Ethics, Values, and Layoffs in Big Tech with Dorothea Baur

Hi everyone. My name is Patrick Aquila for today's episode, we have a real thought-provoking one. We cover purpose ethics values as well as the recent layoffs of big tech companies. Joining me today is Dorothy about our, she's a strategy, ethics consultant and loves controversial questions. I'll put all her socials in the description below. Check her out. And with that being said, enjoy the episode.

How often do you go to the mountains? Because I've been to Switzerland twice and we don't have mountains here, and I love going to the mountains. Well, according to the Dutch definition of mountains that from go to the mountains every day. According. According to Swiss definition of mountains, I don't go there often enough, so maybe once a month, what? So that's it. Go more often, yeah. Especially if there's like this. Gloomy Cloud. I went to Italy during Christmas. It's my girlfriend.

Half Italian, we went to her family and we were all. So I felt like stuck in a cloud and then we went up the mountain, all of a sudden. It was sunny, and I didn't know what was happening. I've never experienced that before. This is like, that's the term. You can't imagine that over drink above. It is such a beautiful world. It's like two worlds in one place. Yeah. And it's so like I felt like it was Doom and Gloom like and it

was it didn't look sunny at all. Until I you mentioned like we drove up and we were above the clouds and I was like, the only time I've done this was like I'm in a plane and then you can see it already. Now, this is really this, always what we need to remember when we suffer down here. Blanket. We need to know it's not that far. You just need to find a way to to, you know, go through the clouds or through to fall, then you will be a beautiful world. Yeah.

But is it is that normal like, in December issue like falling winter? Always, do you say December issue. Should say Remember December, January February, but it has become a bit less intense and less persistent. Thanks to climate change. They say this is come to help us with that, at least. So, yeah, we do. Really a lot of people really suffer from a lack of daylight but I guess must be even worse. In other words. It's so dark. Yeah, it's vitamin D. It's a bit different.

Like, right now or previously used to rain more often and now it rains less often but harder in a way. Yeah, really hard and really harsh rains. More extreme is more extreme and then also randomly, which we would have son in. I don't know. I felt like we skipped fall last year. From Summer to Winter real quick. Yeah, it's like the regular cycle, doesn't really happen anymore. It's not, and I feel older and older, when I say like a didn't used to be like that.

Talk about myself, being all species knows. We won't dive into that. No worries.

But what do you do now? More on a day-to-day business basis? Do you have like a lots of lots of clients you work with? Well, this Generally is often quite slow as self-employed person because, you know, business don't really give away their tops etcetera. But this year, I had a really intense started to generate. I was busy defining sustainability, targets for insurance company and that was really quite, yeah, intense

purposes. Because we have, like, if I'm eight topics that are material for them. Yeah, which means that they really have to pay attention from a risk management fund, And from an impact point of view. And so now we have to set goals that are kind of smart, you know, specific measurable attainable relevant and time-bound. So I had to go through these targets together in the client despite intense.

And I also was invited by a multi-stakeholder initiative partnership on AI to make suggestions on how to disseminate their new code of conduct for the development deployment and use. Use of synthetic media. Well, which is really really timely now that, you know, it's mostly video and audio based. I keep fakes and you don't fake pictures, Etc. So it's not that much about JH e PT which everyone including myself as using. Yeah. But it's very timely really.

Just now this week I read that seen it. This platform is techniques platform as a revealed that they had been creating a lot of content. With a, i Ai and indigo. This setup was always human editor in the loop. It's turned out to be very inaccurate information that they gave many cases. The articles that have been created by. Their AI application were not correct and even more. So they now found out that a lot of it was see my pressurized.

So it was, they were pleasure Rising without knowing it or a I just took its thoughts or its words rather From wherever it had been trained. And so now they, I think they had to retract a lot of our people. So that's also synthetic media. If you think as a new supply for you, can, you know, use AI to generate your content, even if you're open about it and you make remarks saying like this has been, you know, created with the help of AI.

But this person. And then you have a real person is responsible for the accuracy of the content. Yeah, it turned out that humans like journalists. Are not made for this type of role because they will never pay as much attention to the AI generated content. As if they wrote it themselves. Exactly. It's a different is that like if you plagiarize in that way, are you then responsible as the person that created it or generated it these questions according to my knowledge but

I'm not a lawyer there. See ya undecided, but there's a huge discussion starting about intellectual property rights, and teacher is mmm, because someone needs to be responsible. Exactly. Yeah.

