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AI-First Company Memos

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Re: AI-First Company Memos

#11

Post by coldpie »

upupupandaway wrote: post #6

I work for a large tech company, and our CTO has just released a memo with a new rubric for SDEs that includes "AI Fluency". We also have a dashboard with AI Adoption per developer, that is being used to surveil the teams lagging on the topic. All very depressing. A friend of mine is an engineer of a large pre-IPO startup, and their VP of AI just demanded every single employee needs to create an agent using Claude. T…

I'm so glad I'm nearer the end of my career than the beginning. Can't wait to leave this industry. I've got a stock cliff coming up late this summer, probably a good time to get out and find something better to do with my life.

Re: AI-First Company Memos

#12

Post by some_random »

nemomarx wrote: post #2

That Fiverr one seems especially cold somehow. I guess it lines up with their business model though.

It also lines up with what has to be their outlook on the market, their model is especially challenged by AI. Years ago I paid for a Ukrainian to write me some scrapers, today that would be a quick project in Cursor. Lots of people used it for cheap art, voice work, etc, now the low end is all AI.

Re: AI-First Company Memos

#13

Post by ej88 »

upupupandaway wrote: post #6

I work for a large tech company, and our CTO has just released a memo with a new rubric for SDEs that includes "AI Fluency". We also have a dashboard with AI Adoption per developer, that is being used to surveil the teams lagging on the topic. All very depressing. A friend of mine is an engineer of a large pre-IPO startup, and their VP of AI just demanded every single employee needs to create an agent using Claude. T…

1. execs likely have spend commits and pressure from the board about their 'ai strategy', what better way to show we're making progress than stamping on some kpis like # of agents created?

2. most ai adoption is personal. people use whichever tools work for their role (cc / codex / cursor / copilot (jk, nobody should be using copilot)

3. there is some subset of ai detractors that refuse to use the tools for whatever reason

the metrics pushed by 1) rarely account for 2) and dont really serve 3)

i work at one of the 'hot' ai companies and there is no mandate to use ai... everyone is trusted to use whichever tools they pick responsibly which is how it should be imo

Re: AI-First Company Memos

#14

Post by andrewshawcare »

The Klarna guy:

>The misconceptions about Klarna and AI adoption baffle me sometimes.

>Yes, we removed close to 1,500 micro SaaS services and some large. Not to save on licenses, but to give AI the cleanest possible context.

If you remove all your services...

Re: AI-First Company Memos

#15

Post by palmotea »

upupupandaway wrote: post #6

I work for a large tech company, and our CTO has just released a memo with a new rubric for SDEs that includes "AI Fluency". We also have a dashboard with AI Adoption per developer, that is being used to surveil the teams lagging on the topic. All very depressing. A friend of mine is an engineer of a large pre-IPO startup, and their VP of AI just demanded every single employee needs to create an agent using Claude. T…

> We also have a dashboard with AI Adoption per developer, that is being used to surveil the teams lagging on the topic. All very depressing.

Enforced use means one of two things:

1. The tool sucks, so few will use it unless forced.

2. Use of the tool is against your interests as a worker, so you must be coerced to fuck yourself over (unless you're a software engineer, in which case you may excitedly agree to fuck yourself over willingly, because you're not as smart as you think you are).

Re: AI-First Company Memos

#16

Post by malfist »

MontyCarloHall wrote: post #10

Whatever happened to "show, don't tell"? Other productivity boosters certainly didn't need such memos; they were naturally adopted because the benefits were unambiguous. There were no "IDE-first company memos" or "software framework-first company memos"; devs organically picked these up because the productivity gains were immediately self-evident.

Remember when companies all forced us to buy smartphones? Or switch to search engines instead of books? Or when Amazon announced it was "react native first"?

Re: AI-First Company Memos

#17

Post by SketchySeaBeast »

upupupandaway wrote: post #6

I work for a large tech company, and our CTO has just released a memo with a new rubric for SDEs that includes "AI Fluency". We also have a dashboard with AI Adoption per developer, that is being used to surveil the teams lagging on the topic. All very depressing. A friend of mine is an engineer of a large pre-IPO startup, and their VP of AI just demanded every single employee needs to create an agent using Claude. T…

This feels like a construction company demanding that everyone, from drywaller to admin assistant, go out and buy a drill.

Re: AI-First Company Memos

#18

Post by mjhay »

debo_ wrote: post #5
whiplash451 wrote: post #3

It's so sad to see some of these companies completely fail their AI-first communication [1], when they would just get so much from "We think AI can transform the way we work. We're giving you access to all these tools, please tell us what works and what doesn't". And that would be it. [1] there was a remote universe where I could see myself working for Shopify, now that company is sitting somewhere between Wipro and…

Unfortunately at this scale, when you are this soft on the message, everyone ignores it and keeps doing what they were doing before. Carrot and stick are both required for performance management at this scale. You can argue whether the bet is worth it or not, but to even take the bet, you need a lot more than some resources and a "please".

The executives pushing AI use everywhere aren’t basing it on actual performance (which is an orthogonal concept). It’s just the latest shiny bauble.

Re: AI-First Company Memos

#19

Post by steveBK123 »

upupupandaway wrote: post #6

I work for a large tech company, and our CTO has just released a memo with a new rubric for SDEs that includes "AI Fluency". We also have a dashboard with AI Adoption per developer, that is being used to surveil the teams lagging on the topic. All very depressing. A friend of mine is an engineer of a large pre-IPO startup, and their VP of AI just demanded every single employee needs to create an agent using Claude. T…

This is absolutely the norm across corporate America right now. Chief AI Czars enforcing AI usage metrics with mandatory AI training for anyone that isn't complying.

People with roles nowhere near software/tech/data are being asked about their AI usage in their self-assessment/annual review process, etc.

It's deeply fascinating psychologically and I'm not sure where this ends.

I've never seen any tech theme pushed top down so hard in 20+ years working. The closest was the early 00s offshoring boom before it peaked and was rationalized/rolled back to some degree. The common theme is C-suite thinks it will save money and their competitors already figured out out, so they are FOMOing at the mouth about catching up on the savings.

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