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having heard the arguments made by some VP + C-levels throughout the Tokenmaxxing Tulip Mania, I think the interpretation that those mandates were made intentio

by herval 3mo ago

having heard the arguments made by some VP + C-levels throughout the Tokenmaxxing Tulip Mania, I think the interpretation that those mandates were made intentionally for "forcing employees to start leveraging AI in meaningful ways" is too charitable. Most companies focused entirely on doing "what everyone else is doing" at best or "to see if Programmer Joe can be as productive as the entire team so we can fire the rest". And many indeed fired employees in droves because they were "underperforming in token spend".

dspillett 3mo ago
> Most companies focused entirely on doing "what everyone else is doing" This is true of my current overlords. It slipped recently that the reason they went AI-nuts was that a competitor had announced going “AI first” and the market responded excitedly. Not because they thought it was a good idea: because the market got excited and they didn't want to get left behind. This is quite a change as our market is financial services and I remember a time when we had to support decades old browsers (one large UK bank who I won't name here had IE6, and only IE6, on many of its user's machines until ~2017) and web servers because they refused to upgrade anything. > "to see if Programmer Joe can be as productive as the entire team so we can fire the rest" I'm not sure who Joe is in our outfit, but I'm certainly in the “the rest who are to be fired” set. I've been unhappy in dev & related for years so the AI revolution which I don't care for is where I'm consciously letting myself get left behind to find something else to do with my life. Haven't touched it. Was too late to claim one of the first tranche of Claude licences. And the second. Oops. Maybe I'll use AI in my next big adventure, or maybe my distaste for it all means I have a grand future waiting for me in the hospitality industry!
- robocat 3mo ago
  Isn't it easier to get a job when you already have a job? There's some jobs I'd love to do, but I can't face the bullshit of tertiary education again. Without some sort of ticket, job choices become more limited?
  - dspillett 3mo ago
    > Isn't it easier to get a job when you already have a job? Yes. Or so I'm told, I've not needed to apply for a job for 26 years… I have something possible available, though whether it still will be in five months (the earliest I'm likely to leave because of [reasons] and a two-month notice period) is a bit unknown. That five months might be ten as there are other major changes in the company (we were bought a while ago) from which the dust should have settled by Feb, and it makes sense to try to hold out that long to see if I'm still hating things with the same passion at that point. Without that “something” there are less certain tech based options I could look at, and to be honest I really could do with a proper sabbatical style break. The mortgage is paid, I have savings, and no dependents other than the cats, so I have the luxury of considering that option. And if all else fails I've actually done the arithmetic and I can survive on minimum wage for an extended time if I need to, and hospitality work is something friends can get me into above the many others looking (that bit is less of a joke then people assume: it is seriously part of my plans D & E if I can't stick with A and B & C completely fall through).
no-name-here 3mo ago
> many indeed fired employees in droves because they were "underperforming in token spend" 1. Source for that 4-word quotation? I googled it, but it appears you are the only person who has ever said it? 2. Even if you made up the quote, source for the claim that "many" "fired employees in droves" for "underperforming in token spend"? (Again, even if the companies never used those words, I'm still interested in the source for the claim about many companies firing employees in droves for low token use.)
ido 3mo ago
Some companies are badly managed (at least in some aspects). But it’s also true that some devs need to be pushed - sometimes forcibly - out of their comfort zone. I’ve had multiple instances of taking months/years to get some devs to use a more sophisticated git client than GitHub Desktop (so they could properly do anything but the most trivial merges/rebases for example). Or to learn how to use the debugger instead of just printing/logging for debugging. For some of them getting them to seriously figure out how to better use AI required a bunch of repeated prodding. Funnily enough a few years ago they enthusiastically jumped on copilot’s fancier autocomplete in VS Code, but getting them to really figure out how to get the most out of Claude Code required more pushing.

by herval 3mo ago

dspillett 3mo ago

> Most companies focused entirely on doing "what everyone else is doing" This is true of my current overlords. It slipped recently that the reason they went AI-nuts was that a competitor had announced going “AI first” and the market responded excitedly. Not because they thought it was a good idea: because the market got excited and they didn't want to get left behind. This is quite a change as our market is financial services and I remember a time when we had to support decades old browsers (one large UK bank who I won't name here had IE6, and only IE6, on many of its user's machines until ~2017) and web servers because they refused to upgrade anything. > "to see if Programmer Joe can be as productive as the entire team so we can fire the rest" I'm not sure who Joe is in our outfit, but I'm certainly in the “the rest who are to be fired” set. I've been unhappy in dev & related for years so the AI revolution which I don't care for is where I'm consciously letting myself get left behind to find something else to do with my life. Haven't touched it. Was too late to claim one of the first tranche of Claude licences. And the second. Oops. Maybe I'll use AI in my next big adventure, or maybe my distaste for it all means I have a grand future waiting for me in the hospitality industry!

robocat 3mo ago
Isn't it easier to get a job when you already have a job? There's some jobs I'd love to do, but I can't face the bullshit of tertiary education again. Without some sort of ticket, job choices become more limited?
- dspillett 3mo ago
  > Isn't it easier to get a job when you already have a job? Yes. Or so I'm told, I've not needed to apply for a job for 26 years… I have something possible available, though whether it still will be in five months (the earliest I'm likely to leave because of [reasons] and a two-month notice period) is a bit unknown. That five months might be ten as there are other major changes in the company (we were bought a while ago) from which the dust should have settled by Feb, and it makes sense to try to hold out that long to see if I'm still hating things with the same passion at that point. Without that “something” there are less certain tech based options I could look at, and to be honest I really could do with a proper sabbatical style break. The mortgage is paid, I have savings, and no dependents other than the cats, so I have the luxury of considering that option. And if all else fails I've actually done the arithmetic and I can survive on minimum wage for an extended time if I need to, and hospitality work is something friends can get me into above the many others looking (that bit is less of a joke then people assume: it is seriously part of my plans D & E if I can't stick with A and B & C completely fall through).

no-name-here 3mo ago

> many indeed fired employees in droves because they were "underperforming in token spend" 1. Source for that 4-word quotation? I googled it, but it appears you are the only person who has ever said it? 2. Even if you made up the quote, source for the claim that "many" "fired employees in droves" for "underperforming in token spend"? (Again, even if the companies never used those words, I'm still interested in the source for the claim about many companies firing employees in droves for low token use.)

ido 3mo ago

Some companies are badly managed (at least in some aspects). But it’s also true that some devs need to be pushed - sometimes forcibly - out of their comfort zone. I’ve had multiple instances of taking months/years to get some devs to use a more sophisticated git client than GitHub Desktop (so they could properly do anything but the most trivial merges/rebases for example). Or to learn how to use the debugger instead of just printing/logging for debugging. For some of them getting them to seriously figure out how to better use AI required a bunch of repeated prodding. Funnily enough a few years ago they enthusiastically jumped on copilot’s fancier autocomplete in VS Code, but getting them to really figure out how to get the most out of Claude Code required more pushing.