this post was submitted on 19 Feb 2024
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They won't, though. Because these are cost-saving tools for multi-nationals with enormous capital footprints.
McDonalds isn't going anywhere, no matter how bad their hiring practices get. The only real risk they run is in their poor ability to bring people on quickly resulting in storefronts more vulnerable to unionization or other labor actions. But this is a business that's been vertically integrated for decades and subsists on enormous direct and indirect subsidies from every layer of government. They'll keep being fine unless the political conditions in this country change significantly.
I disagree. Screwing up your hiring process is a Darwin Award level mistake for a company. McDonalds is very very good at hiring people and a big part of that is their willingness to hire people who aren't good enough and then giving those people the training they need to succeed at work.
Choosing not to hire someone because they like baseball is insane and there's no way that would fly at McDonalds.
Its only a screw-up if it upsets your investors. And it does not seem like the McDonalds EBITDA has suffered over the past few years.
The AI tool - according to the article - is using baseball and softball as a proxy for determining whether the applicant is a man or a woman, and biasing its selection accordingly. That's not insane. Its just prejudiced in a manner that evades our comically ill-enforced nondiscrimination enforcement codes.
McDonald's actually did suffer in some regard recently. Execs have admitted they need to lower prices or they'll lose business.
I think the thing is, companies always go too far eventually. At some point, they cross the line and have to walk it back. We'll probably see the same thing here. Recruiters will use more and more AI until someone crosses the line, and then there'll be a rapid retreat.
They saw a 40% EBITDA spike in 2022. Then they came off their peak by ten points in 2023.
Overall, enormous net growth.
Recruiters won't exist once businesses fully integrate AI. All you'll have is performance tuning of the automated hiring tools.
Hiring shitty employees is not a cost-saving measure.
Something tells me McDonald's hiring process is not too important.
For low skill jobs, it absolutely is. Many of these employers will deliberately screen out "overqualified" applicants because they don't want employees with the potential for better job prospects elsewhere.
Prison labor has become an increasingly common form of low wage service work, precisely because these workers have no leverage to negotiate salary or hours.
Actually, at least based on my area, McDonald's seems to be careful about hiring, or at least careful about not letting bad service creep in.
The food and overall experience is... fine, and you go there because you want food and you want it with little to no hassle and get the food reasonably quickly and expect them to get the order right. If the service is bad, then I'm going pretty much anywhere else, McDonald's is not worth putting up with crap service. A poor hiring practice coming around would tank the only reason to go there.
There are a number of other fast food places in the area I would tend to prefer, but avoid because their service just sucks, the order taker somehow not knowing the item you are ordering is on the menu, taking an eternity to make orders, and getting the orders wrong in the end, and then things like the fried food clearly being cooked in oil that needed to be changed a few batches ago. I've seen what poor hiring practices can do to a 'good' restaurant, I can only imagine what it would do if McDonald's had that problem.
The strategy of McDs has been to saturate the market. You'll find more of their franchises per capita in your neighborhood than any other food retailer.
Starbucks employs a similar strategy.
I've lived in a few spots where people would talk about the "bad McDs" versus the "good McDs". And the split would inevitably be economic, with the richer neighborhood that could pay the better wages commanding a staff that was more professional.
But the franchise overall never suffered. They made money hand over fist at both locations.