An AI Course Ad Promised “Three Days of Work in Four Hours”—But Is AI Really the Problem, or Is It the Company?
Recently, I have been seeing a lot of advertisements for AI courses and online education services.
One I saw the other day was presented as a short drama. It began with an experienced-looking consultant joining a new company.
During a meeting, someone asks how long it will take him to prepare a document.
“About three days,” he replies.
A younger employee who knows how to use AI gives a different answer:
“About four hours.”
The manager then tells the veteran:
“Your skills are genuine. But the tools you use are outdated. I will give you two weeks to catch up.”
I see.
Veterans who cannot use AI will be left behind by younger employees. Start studying AI now.
The intended message is perfectly clear.
But as someone who has worked in IT for many years, I became concerned about something else before I could marvel at the power of AI.
What is going on with this company’s hiring process?
Did Nobody Notice the Difference Between Three Days and Four Hours During the Interview?
Assuming an eight-hour workday, the comparison is 24 hours versus four.
That is a sixfold difference.
If one skill has such a dramatic effect on productivity, AI proficiency must be extremely important to this company.
This is not a new graduate, either. The company hired an experienced professional who was presumably expected to contribute immediately.
Yet after hiring him, the company discovers that he cannot use an AI tool everyone else apparently considers standard.
Is that not the kind of thing a job interview is supposed to establish?
The company could include “experience preparing documents with generative AI” in the job description. An interviewer could simply ask, “Which AI tools do you normally use?”
Instead, the candidate sails through the process. Only after he joins a meeting does everyone discover:
“Wait, this person cannot use AI?”
Before worrying about AI, the company may need to digitally transform its hiring process.
If the Company Hired for Potential, Its Training Is the Next Problem
Perhaps AI proficiency was never a hiring requirement. Suppose the company expected new employees to learn it after joining.
That would make sense.
But it raises another question:
Why was it not taught during onboarding?
“This is the AI tool we use.”
“Please use this template.”
“Complete this training first.”
That would be the normal approach.
The company in the advertisement instead sends the new employee directly into the workplace.
He estimates three days.
The younger employee estimates four hours.
Only then does the company tell him that his tools are outdated.
And the solution is:
“You have two weeks. Catch up.”
It is an unusually hands-off company.
AI is apparently an essential business skill, yet the company provides no training and tells the employee to somehow solve the problem within two weeks.
This creates a convenient path to the AI course being advertised. From the employee’s perspective, however, the obvious question is:
“Why am I searching for an external course to learn a skill my employer requires?”
The Company’s Problem Is Bigger Than the Veteran’s
Employees do have a responsibility to keep learning.
This is especially true in a rapidly changing field such as AI. Experience alone is not an excuse to continue using the same methods forever.
I therefore have no objection to the advertisement’s intended message:
“Do not rely on experience alone. Learn to use new AI tools as well.”
The trouble is that the company’s failures are too large to ignore.
It does not confirm an essential skill during hiring.
It does not teach the skill when the employee joins.
It sends him directly into the workplace.
There, it discovers a sixfold productivity difference.
Then it tells him to solve the problem himself within two weeks.
Rather than a story about reskilling an experienced employee, it looks like a case study in failed HR and management.
It Is Also Frightening from the Client’s Perspective
The fact that this is supposedly a consulting company makes the story even more interesting.
Consider the client’s perspective.
The same company may assign either of two people to the work.
Employee A needs four hours.
Employee B needs three days.
The company itself did not know that this capability gap existed.
For a consulting business, the required effort directly affects estimates and fees.
Imagine commissioning work after being told, “This document will take three days,” only to discover that the person at the next desk could have completed it in four hours.
As a client, I would be more concerned about that than about the AI course.
How exactly does your company calculate its estimates?
The Ad Tried to Show the Fear of AI and Accidentally Showed the Fear of the Company
I understand that advertisements exaggerate.
“AI may make you slightly more efficient” is not a powerful message.
So the advertisement creates a dramatic contrast:
Three days → four hours.
The difference is large enough to make experienced professionals worry that they may be falling behind.
But by making the gap so extreme, the advertisement also made the company’s failures look extreme.
If a skill creates a difference between three days and four hours, verify it during hiring.
If employees are expected to learn it after joining, provide the training.
Doing neither, discovering the problem in the workplace, and then giving the employee two weeks to catch up seems remarkably unfair.
The advertisement successfully taught me that studying AI is important.
But that was not my main takeaway.
When changing jobs, make sure you ask about the company’s onboarding process.