. It is now July. Let's check in and see if I was wrong, I was right, or maybe too early. Hey everyone, it's Anthony Ernesto and this is my Burn the box drop. This is a special burn the box drop. I am auditing my 10 predictions that I made last year at the end of December. So I made 10 people predictions for 2024 and now I want to see was I right, was I even close too early, too late, or just completely wrong. So this should be fun and kind of humbling. So let's do it. The first prediction I made was more with less. The year of efficiency continues and I think we have seen that. Now I will say that AI has taken over and there's a resurgence of growth around AI to think of Nvidia, but for the most part I think we are continuing, although it's not as widespread or common. I think we did see the beginning of the year continuing that year of efficiency. So definitely more with less. I think the more we see with AI, you're going to start to see continued efficiencies gain. I think there's still a lot of hesitation. I think the tools in AI are helping, but until you get that sort of relevant AI within your organization that can help and understand your aura, your numbers, your data, I think we're going to still see incremental process there. Another prediction in here was around automation, so we'll see how that goes. My next prediction is that is the autonomous agents everywhere all at once. I think I was a little bit early. I think I was very optimistic about the movement and the acceleration of this. If you look at how technology, Moore's Law, in terms of the acceleration of technology in this one, I was definitely overestimated. I basically said that at some point in this year. And again, we're not done with 2024 just yet, so there's still hope, but that a lot of the autonomous agents were going to be in play. I've been waiting for ChatGPT, a lot of the AI to really release. We were hoping with the Recent release of chat, chatgpt 4.0, no autonomous agents. I think there are some folks that are working on the peripherals around this, but we haven't seen really the launch of autonomous agents just yet. But I think once that happens, you're going to see autonomous agents everywhere all at once, more of less AI here. What I predicted is that even though there were so much AI, that it was actually going to get concentrated. The power of AI was going to get concentrated into a few players and I think I was kind of half right on this. While you still see some startups focusing on AI, you're seeing a lot. You just look particularly at the recent ChatGPT revenue. It's just doubled and quadrupled over the last 12 to 18 to 24 months. So I think there's definitely a consolidation in the big players, whether it's ChatGPT or Google's Gemini Claude, even though perplexity is having some challenges these days around illegal scraping of websites. But I think you're definitely seeing a concentration. Microsoft with their copilot again, I think they partnered with OpenAI but also developing their own AI. The one thing and we recently saw the announcement of Apple and Apple Intelligence, their positioning on on the acronym AI. I think that's going to be a real interesting evolution of this contextual AI. This idea that it's going to look at all your activity. I think that's the future of the enterprise. I think the challenge we have right now with the ChatGPT is that I have to go out to that and yeah, I can load some of my documents with limitations even on the enterprise side, but it's not really pulling real time data from my internal systems. Until it's able to do some of those things, you're not going to have contextual AI. But I think it's coming and I think the more or less Data. Data, Data, absolutely. What I talked about here is that it's going to be all about data and it continues to see that, particularly around people. This morning, beginning of July, we heard Fasbah actually announce the extension of more human capital metrics in required public accounting reporting. So we're starting to see the movement around data. I think data continues to be the future of AI. I predicted that in a previous blog post in a previous Burn the Box session called the SEC or Secret to the Future of hr, which is HR analytics. I think we're going to continue to see that. Now what we've seen with Apple A or Apple Intelligence is the contextual, right? Having all your data and activities to formulate the AI and how it's going to help you. So I think data continues to be a key factor in that. For the times, they are changing again, talking about the Bob Dylan song who poetically sang for the times, they are changing, things are changing. I think where companies used to move in years are now moving in quarters. You're seeing it already. I mean just even with AI Nvidia was a mid tier investment a couple of years ago and now it's, you know, and it's trading spots, top spots at Microsoft and Apple in terms of its wealth. But someone had mentioned, I think on the Prof. G podcast that right now based on the valuation, it's about $120 million per employee in terms of valuation. So just incredible amount of change that continuing to happen. Really, really interesting. HR gets bored. This is my prediction that HR will start getting board seats. We're not there yet. This was an early prediction and this might have been more of a long term or maybe even just a hope that I had is this idea that boards would actually hire more and more HR folks. I will say that with the SEC and the FAD B reporting requirements, I think you're going to start to see more and more folks with HR experiences being pointing, pointed to boards. But I had a really candid conversation with an HR person that's