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AI-First Company Memos

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Re: AI-First Company Memos

#151

Post by munificent »

MontyCarloHall wrote: post #140
munificent wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Think about the Industrial Age transition from individual craftspeople working on small shops using hand tools to make things into working in factories on large-scale assembly lines. The latter is wildly more productive than the former. If you owned a business that employed a bunch of cobblers, then moving them all out of their little shops into one big factory where they can produce 100x as many shoes means you just…

>Think about the Industrial Age transition from individual craftspeople working on small shops using hand tools to make things into working in factories on large-scale assembly lines. I wouldn't analogize the adoption of AI tools to a transition from individual craftspeople to an assembly line, which is a top-down total reorganization of the company (akin to the transition of a factory from steam power to electricity…

> As it currently exists, AI adoption is a bottom-up decision at the individual level, not a total corporate reorganization.

I'm sorry, but did you forget what page this comment thread is attached to? It's literally about corporate communication from CEOs reorganizing their companies around AI and mandating that employees use it.

> That's certainly a part of it, but I also think workers enjoy and strive to be productive.

Agreed! Feeling productive and getting stuff done is also one of the joys of work and part of the compensation package. You're right that to the degree that AI lets you get more done, it can make the job more rewarding.

For some people, that's a clear net win. They feel good about being more productive, and they maybe never particularly enjoyed the programming part anyway and are happy to delegate that to AI.

For other people, it's not a net win. The job is being replaced with a different job that they enjoy less. Maybe they're getting more done, but they've having so little fun doing it that it's a worse job.

Re: AI-First Company Memos

#152

Post by withinboredom »

munificent wrote: post #61
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.

Think about the Industrial Age transition from individual craftspeople working on small shops using hand tools to make things into working in factories on large-scale assembly lines. The latter is wildly more productive than the former. If you owned a business that employed a bunch of cobblers, then moving them all out of their little shops into one big factory where they can produce 100x as many shoes means you just…

Blacksmiths pretty much existed until the ‘50s and ‘60s for most of the world, making bespoke tools and things. Then they just vanished, for the most part.

We are probably on a similar trajectory.

Re: AI-First Company Memos

#153

Post by MontyCarloHall »

munificent wrote: post #151
MontyCarloHall wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Think about the Industrial Age transition from individual craftspeople working on small shops using hand tools to make things into working in factories on large-scale assembly lines. I wouldn't analogize the adoption of AI tools to a transition from individual craftspeople to an assembly line, which is a top-down total reorganization of the company (akin to the transition of a factory from steam power to electricity…

> As it currently exists, AI adoption is a bottom-up decision at the individual level, not a total corporate reorganization. I'm sorry, but did you forget what page this comment thread is attached to? It's literally about corporate communication from CEOs reorganizing their companies around AI and mandating that employees use it. > That's certainly a part of it, but I also think workers enjoy and strive to be product…

>I'm sorry, but did you forget what page this comment thread is attached to? It's literally about corporate communication from CEOs reorganizing their companies around AI and mandating that employees use it.

That’s exactly my point. The fact that management is trying to top-down force adoption of something that operates at the individual level and whose adoption is thus inherently a bottom-up decision says it all. Individual workers naturally pick up tools that make them more productive and don’t need to be forced to use them from the top-down. We never saw CEOs issue memos “reorganizing” the company around IDEs or software frameworks and mandate that the employees use them, because employees naturally saw their productivity gains and adopted them organically. It seems the same is not true for AI.

Re: AI-First Company Memos

#154

Post by Sevii »

munificent wrote: post #61
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.

Think about the Industrial Age transition from individual craftspeople working on small shops using hand tools to make things into working in factories on large-scale assembly lines. The latter is wildly more productive than the former. If you owned a business that employed a bunch of cobblers, then moving them all out of their little shops into one big factory where they can produce 100x as many shoes means you just…

The industrial revolution was extremely hard on individual craftspeople. Jobs became lower paying and lower skilled. People were forced to move into cities. Conditions didn't improve for decades. If AI is anything comparable it's not going to get better in 5-10 years. It will be decades before the new 'jobs' come into place.

Re: AI-First Company Memos

#155

Post by halamadrid »

HubSpot CTO was very vocal about how AI is changing everything and how he is supporting by offering the domain chat.com to OpenAI etc. I say was because it has toned down quite a bit. I always thought HubSpot will transform into a true AI CRM given how invested the CTO was in the space from the early days.

Now the stock is down from $800+ to $200+ and the whole messaging has changed. The last one I saw on LinkedIn was "" No comment on the HubSpot stock price.

But, I strongly agree with this statement:

"...I don't see companies trusting their revenue engine to something vibe-coded over a weekend." ""

The stock dip is likely because of the true AI native CRMs being built and coming to market, but why couldn't HubSpot take that spot given the CTOs interest in the space.

Re: AI-First Company Memos

#156

Post by Rover222 »

emp17344 wrote: post #129
Rover222 wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not obvious because the multiplier effect of AI is being used to reduce head count more than to drastically increase net output of a team. Which yeah is scary, but my point is if you don't see any multiplier effect from using that latest AI tools, you are either doing a bad job of using them (or don't have the budget, can't blame anyone for that), or are maybe in some obscure niche coding world?

>the multiplier effect of AI is being used to reduce head count more than to drastically increase net output of a team This simply isn’t how economics works. There is always additional demand, especially in the software space. Every other productivity-boosting technology has resulted in an increase in jobs, not a decrease.

Well that's certainly and obviously how it's working at the moment in the software industry.

We're in the transition between traditional coding jobs and agentic managers (or something like that)

Re: AI-First Company Memos

#157

Post by Rover222 »

driverdan wrote: post #122
Rover222 wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean get onboard or fall behind, that's the situation we're all in. It can also be exciting. If you think it's still just slop and errors when managed by experienced devs, you're already behind.

Fall behind what? Writing code is only one part of building a successful product and business. Speed of writing code is often not what bottlenecks success.

Yes, the execution part has become cheap, but planning and strategizing is not much easier. But devs and organizations that keep their head in the sand will fall behind on one leg of that stool.

Re: AI-First Company Memos

#158

Post by abeppu »

munificent wrote: post #61
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.

Think about the Industrial Age transition from individual craftspeople working on small shops using hand tools to make things into working in factories on large-scale assembly lines. The latter is wildly more productive than the former. If you owned a business that employed a bunch of cobblers, then moving them all out of their little shops into one big factory where they can produce 100x as many shoes means you just…

> Now, if the boss said "hey, since you're all going to be so much more productive working in the factory, we'll give you all 10x raises" then perhaps you might be more excited about putting down your hammer.

... is now the moment to form worker cooperatives? The companies don't really have privileged access to these tools, and unlike many other things that drive increased productivity, there's not a huge up-front capital investment for the adopter. Why shouldn't ICs capture the value of their increased output?

Re: AI-First Company Memos

#159

Post by Mordisquitos »

malfist wrote: post #16
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"?

I agree with the sentiment you're expressing but, to be fair, companies forcing us all to use smartphones (as consumers or as citizens) is, unfortunately, happening implicitly.

Re: AI-First Company Memos

#160

Post by lmeyerov »

I get ai-adjacent dev teams going all in, as they're equipped to deal with the hard edges, but this is brutal for everyone else. Like Frank in collections is just trying to make sure people get paid, not worry about whatever it means to be "prompt injected".
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