
Deutsche Bank staff sent home as 18,000 job cuts begin - tnolet
https://www.theguardian.com/business/live/2019/jul/08/deutsche-bank-staff-18000-job-cuts-restructuring-asia-london-business-live
======
xeeeeeeeeeeenu
Previous discussion:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20379842](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20379842)

------
the-dude
They will also setup a 74bn 'bad bank' :
[https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2019/07/07/deutsche-
con...](https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2019/07/07/deutsche-confirms-bad-
bank-plan-amid-wider-restructuring/)

------
Neil44
To prep for that quantity of offboarding without anything leaking is pretty
impressive.

~~~
duxup
I was part of a fairly large layoff a while back.

Effectively the company made the decision and then a few folks in HR were
involved in hiring an outside firm to handle everything. Even internally few
in HR knew what was coming until that day.

Most decisions were entirely high level based on really simple calculations
"this whole group", "anyone in this group that is X" and such.

Pretty easy to do if you make it easy.

~~~
busterarm
Support.com did exactly that with their layoffs.

~~~
bsagdiyev
I worked there and got laid off during that one. We were all told to call in
at 9:30am, they told us severance was in the mail and killed phone and chat
immediately after. Super shitty way to have done it

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natrik
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bullshit_Jobs](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bullshit_Jobs)

18,000 unnecessary staff amassed over the years.

Edit: *Not all of them were unnecessary of course.

~~~
void_nill
I've read the book and it's pretty good, it also shows how bad the economy is.
Especially where there are a lot of "manager" jobs that seem to be quite
superfluous.

The fact that Deutsche Bank is cutting 18K jobs is quite bitter, because the
mass of people is quite large. I wonder if other banks are planning such
layoffs and if we will have to expect more mass cutts.

~~~
lm28469
Depends how you look at it, how many truly _necessary_ jobs can you create ?
Certainly not enough to employ every healthy person from 20 to 65. These
people still need to pay their bills, eat food, sleep under a roof.

We won't get out of this as long as we see unemployed people as the plague, in
the meantime we'll see a surge in bs services (uber, deliveroo, hellofresh,
&c.)

~~~
moate
>>We won't get out of this as long as we see unemployed people as the plague

What are you talking about? "Management" sees unemployed people, especially
those with actual skills, as a great asset. They provide a downward force on
wages. It's only other laborers who see them as competition and a problem.

~~~
lm28469
> "Management" sees unemployed people as a great asset.

> laborers who see them as competition

More like people getting their tax money through unemployment benefits.

No one thinks "God damn I love all these low skilled workers, they're such a
good thing for our economy". Juts look at the US, lowest unemployment rate in
decades because somehow it's the only metric that counts now, even if that
means that the lower 5% has to work 2 full time jobs to make it work.

~~~
briandear
> the lower 5% has to work 2 full time jobs to make it work.

[https://www.politifact.com/truth-o-
meter/statements/2018/jul...](https://www.politifact.com/truth-o-
meter/statements/2018/jul/18/alexandria-ocasio-cortez/alexandria-ocasio-
cortez-wrong-several-counts-abou/)

~~~
maximente
useful article but doesn't really contradict that claim, just that AOC uber
exaggerated. the percentages reported align with the claim and it's reasonable
to assume they are the bottom 5% as opposed to somewhere in the top or middle.

------
kediz
Does Wall Street going to absorb these people back or they might have to find
another trades all together?

How general the skills learned on the Sales and Trading are?

~~~
ohaideredevs
I very much doubt Wall Street will absorb them. The number of needed Finance
jobs collapsed with automation. The only people getting analyst jobs are those
with connections or an Ivy League background (and a top one with certs at
that).

The call center jobs are just being cut and/or the salary has been dropping
rapidly since 2008.

~~~
mocha_nate
Call center people are being cut out at both ends:

1\. The type of people that would rather call than use an app are getting
older and will eventually stop calling

2\. The type of problems automation can solve is removing the need for a live
person.

------
algaeontoast
Looks like the average value of a non-ivy "business" / "finance" degree was
just docked to a "CCC" rating?

~~~
ohaideredevs
As someone with one, my understanding is that its market value sits somewhere
between art history and lower-tier engineering degrees (e.g. civil).

It opens the door to $40,000 office jobs, but that's about it.

~~~
algaeontoast
Wow, that's shocking!

I have a CS degree from a non-ivy but well known private engineering school in
the Cambridge / Boston area. CS students obv seem to have no issues, but I was
always curious what kind of work / salary "business" or "finance" degrees
would fetch. It's hard to place my position on the subject since I know a
number of talented and intelligent non-engineering majors with the above
qualifications, but an order or magnitude more complete idiots who partied
their way through college and think their $40 haircut is more of a bargaining
tool than actual skills.

------
Ididntdothis
It’s interesting how many highly paid managers can come and go at Deutsche
Bank, do some experiments that will fail and then leave. They really seem to
have no clue where they want to go. It’s pretty sad to see how a once solid
bank had been managed into a shell of its former self.

~~~
duxup
I wonder what "banking" is to a bank like Deutsche Bank?