And you can't really say, well, the, the a, I did it, so, it's not my responsibility, but also, you won't know where it got the information from, so, you're acting not knowingly. Yeah. Well, that's what that's part of I think, what the EU way I act once attacked, like, who should be responsible? Is it the Mayor of the AI application, like the vendor or is it the user and so do you as a user you need to have full transparency over the value chain of the AI. Where does it come from?

Just like you have with, you know, bananas all week of Columbia have been trained on that Plantation in Colombia. So will you have to know as a user of AI applications of this? AI application has been trained on a data set from, you know, visit this year. For these years covering these years from these platforms or is it okay? Or is the vendor liable for mistakes or older vectorizing?

That could be traded by AI? But as I said, I'm not I'm not fully up-to-date believe questions and it's not suffering, my core competence but regardless of how the law will regulate these questions for an ethical point of view. It's anyway, it's relevant. It's yeah, absolutely. I can imagine there's it's gonna be so much Much gray area like even regardless yes, the law says right. Because the laws absolutely black and white in some aspect

about yes, on an ethical sense. I guess it's a lot of gray area.

How would I describe kind of your raw because is it an Ethics consultant? Is that doing it justice? Or how would you describe? Like what you do on a day-to-day? Well, I think on that basis, I would even go as far and say, I'm an Ethics strategy consultant. Yeah, because strategy is important. If you say you're an Ethics consultant, people think you will. Will only help them with ethics, which is, of course, a good thing. But I mean, let's be realistic.

I can only make money and it was a founded meaningful if I link ethics to strategic questions. Yeah. And some people feel like there is a contradiction between ethics and strategy that ethics can never be strategically oriented, and it's a bad thing to kind of You know, abuse ethics for strategy? Yeah, but you know, I'm not in Academia anymore, and I don't have to stick to a rigorous Doctrine or like a rigorous mindset.

I had this flexibility to kind of mix different worlds and so ethics like from free in an academic sense and the reality of businesses I can combine the two and see what's best for my client. So yeah. Ethics strategy Consultants. Right, interesting?

Huh? How Do you combine because ethics is for me, it's hard to Define and it's not really tangible. How do you define that will combine that with strategy? Like, they have an example of that. Well, it's really, what I said is like, if you business is about value creation, mostly, I mean, first of all, or like, in the economic sense, so you create value by giving advice to clients other people or other businesses, create value by, but you know, producing food,

whatever. This product or service. So now how can you make sure that this economic value creation is aligned with ethical values? And which ethical values is it aligned with? Yeah. So, what are the predominant ethical values that guide your business decisions because even if you think you don't have any, we're just doing, you know, our job, you're just earning money implicitly, you always make

ethical judgments. So I help clients become aware of Of the Hidden ethics or implicit ethical assumptions that are underlying their business models, and I help them kind of flag them out and make sure that they're transparent about their recorded normative assumptions. Like about how things should be. And this is kind of what I haven't because it's also nowadays.

It's an expectation. Also from stakeholders that your business, you know, is clear or takes a stance of Physicians themselves on It's that go Way Beyond merely economic or business questions. Yeah. But are they? So I hear you're saying, I still

have a hard time kind of finding an example. Like my, the company I'm working with has values, will they call them values? And I wonder how close they are to ethics, right? Because they're one of them is people. First second one is knowledge sharing with quality without compromise. And we have customer intimacy. Those are the main four pillars. How are those, like strongly connected to Ethics in that way? So, so first is not a cherry cost. To see and people. First people first.

Yeah, I called it without sucking Noise. Okay, so what would I expect in terms of, let's say an ethic strategy from such company. If it said people first customer intimacy, if you dance, only fully automate customer service. If you only have call centers or like checkboxes cetera and human in the loop cannot be reached anymore. That would be, in my opinion, like a violation of your

self-proclaimed values. Yeah. So it's real commitment to human interaction and, and it means that, even though you're as far as I know, an IT consulting company, you're like a totally different set of values will be automation at scale maximum efficiency. And I don't know, you know, whatever other way you could think of. Yeah. So I would expect it totally different. Kind of strategy evolving from such values then from the various you just played interesting.

And yeah, recently, I was talking to real estate agents about sustainability, strategy, overarching, so say his strategy. And then I read about, you know, their value sets. And so, one of the companies also had something like something like solid and I don't know, sorry, Derek, Etc. Yeah.

