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CEO fired developers to make room for AI. Developers create open source AI CEO

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Re: CEO fired developers to make room for AI. Developers create open source AI CEO

#381

Post by whstl »

DanielHB wrote: post #343
Havoc wrote: post #304

Neither CEO nor dev here but must say hn comments on CEOs are always wild. It’s like some caricature - like an attempt to draw an animal that has never been seen from a description Somehow founders constantly putting out fires, leading and strategizing makes sense but once they acquire the CEO title they apparently do nothing and swan about

I dunno most CEOs I have been under of seem to work really hard and try to get stuff done in a sane manner, it is usually the middle management that fs up. CEO is, of course, partly responsible for having that middle management in the first place. However if I were the CEO I don't even know how I would be able to smell the rats with the top-down view that CEOs have (they can't be in every meeting and decision making…

I've been in a situation where I had to work directly with a good CEO (plus board, C-Levels, and a lot of middle-management) and problematic middle-management was the actual problem.

It was almost like parody:

- CEO wanting people to leave at 5 sharp, middle-management inventing work and forcing people to do overtime and telling people "he's the CEO, he can leave at 5, he doesn't know we have a lot of work to do".

- Bureaucracy and inefficiency, with everyone complaining about it, but whenever CEO pushed back on that same bureaucracy, the discussion would be hampered by one or two people fillibustering the meeting to force the status quo.

- People going to golf courses or resort trips paid by vendors and then pushing for a vendor that costs 100k/year. This one was so blatant that I was surprised said person wasn't fired.

- CEO and C-Levels taking suggestions from the trenches, and the board loving it, but middle-managers laughing about the suggestions behind the CEOs back, right after the meeting. This one stung because a few of those were suggestions I made and he presented as his own on my request.

This is the kind of stuff that HN people would go "Chesterton Fence" but was just fucking corruption and schoolyard bullying from middle-management.

Obviously the company didn't grow in the period, and the CEO resigned and left for much greener pastures.

In the end the only lesson I learned is that the CEO should have laid-off those people.

And that the CEO should make more money because childcare is hard work.

Funny thing is that I'm a middle manager myself.

Re: CEO fired developers to make room for AI. Developers create open source AI CEO

#382

Post by srean »

21asdffdsa12 wrote: post #372
LIMEVINCE wrote: post #365

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The founders who become CEOs are generally the better ones. The ones that draw universal hatred are usually hired by the board of public companies, to enact unpopular measures to ensure shareholder returns, such as firing expensive developers to make room for cheap AI; or unfairly denying health care to policy holders (like Luigi's alleged victim); etc. The relatively rare heartless corporate CEO also receives dispro…

They are usually ousted really fast - as there goals do not align with the shareholders?

Anecdote: John Sculley lasted ten years.

Re: CEO fired developers to make room for AI. Developers create open source AI CEO

#383

Post by wwind123 »

groestl wrote: post #335
midasz wrote: post #325

The crux of this entire issue surrounding replacing people with agents, is that agents should pay taxes. If we're losing people that pay taxes our social safety nets will crumble. Maybe that makes the math more in favor of actually using humans too.

I'm fully in favor of a social safety net (a proper UBI even), but the tax system should tax what we don't want / keep within bounds, and I think in general we want more automation and more free time. So we should tax resource consumption. Short time, this might turn out the same (i.e. whether to tax agents through electricity consumption or agents directly might not make much of a difference) but I think long term t…

Taxing resource consumption, would likely encourage companies to optimize for less and less resource consumption. That by itself might be a good thing. But what if some day companies achieved the ultimate savings, using very little resource to produce the max amount of things. You'd get very little tax revenue to feed the society.

Of course, if those max amounts of things have few consumers because most people are just too poor to afford them, that'd make companies (or the agents that run companies) think twice too. At some point these AI agents might work together to come up with an economic system to make it possible for society to afford their products so they could further grow.

