Zero-Human Companies Still Need Humans

Viktor Farcic (0:00)

It's a good analogy, right? Just as serverless is misleading, kind of, oh, there are no servers, right?

It's rather that we don't see servers that much ourselves. That's the thing with serverless. Servers are equally there. Probably the same thing with Zero Human Company. It's a very misleading name, but if the point is we can do so much more with fewer people, then I'm on board.

Darin Pope (0:24)

This is DevOps Paradox, episode number 367

Zero Human Companies Still Need Humans.

Welcome to DevOps Paradox. This is a podcast about random stuff in which we, Darin and Viktor, pretend we know what we're talking about. Most of the time, we mask our ignorance by putting the word DevOps everywhere we can and mix it with random buzzwords like Kubernetes, serverless, CICD, team productivity, islands of happiness, and other fancy expressions that make us sound like we know what we're doing. Occasionally, we invite guests who do know something, but we do not do that often since they might make us look incompetent. The truth is out there, and there is no way we are going to find it. PS., it's Darin reading this text and feeling embarrassed that Viktor made me do it. Here are your hosts, Darin Pope and Viktor Farsic. The URO human company is real, but it still has humans.

Viktor Farcic (1:31)

How can be a zero human company with humans?

Darin Pope (1:35)

We're a founder, right? We have to be the founder to actually get that company going.

Viktor Farcic (1:39)

Oh, that's cheating. That's cheating. That's not zero human company. That's one human company.

Darin Pope (1:44)

It was a one human company to get going.

Viktor Farcic (1:47)

Okay.

Darin Pope (1:48)

But we also need a human when the AI CMO hallucinates some new marketing material.

So the head count isn't zero, but we still have to have at least one human. So we're thinking about this. I've been seeing people pitching this about, okay, we're going to have nothing but an AI led company. It's like, no, especially from the VCs. They're talking about hallucinating. They're really hallucinating.

Viktor Farcic (2:19)

If the story would be, there is going to be one expert in something and another expert in something else, instead of an army of experts in that something, then I would say probably, yeah, that sounds doable. Sounds interesting. But I know in what I do that there is no way that my daughter would do equally good job with AI.

There is absolutely no world in which that would happen today. And I cannot imagine that if we would invert those roles and say, okay, Viktor, now you do marketing campaign, that I would do as good of a job as somebody who is really good at that something. Now, I would do much better job with AI than I would do without, but it will still be bad, just slightly less bad.

Darin Pope (3:09)

I think the framing of this too is the humans haven't left the company. It's not like Elvis, they haven't left the building, but they've changed roles. And in fact, you had a video over on your DevOps Toolkit channel that came out on July 6th. I don't remember the name of it, but basically it said, hey, I'm now the CEO of a company. And that's a possibility now.

That was not a possibility a year ago.

Viktor Farcic (3:33)

Yes, that's a possibility. I still am skeptical. If that would be a real company in that video that does everything the companies do, it would not work.

I mean, I say I'm CEO, yeah, I can work alone on my projects, but I'm not doing real marketing. I'm not doing sales. I'm not doing a bunch of other things. It's open source. I don't care. I mean, I do care. They're my babies, but not to that level. If it would be a real company, then yeah, I would need people. Let's say maybe 10

What I'm equally, so I'm very skeptical of that zero human or one human. I'm the only person and there is an army of AI agents. I'm not sure about that. But equally, I am confused as to what role with the current massive companies have in this world. Let's say Microsoft, and I'm not picking them for any particular reason. How many people Microsoft has? Like 100,000?

Darin Pope (4:32)

Many.

Viktor Farcic (4:32)

Let's say it's 100,000.

You don't hold me for that figure as being accurate, right? Do they need that many people? We can discuss what is the correct number, but it's not that. It's definitely not that. 100,000? Not 100,000.

Darin Pope (4:50)