And then I said, well, okay. If this is, if these are your values as a company and this is how you treat your employees as, you know, with solidarity Etc. I also expect you to kind of build houses, or engage in building projects that mirror is values. Yeah. So you have to kind of translate your values and you have in your company that you use for your engagement with your employees, all of your other stakeholders, you can't if it totally different set of values that guide you.

Behavior within your company and outside your company. Yeah, I get that. Like I can I can have good

examples of where like those values would translate on a more day-to-day business and in every aspect of the sense, right? In the employees sense or more on a customer on consultancy, bases are those then, are those the ethics of a company then or do they translate into something else that are than the ethics? Like, I still have a hard line dividing the values and ethics in that way. Well I mean the venues are just like the words that have been chosen by the company.

Yeah, kind of positioned themselves. It's a lot about branding about, you know, being an attractive employer. You know whatever salts are Beyond. Just it's up, always explicitly driven by ethical considerations but ethics of a company always kind of can be assembled first of all by your core business. So how do you do your core business? I would say. Clothing brands like Patagonia has a totally different ethical approach towards textile production than for example, zinc Primark.

And I don't want to shame anyone. Sure. But of course if you're talking about Foss fashion or you're talking about eco-conscious outdoor fashion, that's totally different. Ethical approach to how you hand resources, how you give your value chain. Your supply chain is Sarah. So the core business is one thing where you can kind of

derive. It's working at endocyte you know ethical assumptions that guide your business choices you make there but then also the whole like corporate culture that you have how you as I say like how you engage with your employees, what kind of remuneration system? Do you have not just for the board? And for the management? But also, for your employees, you have employee shares, Etc. All these are like ethical decisions that you take like, yeah.

What is it worth for us as a company to have these? How do we show appreciation as all these little things together, they kind of, create the ethics of company, but then, again, it's never a uniform ethical position in public companies made is made of people. And it's often heavily influenced like the, at least the tone, from the top, like the current CEO, or the current board will always have an impact on ethics.

The messages, they spread will always say A death except so there can also be changes in values or like changes in how you do business, ethically, more or less ethically, as soon as as there is a change on the top of the company, but so overall. It's yeah. Your core business, the choices you make their. What do you emphasize? How do you source, and how you sell? And then you're like corporate culture, which is to a certain degree independent from your core business?

Interesting. I wonder how much awareness kind

of helps in that. This was, as you mentioned, you didn't like you pointed them out, but I didn't know those were ethical questions, right by. As you go about them, I can see how there's ethics in place there, but the people making those decisions, I'm not aware. If they are aware that, those are ethical questions, right? That they have to ask themselves. I think a lot of people do that unknowingly and to make those decisions based on their intuition.

And obviously, those are kind of founded within their roots in in a way of working, or where they come from, or what they've experienced in that way. But they are still Classical decisions. Yes, it's often like this right at either, it's like intuition. But I mean, in a business context, you don't talk about intuition. You said, we don't say, oh it's not, it's not a good feeling. It's not like really you often say things like, we are forced by the market competition forces us.

So you pretend that you're not responsible and you don't have any wiggle room there. And so these are often excuses, not in a bad way but or like a lack of awareness and all the dislike There is no alternative mindset, often times you do have room for manoeuvre and you do, you can change things. But of course, there are certain icard restrictions like, budgets Etc. But even within that you how you allocate your resources. You know, says something about your priorities and what you value.

Most. Yeah, and this is really, this is something I really like, that's all the one out. For example, talk about sustainability with my clients. I don't talk about tons of CO2. To right from the beginning. First I asked them, what does sustainability mean for you? And then some people say, oh, sustainability is resource efficiency or it is circular economy, and they come with technical concept. And others say, oh no, sustainability is solidarity with future Generations, Etc.

So you really, you see how the same concept can be interpreted as an entire technical concept, but some people or as I get heavily ethics In concept. But the people I think that's

really challenging like even the notion of what is fair, right? Even let's say you're in an organization and you all have the same manager. They're gonna treat you differently based on other people and those other people might think that's fair or unfair at the end of the day, it doesn't really matter because I don't think there's a hard line and it's black and white. Like, it feels very much gray. What would be fair in that case? Even like the sustainability

aspect, like you mentioned. Yeah. I think, you know, when we're dead. These people people can try to be fair, you have procedures, you have standards. And of course, there's always a human element, which is Moody and unpredictable, and I might have a secret hidden preference for, you know, certain people over others. So, but they're, of course, it's important to have standards in place and resources for like taking recourse, like they say remedy, yes, cedra.