on boards and basically you know that they had converted from HR to the growth side of the business. They just said functionally the way boards have been structured it doesn't allow for specific HR experience. And so outside of the comp committee. So I think this is going to be an evolution. Definitely too early here to really predict that remotely experienced. We're continuing to see this hybrid versus remote. But there's been a lot of research done recently published by the folks I believe at Stanford University that shows that there's actually no connection to better productivity by folks coming into an office that this idea of remote, you know, you can have a remote environment and expect the same productivity. Now I'll argue, I think the Nike CEO recently came out a couple of weeks ago or months ago where on the earnings call basically called out remote as affecting the performance of the company. We saw. I think Nike traded at its lowest mark recently. I'd argue that that same CEO did not give credit to in office when Nike was doing well. So again, I think we're going to continue to see this, this idea of remote. I think companies are going to start really thinking through how to build a remote environment, a hybrid environment. But I think the answer we're going to see and starting to see again is remote or hybrid in that matter. Wink, wink, nudge, nudge. This is idea of having nudges available way too early. I was wrong on this. I don't, I haven't seen anything specifically around nudges. I think there's a lot of AI technologies that are starting to be developed in the moment, in real time. It could be like in a zoom setting or if you're on a sales call. There's technology we're looking at at Suzy that will allow feedback or nudges within moment. There is a recruiting solution that we're looking at that will be like a co pilot on your interviews and nudge you to ask questions or provide you feedback. So I think we're starting to see a lot of that built into more commercial elements. But we're starting to see it particularly in the recruiting space around this idea of real time nudges. I think the more AI gets integrated and become contextual like Apple intelligence, I think you're going to see more and more nudges. But definitely too early on this now hiring. We're still seeing a pretty good uptick in hiring. I would argue that, you know what Professor Galloway calls a Patagonia vest recession had had definitely hit in 2023, early 2024. I think we've stabilized. A lot of the hiring we've seen in some of the reporting is in manufacturing and travel and construction. I have a blog post coming out called the blue collar boom where we're going to see a reverse where it was white collar boom for the last couple of decades. We're going to start seeing a blue collar boom, but people are still talking about demographics. But I think for this we're still hiring. We haven't seen an uptick in hiring for the most part, but definitely leveling out in terms of hiring and not really looking at reducing the workforce again. I think part of the planning in the future is the idea of what can be automated through AI. And I think you're going to see more and more smaller companies being built in the future. But for right now still seeing some pretty, pretty good hiring. It's not as accelerating as it once was, but companies are still hiring so quickly. If we look at more with less. Yeah, I was right on that. Autonomous agents definitely wrong. Too early on that more AI, less AI. Absolutely. I think you're starting to see Apple getting in the AI game in a very thoughtful way. Data, data, data. That was an easy one. It's always going to be data for the times they are changing. Which was prediction number five. Absolutely. I think we're seeing change on the scale of quarterly now people metrics. SCC will let them be. We're starting to see movement on that. With the announcement this morning and continuing push overseas, you're starting to see more and more human capital metrics requirements for publicly traded companies that I think will happen to privately Private companies. HR gets bored way too early on that I think that will take some time remotely experience. Absolutely. We're seeing this idea of remote and hybrid again. The study from Stanford says that there is no any correlation to productivity increases for folks that are in office. So rethinking your remote or your in office or the hybrid approach, super strong. Wink, wink, nudge, nudge. The idea of getting nudges, we're starting to see that play into a lot of commercial tools, particularly on sales, nudging you around, asking certain questions or how you're talking to your clients. But again, we're seeing that in recruiting too. So I see recruiting as a sales job. It's a marketing and sales for people. So absolutely, that's starting to happen. But it's not widespread. And then now hiring. I think we're seeing a pretty healthy market. Unemployment continues to be very low. There's job growth in certain sectors. Certain sectors are, are growing, but not as, as, as quickly as they once were, but definitely seeing a high hiring and I think that's going to continue. Demographic challenges. You're going to see AI automate a bunch of stuff but also create jobs. So I think you're, you're. This might be a new normal for us that, you know, we're going to have just because there aren't enough people for the jobs that are open. So not too bad. I would give myself what, 50% kind of. Correct. Maybe that's being aggressive. 30. 30%. We'll do another check at the end of the year, but I wanted to do an audit on my 10 people predictions for 2024. So not so bad. And we'll see you next time. Thanks for listening.