Re: CEO fired developers to make room for AI. Developers create open source AI CEO

#384

Post by kakacik »

nickff wrote: post #362
DanielHB wrote: post #343

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I dunno most CEOs I have been under of seem to work really hard and try to get stuff done in a sane manner, it is usually the middle management that fs up. CEO is, of course, partly responsible for having that middle management in the first place. However if I were the CEO I don't even know how I would be able to smell the rats with the top-down view that CEOs have (they can't be in every meeting and decision making…

> qIf you have the right underlings (or inherit them) you might actually not need to do anything at all and succeed. Then again if you have the wrong underlings (or inherit them) then your job is hella-difficult.” I think this paragraph is right on the money, but the ‘leader’ has more influence on their ‘underlings’ than you give them credit for. In this vein, I highly recommend “Turn the Ship Around!” by Marquet, wh…

Yeah if new CEO gives the middle management mission in the lines of - we need high productivity, lets be nice and supportive to our teams to get the best out of them since we believe core of our employees are smart hard working folks, it trickles down into thousand little (and not so little things).

Reverse also trickles some brown stuff down. CEO who doesn't care about that leaves stuff to middle management, who are often over-eager to please for the carrot on stick in form of bonuses.

Re: CEO fired developers to make room for AI. Developers create open source AI CEO

#387

Post by gib444 »

baalimago wrote: post #160
edoceo wrote: post #6

What does a CEO(and other managers) do really? Sometimes the claim is "set vision" - which AI can extract from the collective. Someimes the claim is to prioritize the work (with bias), AI can extract that from the collective too, right? Making resources available to the team? AI. Coordinating between teams? AI. Can the AI do this in a more un-biased way? Can it refine collective intelligence and desire into objective…

They ensure the company is funded.

This! They sell the company and vision to potential investors

Re: CEO fired developers to make room for AI. Developers create open source AI CEO

#388

Post by exe34 »

torginus wrote: post #313
exe34 wrote: post #309

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I had this hypothesis back in 2014 that all the communications from higher level managers could be replaced by a markov chain, because it was just variations on the same themes ("improve conditions", "make it easier to do....", " ". I never saw LLMs coming.

I have a friend who works a high-level management position, who told me that as long as results are delivered, management is doing their jobs 'by definition'. So if a manager is either horribly abusive or totally incompetent and his subordinates make up for it in some way, that the result is at least acceptable, nothing bad can happen to said manager, at least officially. Only failure is actionable, in which case sai…

Thankfully my boss is actually great (he doesn't know me on here), and even the suits know enough to just leave us to get on with it while they play musical chairs.

Re: CEO fired developers to make room for AI. Developers create open source AI CEO

#389

Post by rgavuliak »

DanielHB wrote: post #343
Havoc wrote: post #304

Neither CEO nor dev here but must say hn comments on CEOs are always wild. It’s like some caricature - like an attempt to draw an animal that has never been seen from a description Somehow founders constantly putting out fires, leading and strategizing makes sense but once they acquire the CEO title they apparently do nothing and swan about

I dunno most CEOs I have been under of seem to work really hard and try to get stuff done in a sane manner, it is usually the middle management that fs up. CEO is, of course, partly responsible for having that middle management in the first place. However if I were the CEO I don't even know how I would be able to smell the rats with the top-down view that CEOs have (they can't be in every meeting and decision making…

Interesting. I have had mostly the opposite experience. CEO(s) that changed strategy + focus every month and the middle management having to pick up the pieces. Keep people motivated and deliver.

Re: CEO fired developers to make room for AI. Developers create open source AI CEO

#390

Post by slifin »

I think this is an interesting idea but the non tech parts need fleshing out a bit if only to fire the imagination

The way the title sounds is that they got fired, then they created a new CEO and continued as normal

In reality payroll would be gone, any customer relationships would be with the previous entity would be gone, any capital/fund raising whatever not helpful any more

I'm actually surprised we don't hear more about companies created where AI is the leader - I think over the next year or so when the commercial labs release persistent agents this will be more viable because right now its still very difficult to take seriously due to deficiencies in the models

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