I have some visibility to a bank that grew from a community bank to a fairly
sizable regional bank in the US, but it is still largely a consumer type bank
with individual account holders / businesses. Almost everything they do as a
"bank" is very much what anyone might think a bank is. It's surprisingly
simple how they operate and everyone at the bank is on the same page.

At large banks I see what seems more like a whole lot of speculation, tax
management, random opportunities etc.... seems like that easily can get out of
hand.

~~~
rmah
A large international bank like DeutscheBank operates in many different
business areas. Basically, they can be broken down into six main areas:

    
    
      1. Retail banking
      2. Commercial banking
      3. Investment banking
      4. Investment/money management services
      5. Proprietary trading
      6. Other random financial things
    

Retail banking is mostly what you're thinking of for your community bank. That
is consumer deposits and loans (for cars, houses, etc). And possibly small
business loans, lines of credit, etc. (though at some banks, these are part of
commercial banking instead). These things are typically handled at the local
branch level.

Commercial banking is for larger corporate customers. The bank generally
offers more services in addition to deposits and lines of credit. They may
include loans, foreign exchange, treasury services (cash management), payment
services, etc.

Investment banking is sort of related to commercial banking. Generally
speaking, it revolves around _arranging_ financing (rather than providing it
as commercial bankers would do). It includes things like bond issuences,
mergers & acquisitions, private equity deals, etc.

Investment/money management services may include an actual brokerage
operation, custody services, and high-net-worth money management/investment
advisers. Services range from do-it-yourself-online to we-handle-everything-
for-you-so-you-don't-have-to-think-about-it. Part of this will often be the
production of analyst reports and market forecasts, though this is sometimes
outsourced.

Proprietary trading is where the bank uses its own money to trade or invest in
various securities. This is distinct from investment services in that they do
not use client money and thus must be segregated into a different group by
law.

Finally, there are a slew of random financial services that some banks do and
some banks don't. In terms of size, they can be very large (or even dominate)
to a rounding error on their books. Everything from trust accounts to credit
card issuance, from tax prep to reselling insurance.

And really finally, there are a number of internal groups that are specific to
banks. Two that come to mind are compliance and risk management. IT often also
has quite a large headcount (though often spread out in different business
units).

Each bank organizes itself somewhat differently so take what I wrote with a
grain of salt. Sometimes the same product may even fall under different
departments in different countries because of regulatory issues.

~~~
duxup
Thank you.

It would be interesting to see how they manage the different returns and
approaches to each.

We've seen companies struggle with say a traditional business who is reliable
but don't bring in massive jumps in income where another business does, and
then the obvious conflicts that come with that.

------
shahbaby
Software developers take note, once we solve AI, we'll be next.

~~~
umvi
Assuming "AI" is "solvable"

That's like saying: "nuclear engineers take note, once we solve cold fusion,
we'll be next"

~~~
shahbaby
Cold fusion is a hypothesized type of nuclear reaction.

Solving AI is more like solving flight.

Before flight was solved, leading experts believed it would be impossible.
Same could be said for the moon landing.

Hackernews crowd seems to be in denial about how true AI would make most of
them redundant.

~~~
umvi
Until we fully understand the human brain, we won't be anywhere near AGI or
"true AI" as you call it.

Current AGI efforts amount to cargo cult science where experimenters create
increasingly vast neural networks and hope some kind of
intelligence/consciousness magically emerges.

So far "AI" seems to be a combination of if statements, neural networks, and
linear algebra - which is great for specialized tasks! But light years away
from the way humans can pick an area and self-teach.

Believe it or not, not all of HN is atheist either, so that means many people
believe the human mind is more than just a biological Turing machine/neural
network and that there is some sort of "spirit" or "soul" if you will that
accounts for our first person consciousness experience. Hence, without a
spirit/soul, you'll never be able to create a conscious computer.

~~~
rmah
First off, I agree with your general message that getting an AGI is very very
very hard and that we are no where close.

That said, however, we do already know quite a bit about how neural nets work,
both biological and artificial. One of the things we know is that they are
most certainly not a Turing machine -- they are associative memory machines.
That is, memory and processing are one and the same.

Most (all?) current artificial neural nets have fixed interconnects between
neurons. One thing we do know is that biological brains _change_ which neurons
connect to which other neurons. And as far as I'm aware, we don't know how
that's done or what drives it except in the most general terms. This lack of
plasticity (not sure if that's the appropriate term) in artificial neural nets
is, IMO, a major blockage in the road to an AGI..

IMO, "intelligence" is an emergent of a complex, malleable, neural network
that has been exposed to the right environment. I suspect _both_ are
necessary.

And finally, we don't need an AGI as "smart" as humans (we have plenty of
humans, after all). But even one as "smart" as a bright dog would be very
useful. I don't think most religious people think dogs have souls, so I don't
see how souls are an issue.

~~~
umvi
> I don't think most religious people think dogs have souls, so I don't see
> how souls are an issue.

Really? I was taught growing up that all life has a soul/spirit. It's what
sets life apart from machines or other non-living matter. Sure, a dog's spirit
might be a lesser one than a human spirit, but it still has one...