If your rights get violated. That's also what makes it so difficult when you're trying to delegate curses are we delegating lot of decision-making processes to Tech. Yeah. Then there is no room for discussion about whether decision has been Fair decision is made by computer program and you just, you know, take it or leave it. That's it. Don't know how it hasn't taken. You can't argue with me, I education. And that's people think it's more fair because computer is

neutral. But as you all know, you know someone Trains an algorithm someone defines what parameters, you know go into the algorithm what training set, we use, Etc. So this is like attention, nothing. Can relieve us from ethical responsibility. Yeah, Vivian, it's always us like humans responsible for these matters. Yeah, I think also like looking

at a brand perspective, I watch a lot of Shark Tank and what I see more so is that people invest more, so in Brands, rather than the products they sell, sometimes like it. A good product, but a lot of companies can have a good product and then what they do as a company besides just building that product, all of a sudden matters more, right? If we have a company that really advocates for sustainability in the sell clothes and they can say 0 for x amount of sales.

We plant the tree somewhere, right? To give back all of a sudden people look at that Brandon are like okay I can see myself behind that and that's them kind of a strategy aspect of that. Yeah there's a lot of PR is yeah, and to a certain degree I found it. Okay, I don't find it bad to try to make money with or from ethical actions. I don't say it's a per say something that I totally true to size.

Yeah. But at the same time of course, as you say, like planting trees and just yeah, we're close to the whole green watching this thing watching discussion there, if you, you know, you can just liberate yourself from your responsibility by planting trees or you have no control over. Fast they grow where they grow and, and it doesn't really make up for all the emissions you're like maybe unnecessarily creating in your production process. So that's a bit of a delicate example.

The plaintiff resistant overuse, but still, as you say it is. There's a lot of like brand value. That's kind of decoupled from products and I appreciate it, a friend, okay? If authentic sustainability increases the value of a brand that It's kind of desirable. Yeah. I like I like that. You add it having to be authentic, right?

Because if it's like force, then if it's used in, kind of a finally weight gain attention in that way because it is PRI it should be positive for your PR and authentic CR. Otherwise, I also don't think it's sustainable at some point something's going to shine through, and that will catapult back into the negativity. Then, But the hard part is, I

think, for me, what I would see as organization, if you don't really are aware of like the ethical decisions that you make or even those guidelines that you have in place or more so boundaries, what is like being aware of those ethical decisions. Like what would it add to an organization? All of a sudden being more? So we're of the ethics that are in an organization rather than the opposite of them acting unknowingly. Well, it's certainly reduces the risk of violating anyone's

rights. For its election risk management perspective is very like technically speaking. It's a strategic speaking, but it just helps you to have a also common bases in your company. People are aware of the ethical assumptions, I say like or the ethical considerations that drive your decisions. Yeah, it's much easier for people to either Bond or say. I disagree. So it's I think it really helps you create a stronger corporate

culture like that. Yeah. Because from a, from a value point of view, even my my organization is structured in different units and every unit has kind of their own operational sense profit loss. If I don't even know how to say that from a business context, now, that's shining through. But in any case they're responsible for their own operations in a sense and then

also we have this Russians like what really defines us, like, why do we exist in the first place? And what brings us together, right? And I think those questions is really going to create kind of a camaraderie and it's going to bond us over a certain aspect that like we came together to solve a problem, right?

And talking about what that is, and what decisions get made and how we do those things, those approaches, I think those are ethical questions were asking ourselves, but we go about it in a different way, right? Because we see a problem that as a consultancy company or more so spread out. Over different clients but still we come together as a company. We say, we are this company and it needs to come like around a certain aspect and asking ourselves what those aspects are

in defining them. I think really helps me kind of forming that bonding. Exactly. I mean, I can't believe it that we be talking for like, 20 minutes and I mentioned the word purpose yet, it's all about purpose. So every company nowadays, of course, has to Define their purpose. You know what the chicken mates or legitimizes hour, Is what problem are you trying to solve what value to do?

We add to the world. Yeah, that's not just because of sustainability because all the, you know, the younger generation which your, I guess part of it. But especially Chauncey, they have totally different expectations from their employers. They don't just go to a company that says, oh, we're producing, you know, tools for the sake of producing tools. And we're trying to maximize our

sales. We don't care who buys our tools and what they're doing with it and how our pools are created or where we Source our metals from, you can't be indifferent to these questions anymore. So you need to have a purpose that kind of, you know, is considered legitimate and attractive for your employees but also for other stakeholders and otherwise you're not going to survive.

