As ever, the main driver is that owners/leaders have absolutely no respect for their workers. They are replaceable components who need to be replaced with more predictable ones because the unpredictable humans might rise up eventually.
And we(society in general) keep believing them, always acting like we’ll be rewarded if we just work a little harder. All the people using AI “because it helps me in my job” haven’t stopped for even a second to ask why the fuck they should be looking to be any more productive than they already are.
We enable this shit. We let ourselves be driven by these fucking toolbags. We have better options presented to us all the time and we ignore them. It’s our fault, but the cool thing about that is that it means we technically have control. Technically.
British advertising executive Rory Sutherland coined the term “doorman fallacy” in his 2019 book Alchemy. Sutherland uses the concept of the humble hotel doorman to illustrate how businesses can misjudge the value a person brings to the role.
To a business consultant, a doorman appears to simply stand by the entrance. They engage in small talk with those coming and going, and occasionally operate the door.
If that’s the entirety of the job, a technological solution can easily replace the doorman, reducing costs. However, this strips away the true complexity of what a doorman provides.
The role is multifaceted, with intangible functions that extend beyond just handling the door. Doormen help guests feel welcome, hail taxis, enhance security, discourage unwelcome behaviour, and offer personalised attention to regulars. Even the mere presence of a doorman elevates the prestige of a hotel or residence, boosting guests’ perception of quality.
When you ignore all these intangible benefits, it’s easy to argue the role can be automated. This is the doorman fallacy – removing a human role because technology can imitate its simplest function, while ignoring the layers of nuance, service and human presence that give the role its true value.
Organisations are falling for what is known as the doorman fallacy: reducing rich and complex human roles to a single task and replacing people with AI. This overlooks the nuanced interactions and adaptability humans bring to their work.
That actually … really hits the nail on the head with a lot of things in the modern era.
Really illustrates how fucking dumb businesses and business management has become.
Taken broadly; literal management might be correctly optimizing shareholder returns for next quarter (cut costs at all costs), as the incentives encourage. The goal is no longer to keep having a business next year.
The goal is no longer to keep having a business next year.
Exactly. Which is why it feels like the stockholders are screwed.
That’s like muscle atrophying from lack of gravity. The gravity was the importance of such nuance for, well, making money. In this analogy.
Where did it go - well, to picking the right advertising and promotion system, the right platform. Good or bad attention is more important now than reputation.
One could foresee this when the Web, consisting of web directories, web rings and people talking about things in small communities on forums and in groupchats, with their ICQ number being their main identifier, was defeated by Google. It was the first indication that reputation loses to discoverability.
So, why are they cutting this - because this level has become subject to a higher level of competition. Where the specific business going bad doesn’t matter.
Rory’s stuff is really insightful and you get those d’oh of course -moments when you listen to him talk and present his ideas
To avoid the doorman fallacy, companies must recognise jobs are more than the visible tasks listed on a job description.
It’s why malicious compliance and work-to-rule actions are pretty devastating for a company. You got to assume AI will act with malicious compliance, or at least hallucinate and lie about it.
On top of that, consumers dislike dealing with AI in customer service settings, and most say they’d likely choose a competitor that doesn’t use AI.
I’m surprised this is news. Automated phone menus have been common for decades. If an automated system could solve your problem, then you would have used the website and not had to wait. The only reason to call is if you need a human to help.
Now they’re offering the same thing, except you can’t just type 123whatever to get back to where you were.
The thing is that customers wouldn’t dislike dealing with AI in customer service if it actually worked.
It is like a self-service checkout. There is no problem with it, unless an item doesn’t want to scan, or an error appears where an employee is needed.
Think the issue is either a self service portal that works in very predictable way (like the self checkout) or a human to deal with nuance.
To the extent an LLM might be useful, it’s likely blocked from doing so because the operator doesn’t trust it either.
The biggest annoyance is that the LLM support tends to more aggressively refuse to bring a human in.
I wonder if it’ll be just like those self service checkouts — literally no improvements for 20 years.
The biggest improvement on the user side was to stop trying to weigh the bagging area to prevent loss.
The newer machine vision based systems are less likely to screw up. “Unexpected item in bagging area” was an almost universal experience, nowadays I have only been flagged for human review once.
Also, one store I was at just lets you put your items under a camera without finding barcodes, and you just confirm the identified products.
The “doorman fallacy” is a major complaint I’ve had about past managers. I’d say things like “they let Excel manage the business. If there’s a cost without a painfully obvious benefit, it’ll be mindlessly cut. They put zero thought into intangible benefits. That’s why I’m always suspicious of new managers.”
Even if there’s an understanding of the doorman fallacy throughout most of the chain of command, you can still run into issues.
I know as an analyst both me and my boss were very aware of intangibles, but usually couldn’t find a way to model them. The consumers of our reporting would also want these, but couldn’t always tell a story that was palatable to the client to justify the expense.
You end up with everyone knowing the doorman is a big deal but being unable to hold onto him.
Yeah, have a new executive who managed a vaguely segment appropriate “hello world” with code gen and so regularly rants about why we should be paying human developers.
It turns out that people are better at most things than non-people.
In a world of automated robo-bullshit it’s amazing how far a little human customer service goes. I’m not sure if it’s because I’m getting older and less patient, have more and bigger problems to deal with, if the robo-bullshit is worse, or all three, but god damn have I gotten frustrated having to deal with some automated nonsense this year.
The robo-bullshit is great, if the thing has no nuance. Self checkout, paying bills, buying stuff online.
The things is those things are great because they are so predictable. LLM takes the predictability out. It’s also generally not allowed to do anything that the self service portal was not allowed to do, so you get stuck with a more imprecise interface instead of the nice, precise interface of a traditional portal, and no access to more nuanced help. It’s the worst of both worlds.
It’s not great when you have to wait for phone menus because you have a weird request that doesn’t fit neatly into the options, so you have to navigate multiple levels, then you finally connect to a human… and the call drops, putting you right back at square one.
I like self checkout and doing things online but I’d not consider these robo bullshit. I can navigate through those at the speed of my own brain, rather than being on the equivalent of an escort quest where the NPC is moving at the speed of smell.
Oh phone trees are terrible, I refer exclusively to online self service. I suppose an LLM might be able to help a caller connect to the correct set of humans better than phone trees…
If I’m resorting to phone, it’s because I really really need a human. I know there still exist some very old people stuck calling… But if they can’t work your online portal, they won’t be able to work a phone tree either…
I agree with the message here, but man does this anology fail with me. Hotel door men are just another pressure point for tipping for service I really don’t want / need 99% of the time. An automatic door and a smart luggage cart that follows me to my room would be much preferred.
Reads an article about people falling for the doorman fallacy, immediately falls for the doorman fallacy.
I go to plenty of places don’t have doormen and prefer the experience. Did you read the description of the fallacy? The doorman fallacy is based on c suite execs making a decision that they don’t have personal experience with.
I think you might be confusing a doorman with a bellhop.
Nope. But that’s another person I can happily do without
Sounds like you live in or travel to a shit country that doesn’t pay their employees right. If the doorman or bellhop are relying on your tips to make ends meet, they need to unionize and demand better pay from their employers.
Are you in a managerial, c-suite, or office role at your company?
