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AI-First Company Memos

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Re: AI-First Company Memos

#41

Post by gowld »

ej88 wrote: post #7

seems to be a pattern: [Company that's getting disrupted by AI: Fiverr, Duolingo]: rush to adopt internal AI to cut costs before they get undercut by competition [Company that's orthogonal: Box, Ramp, HFT]: build internal tools to boost productivity, maintain 'ai-first' image to keep talent [Company whose business model is AI]: time to go all in

Why wouldn't HFT be disrupted by AI? AI-enhanced trading algo designs are likely to be competitive? AI disrupts everything on the computer from the low-end on up. The higher end requires more expensive or custom models that aren't as easy to obtain yet.

Re: AI-First Company Memos

#42

Post by collingreen »

steveBK123 wrote: post #19
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 to…

> FOMOing at the mouth

This is a great line - evocative, funny, and a bit o wordplay.

I think you might be right about the behavior here; I haven't been able to otherwise understand the absolute forcing through of "use AI!!" by people and upon people with only a hazy notion of why and how. I suppose it's some version of nuclear deterrence or Pascal's wager -- if AI isn't a magic bullet then no big loss but if it is they can't afford not to be the first one to fire it.

Re: AI-First Company Memos

#43

Post by Mave83 »

The software defined storage company croit.io announced it in their Workation in May 2023. AI is just another tool and people have to understand that it's not going away. As a company, you still need people to make use of this tool.

Re: AI-First Company Memos

#44

Post by jezzamon »

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.

Productive output is a lagging indicator. Using AI tools is theoretically leading???

Re: AI-First Company Memos

#45

Post by mdavid626 »

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…

Reminds me of those little gadgets, which move your mouse, so that you show up online on Slack.

I’d just add a cron job to burn some tokens.

Re: AI-First Company Memos

#46

Post by steveBK123 »

upupupandaway wrote: post #36
steveBK123 wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

4. They heard from their golf buddy who heard from his racquetball buddy that this other CTO at this other shop is saving lots of money with AI

I know you're speaking half in jest but the C-suite of my area actually used a tweet by an OpenAI executive as the agenda for an AI brainstorm meeting.

I am at less than half jest here.

I have friends who are finance industry CTOs, and they have described it to me in realtime as CEO FOMO they need to manage ..

Remember tech is sort of an odd duck in how open people are about things and the amount of cross pollination. Many industries are far more secretive and so whatever people are hearing about competitors AI usage is 4th hand hearsay telephone game.

edit: noteworthy someone sent yet another firmwide email about AI today which was just linking to some twitter thread by a VC AI booster thinkbro

Re: AI-First Company Memos

#47

Post by munk-a »

SketchySeaBeast wrote: post #17
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.

Can I modify your example to:

Demanding everyone, from drywaller to admin assistant go out and buy a purple colored drill, never use any other colored drill, and use their purple drill for at least fifty minutes a day (to be confirmed by measuring battery charge).

Re: AI-First Company Memos

#48

Post by plaidfuji »

Fiverr CEO goes on a pretty dark rant about how people who don’t upskill and convert to AI workflows will have to change professions, etc.

Then concludes his email with:

> I have asked Shelly to free up time on my calendar next week so people can have conversations with me about our future.

I assume Shelly is an AI, and not human headcount the CEO is wasting on menial admin tasks??

Re: AI-First Company Memos

#49

Post by munk-a »

upupupandaway wrote: post #36
steveBK123 wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

4. They heard from their golf buddy who heard from his racquetball buddy that this other CTO at this other shop is saving lots of money with AI

I know you're speaking half in jest but the C-suite of my area actually used a tweet by an OpenAI executive as the agenda for an AI brainstorm meeting.

Well that's inspiring. If you're going to follow anyone right now be sure to follow someone from the company that has committed to spending a trillion dollars without ever having a profitable product. Those are the folks who know what good business is!
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