Yeah, it's interesting that you mentioned that like more. So that is a stronger feeling from a younger generation and I can see that Trend more and more But I don't know where that comes from like is a younger generation more aware of what happens around the world like because of social media of stuff like that, what do you think that is more? So like a parent within that younger generation.

I guess, I've looked so good. I mean, I assume if I were 20 today, I would probably be glued to the road now and not do not cast. Sorry, that's the. I know it's probably part of Extinction Rebellion or less generation or whatever they call themselves. I mean, out of be very Worried because, when I was 20, it was

the 90s. Yeah, and it was offered the end of Cold War, Cold War, and before 9/11, and this decade that my 20s like a large part of my twenties, it even looked like at least in Switzerland and to a certain degree as if like to really difficult questions had been resolved wasn't capitalism that I'd want over communism and you know we didn't have these two blocks anymore and nuclear war was not a permanent threat anymore. So it looks like okay, we're doing it. Have some Just with environment.

Yeah, but that was mostly nucleus, right? Or maybe acid rain Etc. But it was not this like systemic Questions that they have that we have nowadays, they were not present. So if I think if you're 20 now it's by no means clear and were that capitalism the way we used to do it? Like short-term short-sighted capitalism is is doing us is the best option we have.

Yeah, you realize that this short sightedness has screwed up a lot of things that we have wasted resources that even though countries get richer and richer to a certain extent, people don't get happier. There's a limit to the correlation between happiness and wealth. Yeah, and all these questions. I think it makes people much

more sensitive. So, I totally understand that they don't just want to think about questions of meaning and fairness in their private time, like when they leave the factory at four pm of it, have like the intention and also the treasurer to kind of Sense of their lives in the vehicle passing sense.

All the woodwork. Yeah. And I think I like that kind of explanation or that train of thought, that the questions we have now about the world or our impact on the world, or company's impact on the world. They're more so apparent now and I don't know why that is. I don't know if they've always been there or just through the information sources we have, they're more like a parent in a way. I think that has a factor but

the fact that people are really just being introspective looking at their lives and kind of the impact on the Greater good. I think it's very healthy and more people do that. The bigger, the change is going to be, because each individual Change is Gonna add up and you have to have faith to a certain degree that it does add up, and that people will act accordingly. But that requires a lot of faith in that way. Yeah, you're right.

She got more introspective and also social media, of course, plays at Giant robe. Yeah. Because when I talk about the 90s, maybe I only perceived it as on political and peaceful, who's didn't have all Information in real time all the time.

No all my smartphone popping up things like attacks against foreigners in Germany because I know for example, in Germany like neighboring country to Switzerland, the 90s were totally different than it. Some things they had like you know, post like they're the city reunions Etc and they had a lot of issues there with you know racism Etc and and people who live there and totally different perception. But I was like, let's say 2000 or like that. Thousand, which is the way I didn't know.

I mean, I read about the newspaper. Yeah, once a day, but there was no real time life reporting that could, you know, make me very. So, I think the constant flow of information now makes people much more aware. Yeah, and as I say it, respect it but I think there's also a danger, you know, it's hard to keep Focus.

If you're overwhelmed by a steady stream of news and as we know where you move around the platforms, Shoes and the bubble, you're in kind of shapes what you get to see and it's not necessarily always a balanced and healthy environment for everyone. Yeah, I agree.

I usually describe myself sometimes, especially with Dutch media, is living under a rock. Like I have no clue what happens like on a TV since I don't have a TV anymore and I don't know why that is, but I feel like not knowing about like smaller issues or like more on a day-to-day thing. Kind of thing makes me more happy because it filters out a lot of the The noise. And I don't know if that was a conscious decision, that's just how it grew to be, I guess.

But I do realize that if people are really good glue to all the negativity because any negativity cells especially on news and stuff like that, then they kind of spiral, right? Because then they think everything is negativity and it's everywhere and it's just Doom and Gloom out there and I do see that it can be toxic in that way as well. There needs to be a balance and I think a healthy balance. Yeah same but looking back more so to a business context because

we What the ethics are and even the purpose in there. What I wonder is because I've seen this online, and also reading it, the topic of being ethically sound. And I don't know if there's a fine line, like, someone can say, okay? This is ethically sound in.

