Microsoft drops AI sales targets in half after salespeople miss their quotas
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Re: Microsoft drops AI sales targets in half after salespeople miss their quotas
#2AI agent technology likely isn’t ready for the kind of high-stakes autonomous business work Microsoft is promising.
It's unbelievable to me that tech leaders lack the insight to recognize this.
So how to explain the current AI mania being widely promoted?
I think the best fit explanation is simple con artistry. They know the product is fundamentally flawed and won't perform as being promised. But the money to be made selling the fantasy is simply too good to ignore.
In other words --- pure greed. Over the longer term, this is a weakness, not a strength.
Re: Microsoft drops AI sales targets in half after salespeople miss their quotas
#3Re: Microsoft drops AI sales targets in half after salespeople miss their quotas
#4AI agent technology likely isn’t ready for the kind of high-stakes autonomous business work Microsoft is promising. It's unbelievable to me that tech leaders lack the insight to recognize this. So how to explain the current AI mania being widely promoted? I think the best fit explanation is simple con artistry. They know the product is fundamentally flawed and won't perform as being promised. But the money to be made…
Imagine your supplier effectively telling you that they don't even value you (and your money) enough to bother a real human.
Re: Microsoft drops AI sales targets in half after salespeople miss their quotas
#5AI agent technology likely isn’t ready for the kind of high-stakes autonomous business work Microsoft is promising. It's unbelievable to me that tech leaders lack the insight to recognize this. So how to explain the current AI mania being widely promoted? I think the best fit explanation is simple con artistry. They know the product is fundamentally flawed and won't perform as being promised. But the money to be made…
They've gotten away with shipping garbage for years and still getting paid for it. They think we're all stupid.
Re: Microsoft drops AI sales targets in half after salespeople miss their quotas
#6AI agent technology likely isn’t ready for the kind of high-stakes autonomous business work Microsoft is promising. It's unbelievable to me that tech leaders lack the insight to recognize this. So how to explain the current AI mania being widely promoted? I think the best fit explanation is simple con artistry. They know the product is fundamentally flawed and won't perform as being promised. But the money to be made…
I was just in a thread yesterday with someone who genuinely believed that we're only seeing the beginnings of what the current breed of AI will get us, and that it's going to be as transformative as the introduction of the internet was.
Everything about the conversation felt like talking to a true believer, and there's plenty out there.
It's the hopes and dreams of the Next Big Thing after blockchain and web3 fell apart and everyone is desperate to jump on the bandwagon because ZIRP is gone and everyone who is risk averse will only bet on what everyone else is betting on.
Thus, the cycle feeds itself until the bubble pops.
Re: Microsoft drops AI sales targets in half after salespeople miss their quotas
#7AI agent technology likely isn’t ready for the kind of high-stakes autonomous business work Microsoft is promising. It's unbelievable to me that tech leaders lack the insight to recognize this. So how to explain the current AI mania being widely promoted? I think the best fit explanation is simple con artistry. They know the product is fundamentally flawed and won't perform as being promised. But the money to be made…
> In other words --- pure greed.
Pure greed would have a strong incentive to understand what the market is actually demanding in order to maximize profits.
These attempts to try to steer demand despite clear indicators that it doesn't want to go in that direction aren't just driven by greed, they're driven by abject incompetence.
This isn't pure greed, it's stupid greed.
Re: Microsoft drops AI sales targets in half after salespeople miss their quotas
#8AI agent technology likely isn’t ready for the kind of high-stakes autonomous business work Microsoft is promising. It's unbelievable to me that tech leaders lack the insight to recognize this. So how to explain the current AI mania being widely promoted? I think the best fit explanation is simple con artistry. They know the product is fundamentally flawed and won't perform as being promised. But the money to be made…
I was just in a thread yesterday with someone who genuinely believed that we're only seeing the beginnings of what the current breed of AI will get us, and that it's going to be as transformative as the introduction of the internet was. Everything about the conversation felt like talking to a true believer, and there's plenty out there. It's the hopes and dreams of the Next Big Thing after blockchain and web3 fell ap…
All these boosters think we're on the leading edge of an exponential, when it's way more likely that we're on the midpoint to tail of a logistic
Re: Microsoft drops AI sales targets in half after salespeople miss their quotas
#9AI agent technology likely isn’t ready for the kind of high-stakes autonomous business work Microsoft is promising. It's unbelievable to me that tech leaders lack the insight to recognize this. So how to explain the current AI mania being widely promoted? I think the best fit explanation is simple con artistry. They know the product is fundamentally flawed and won't perform as being promised. But the money to be made…
They've gotten away with shipping garbage for years and still getting paid for it. They think we're all stupid.
They think we're all stupid.
As time goes by, I'm starting to think they may be right more than they're wrong.
And this is a sad and depressing statement about humanity.
Re: Microsoft drops AI sales targets in half after salespeople miss their quotas
#10AI agent technology likely isn’t ready for the kind of high-stakes autonomous business work Microsoft is promising. It's unbelievable to me that tech leaders lack the insight to recognize this. So how to explain the current AI mania being widely promoted? I think the best fit explanation is simple con artistry. They know the product is fundamentally flawed and won't perform as being promised. But the money to be made…
It's not "fundamentally flawed". It is brilliant at what it does. What is flawed is how people are applying it to solve specific problems. It isn't a "do anything" button that you can just push. Every problem you apply AI to still has a ton of engineering work that needs to be done to make it useful.