Same here in LATAM. We are also an AI-First company now. No customer-first, or product-first, or data-driven (I actually liked the idea behind being data-driven). All the code must be AI-generated by the end of Q1. All the employees must include at least one AI-adoption metric or project in their goals.
AI-First Company Memos
81–90 of 216 posts
Re: AI-First Company Memos
#82Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
I don't understand how all these companies issue these sorts of policies in lock-step with each other. The same happened with "Return To Office". All of a sudden every company decided to kill work from home within the same week or so. Is there some secret CEO cabal that meets on a remote island somewhere to coordinate what they're going to all make workers do next?
> Is there some secret CEO cabal that meets on a remote island somewhere
I mean.. recent FBI files of certain emails would imply.. probably, yes.
Re: AI-First Company Memos
#83Earlier quoted context omitted.
People will voluntarily adopt modest productivity boosters that don't threaten their job security. They will rebel against extraordinary productivity boosters that may make some of their skills obsolete or threaten their career.
That’s simply not true. Developers hand-writing assembly readily adopted compilers, accountants readily adopted spreadsheets, and farmers readily adopted tractors and powered mills.
Your examples are productivity boosters that don't threaten job security. A human has to provide inputs to the compiler, the spreadsheet, and the tractor.
Re: AI-First Company Memos
#84Earlier 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.
I try these things a couple times a month. They're always underwhelming. Earlier this week I had the thing work tells me to use (claude code sonnet 4? something like that) generate some unit tests for a new function I wrote. I had a number of objections about the utility of the test cases it chose to write, but the largest problem was that it assigned the expected value to a test case struct field and then... didn't…
Twice now in this same story, different subthreads, I've seen AI dullards declaring that you, specifically, are holding it wrong. It's delightful, really.
Re: AI-First Company Memos
#85Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
I don't understand how all these companies issue these sorts of policies in lock-step with each other. The same happened with "Return To Office". All of a sudden every company decided to kill work from home within the same week or so. Is there some secret CEO cabal that meets on a remote island somewhere to coordinate what they're going to all make workers do next?
I have wondered the exact same thing. It's uncanny how in-sync they all are. I can only suppose that the trend trickles down from the same few influential sources.
Re: AI-First Company Memos
#86seems 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.
HFT is about the last technical domain that could possibly be touched by LLMs. There is next to no good training data and there is zero margin for error.
Re: AI-First Company Memos
#87seems 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.
i mean llms
happy to be corrected but im not aware of any direct improvements llms bring to ultra low latency market making, time to first token is just too high (not including coding agents)
from talking to some friends in the space theres some meaningful improvements in tooling especially in discretionary trading that operate on longer time horizons where agents can actually help w research and sentiment analysis
Re: AI-First Company Memos
#88Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Then, you might even tinker with some AI stuff on your own terms, you never know Indeed! I'm not like dead set against them. I just find they're kind of a bad tool for most jobs I've used them for and I'm just so goddamn tired of hearing about how revolutionary this kinda-bad tool is.
If you're finding their a bad tool for most jobs you're using them for, you're probably being closed minded and using it wrong. The trick with AI these days is to ask it to do something that you think is impossible and it will usually do a pretty decent job at it, or at least close enough for you to pick up or to guide it further. I was a huge AI skeptic but since Jan 2025, I have been watching AI take my job away fr…
Okay, I use OpenCode/Codex/Gemini daily (recently cancelled my personal CC plan given GPT 5.2/3 High/XHigh being a better value, but still have access to Opus 4.5/6 at work) and have found it can provide value in certain parts of my job and personal projects.
But the evangelist insistence that it literally cannot be a net negative in any contexts/workflows is just exhausting to read and is a massive turn-off. Or that others may simply not benefit the same way with that different work style.
Like I said, I feel like I get net value out of it, but if my work patterns were scientifically studied and it turned out it wasn't actually a time saver on the whole I wouldn't be that surprised.
There are times where after knocking request after request out of the park, I spend hours wrangling some dumb failures or run into spaghetti code from the last "successful" session that massively slow down new development or require painful refactoring and start to question whether this is a sustainable, true net multiplier in the long term. Plus the constant time investment of learning and maintaining new tools/rules/hooks/etc that should be counted too.
But, I enjoy the work style personally so stick with it.
I just find FOMO/hype inherently off-putting and don't understand why random people feel they can confidently say that some random other person they don't know anything about is doing it wrong or will be "left behind" by not chasing constantly changing SOTA/best practices.
Re: AI-First Company Memos
#89If you hire good people and set proper incentives they will figure out the best way to do something. If leadership has to direct employees to use AI it's a bad sign. If it were a huge boon to productivity, you won't need to force people to use it.
Re: AI-First Company Memos
#90Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
I don't understand how all these companies issue these sorts of policies in lock-step with each other. The same happened with "Return To Office". All of a sudden every company decided to kill work from home within the same week or so. Is there some secret CEO cabal that meets on a remote island somewhere to coordinate what they're going to all make workers do next?
It is investor sentiment and FOMO. If your investors feel like AI is the answer you will need to start using AI.
I am not as negative on AI as the rest of the group here though. I think AI first companies will out pace companies that never start to learn the AI muscle. From my prospective these memos mostly seem reasonable.