This is not but somehow a lot of Articles, still describe some things as being ethically sound like if you in your consultancy assignments or working together with companies, do you define what is ethically sound or do you allow people to Define that themselves? Or what's going on? Your take on that. Well, I definitely don't

so ethically sound. In a descriptive sense can be, if your highest, if your purpose of the company is like maximizing scale efficiency and speed, I would say, well it's not ethically sound but at least it's not really surprising. If you also apply that principle to the way you did with purpose in Supply chains, it's not ethical sound. So it's something I like but, you know, I could say it's it's it's what you expect from company with these values.

Yeah. But It's not, it's definitely more surprising or a bigger problem, if you know, sell yourself as a high you know where company dedicated to fairness and to whatever health and the environment Etc. And then you kind of don't live according to these values, neither in your day-to-day business within your own operations. Yeah, nor in your relation with your stakeholders. So, that's it. On corporate level and like four people for like individual people. Ethically sound.

What is ethically sound? It's like, of course, I could come up with different ethical theories, but I don't think they help in a corporate context. It's certainly what is in line with the purpose of the company and where you kind of At the same time, stay true to yourself and if you are in a company where the very purpose forces you to violate your own values on and on on and again, again, again, you're probably not in the right company or that's like it's not medically sound

environment. Yeah, I like I like that reasoning because Integrity, right holding true to your values, either. If that's a company or if that's a person, I think that makes a lot of sense and all of a sudden if you kind of cross that line even for yourself, And reflect back on that. You like all that wasn't really like the right way where I should have handled that differently or I didn't expect that from myself, right. We already have the reasoning looking back and being like all

those judgment calls. Those are not really who I am or who I want to be, right? Because you can still strive to be something you think is better. And at the end of the day, I think that correct for instance, the ethically sound part and it's not really black and white rights very much. Now your bowl and also company.

The way it is at incentives, they have a direct impact of weather. You can act in ethically sound way or not. So for example, if you're being incentivized to kind of maximize sales, no matter what. Yeah, it will of course try to, you know, that's what we had in financial crisis, in the Novelties of zeros, like 2008 etcetera, you're going to try to sell any Financial product to just anyone regardless of whether you know it is the right thing in light of their risk appetite.

And their personal situation. So this has a direct impact on your room or in your freedom for like the ethically sound if you're like Unruh pressure or if you're like working in a company where you're like surveilled that where there's everything surveillance, you will probably not act ethically sound because you don't have room to deliberate about your actions, your just driven by algorithms, such your performance and productivity all the time and there is no Base for genuine.

Ethical behavior in such a highly automated context. Yeah, it's very interesting. I mean one of the things you

mentioned made me like triggered me into thinking about more. So the the time that we're facing now or more so trending towards now because if I open my LinkedIn and if I open someone else's LinkedIn as well you see a lot of big companies. Big Ten companies laying off like thousands and ten. Thousands of people all of a sudden overnight people get an email and don't even get to say goodbye to some ass. Aspect and I'm just like, what is happening over here.

Like those are companies that I looked up to and all of a sudden they flip the switch on you and they do something like that, which I don't know where that comes from or how that kind of like if that is in line with what you said, that people don't feel forced like this is the only option or more. So making decisions that they really like can't hold a candle to, I guess. You mean those who fired people? Yeah, they didn't have any other option. I can't really judge it as hard trance.

Yeah, but everything that happens with big tick. I mean, you know, I'm Switzerland, you're in Holland. Yeah, I don't think any of these procedures would be legal the way that people are fired. I read about it on Twitter. I'll just received an email or just couldn't enter my office anymore. Yeah, I don't think that's legal in Continental Europe. I think it most is says something about the Lake of the employee. The Anglo-Saxon world or in the u.s., yeah, yeah, I think so.

Yeah. But it's amazing because especially, B Tech has been very good at also, creating a lot of immaterial value or like, you know, driving up the valuations by selling their brand and their, you know, I think who, for example, had a very strong reputation for strong corporate culture. We have a lot of extra benefits, like free lunch for people and a pecan pie. Table and whatever it takes now, hard times out of here, I'd rather have less people table, less a free lunch, and less of a

family feeling. May be enforced upon me at work. Yeah. But the more reliable and and steady employer than just this, like hire and fire overnight at discrepancy that I perceive. Yeah. And the fact that like short countries can can have rules and

regulations against that, but the fact that Use that to your advantage in then like for your business culture in your context. That that's a harsh one. Like that's a hard one exactly. Somebody the law is your benchmark. Yeah. When before you trade yourself for going way above the law, we thought you provide to your employees. How you? You know, you treat them like family members and you know, you spoil them and everyone was jealous of people working at cool with all these extra

benefits. And when it comes to firing, I mean, I can't really talk detail by Google but just What I perceive now or when it comes to firing procedures. Big Tech just, you know, sticks to the bare minimum Lon, it'll make any effort. From what I see, go young for long. Yeah, and like, from a, I mean, from an outside point of view looking inside, like it looks really bad because first it was one company.

Then it's the other one there like dominoes and they all do it. Kind of you know worse way feels like one tries to up the other one in making it like an even worse example to talk about which I don't know why, right? If you see one companies, Doing a whore in a horrible sense and you see a lot of people talking about it online. Like, obviously take a bit of nuance and take a bit of empathy

and do it differently, right? You can still let go people because it's better for your business because of the context, but do it in a way that it doesn't either impact. So many people are or the impact is, so grave. In that way, it's actually pretty bad for ethics.

I must say now that you mention it, because if you, you know, What about corporate culture and how Corporate culture really reflects on the ethics of company and you could say whatever you want about big tank, but a lot of them seem to have an attractive culture for employees. Certain regards course, I've always been accused of, you know, discrimination and sexism and racism. You know that by no means innocent but in many ways they

seem to be really good employers and creating a good environment for people. And then if all this is It's just like thrown overboard immediately and and the way they fire people does not reflect in any way, the values that they used to have before. As I said before, kind of shows how fragile ethics can be. When, when hard times come with economic Hard Times come, it's like, are you willing to, can

you afford ethics in hard times? Yeah, apparently, you can't or the way they did it. They couldn't they could, it's not It's not sustainable. The ethical model is not sustainable. If it's only like a or the sunshine, whether ethics like that only matters in Good Times. Yeah, yeah, I think, I mean that's what all company values, right? You're going to have benefits in your knob secondary benefits and even benefits, that are not really tangible. Right?

In the way, people interact with each other or like the simplest thing as a free lunch or something like that. But if shit hits the fan, if it's really bad times, then the things that still stand at the end of the day. I think those are you true company values, right? Because from an organization point of view that can be like, okay, this is going to cost more. But this is the risk we're willing to take because this is who we are and that is very powerful you stand by that.

Obviously if you still make it at the end of the day as well, those are the new values and those are your ethics as well. Those are the Not Fragile, while the ones that fall and break those, I think might have been more of a, how do you say that? Like a mirage. I guess it's a hard one. It's like, you know, One of the favorite terms across the last few years, like, ethics or sustainability is in our DNA.

Know, if it's really in our DNA, you don't lose your DNA, you know, when economics change it so forth. Have you been you been mutated crisper modified? Yeah I don't mind you being ethical and making money from Being ethical as long as you keep being ethical, once you don't make money from being ethical anymore. So that's kind of nice to see it's, you know, the the litmus test. It's a wonder he chipped his fan as you said, that's what's happening now.

Yeah. And I don't know how we're gonna get out of this, it's just now that everything is online. And everyone seeing that like the reputational damage is just I don't think they can really measure it, right? Because even people that are in the company are being scared for their job, Looking outside in there like okay it's not as good as I thought it would be so they're going to have secondary thoughts even applying in that aspect like it's the damage is huge. So was it then really worth

that? I don't know and I don't think I'm ever gonna know but I would like to know tell me I'm really I'm also a bit confused at the moment because on one hand we have a huge shortage in qualified labor right? You know I teach a shortage but apparently it's a big Tech. We have Google here, we have, I think your face metal here in certain cetera. They have hired a lot of qualified labor and for wages that know SME in Switzerland

could pay. Yeah, and so, so now, I mean, I don't know what's going to happen, so on the one hand, yeah, we're having a shortage of labor. On the other hand, you say the reputation is being damaged. I don't know how, you know Supply. Man how that's going to work out. Yeah, me neither but one of the one of the final thoughts I had,

was you laid out that in Europe like this? Most likely cannot happen, right? Because of the rules and regulations that are in place of the companies, or at least, it would happen with a bit more nuanced, right. With a do notice day, and a few months in between and a severance package, right? Because those are the kind of the rules and regulations we have within these countries, but not every country in that way. Is the same. Right?

And some countries, I think based on just what They lay out as law. Protect their, their people a bit more than from a business context, right? If you have a business sense as an entity in the people that are than employed at that business, in this case, the employees have more benefits when it comes to like ethically, being let go in that way. But not every not, every country

has that. Do you think we're trending more towards countries, or even companies being more bounded by countries and guidelines in that way? Like is it more strict than getting more strict than in a good way? For the people that are employed there, where do you think is trending? Right expert in employee protection, but I think the EU has their standards and especially all the different countries into you have different standards.

You know, France, for example, has probably much higher standards then I don't know saying, Colin's. Okay, I assume you know, just like just assuming but I don't know about trans. I think they're just new challenges that arise where you have gaps that have not been regulated like, with the whole like economy. How do you do these workers that are not like permanently employed, and you knew you, work models, Etc. So, that's where there will be an impact.

Depending on how you regulate that, it will be better or worse for for people that I don't know what the general trend is a. You're off to read that. Things are getting more precarious. I don't think that employee protection is on the rise. No, General, no. I think it's, I think it's been set, and sometimes it's being reworked and I think it's sometimes needs reworking. I mean, due to covid, a lot of people are working remote more

so and more. So so Spain offers now like a digital moment Visa, which is interesting. So something radical usually happens before you see a shift or a trend in a different way, but I think otherwise it's just laid out and that's it. And you have those boundaries in the company's play, those boundaries to their best even when there's a crisis which I don't really know what to think of that but that's what I haven't seen and when it comes

to Tech and I also don't know where it's trending, but the challenges that our eyes like more, the more we do with AI, we already do a lot and I'm not a lot you can See chatty, PT was, I think one of the first ones where a general population actually had access to something. And I think the impact was also enormous there, where people could see like this is, this is insane, and some people are afraid of their jobs. Also, because of that, and then

new challenges arise. When it comes to plagiarism. Like we touched upon earlier that haven't been defined, right? And we're going to make a decision at some point where a group is going to make a decision. And if that's right or wrong, we're not going to be either there to decide or we can disagree or agree. But decisions are going to be made and I don't know how it's going to Trend in that way.

Yeah, I think the impact of Charity is only just unfolding now, because it has been on the like, on the market that are accessible for everyone, just for the past two months, and it was Christmas in between. But now I see everyone is using it. So I think the, the big decisions on whether that GPT make certain people obsolete or certain jobs obsolete. This is just coming.

Up in the future. But now, of course, when you read stories, like I said, from seen it, where the creation of content with AI has led to inaccurate text, maybe that's also a warning signal, that will be taken seriously cetera. But I know that in other, in other talks, I think, like, mediocre copywriters, for example, don't you think you need them anymore GPT for the mediocre work and then you have some professionals experts that can And mediocre content into

really good content. That's where you need to use in many ways I think. Yeah. Catchy Petit or like AI that democratize Ki as they often poor. Yeah. Accessible for everyone really shake up. The work environments. Yeah. And I like I hope I hope a role a lot of roles evolve like you mentioned, right that they already have a head start and then their job is to take it from 70% and turn it into a 99%. Let's say because 100 is always hard.

I hope a lot of roles evolve and don't just become obsolete, because I think that's the harshest one where someone all of a sudden brings up something and your job is obsolete. You have to do something completely else. I think that's so weird. Obsolescence is really hard work. Meaningful. As I said, she had example if someone who has been trained as a journalist or sees himself or herself as a writer suddenly is like relegated to the union the loop.

That's just reading the text that has been created by a I know the meaning. Yeah job just kind of vanishes and so how can we create meaningful jobs for people or like make them involved evolved into many Physicians? I go you mean I think that's going to be incredibly challenging because The task because that's 10 more of a task than a job. I guess that is new and sure someone needs to do that task. But if that fulfills them, in a way that it did before. Yeah.

If they're really, if they identify as a writer, that's going to be a hard one, a real hard one. I've I've loved our conversation so far having to do with ethics

purpose and values. I think a lot of food for thought and I'm going to really enjoy re listening to this episode. Is there anything you still want to share with our audience before we leave off? No, just thanks a lot for having me and for Challenging me on entirely different set of questions that I usually get. That's also uniqueness, I really appreciate that. I think I really am. I'm starting my mind started pulling. So what's a good sign and the easy to achieve? So thanks a lot.

No problem. No problem. When you were saying that I was like I hope I hope in a good way but I'm glad I'm glad you did. Then we're going to round it off here, Dorothea Bauer, everyone. I'm gonna put all her socials in the description below. Check her out there. You know, you came from our show and with that being said, thank you for listening. We'll see you on the next one.