This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
Vaughan was surprised to find it was often the technical staff, not marketing or sales, who dug in their heels. They were the “most resistant,” he said, voicing various concerns about what the AI couldn’t do, rather than focusing on what it could. The marketing and salespeople were enthused by the possibilities of working with these new tools, he added.
So the people that had an actual idea of what the implications of using it might be weren't on board? Huh. Weird.
"All the engineers said my "screen door on a submarine" was "stupid" and would "sink the ship", so I fired them and hired new engineers!"
speaking of submarines, this is the exact line of thinking that turned an idiot CEO into a paste at the bottom of the ocean
thank you mighty wizard for casting dopamine.
I can not read the word "cast" in any form without remembering this:
I told AI to build me a submarine out of ~~titanium~~ carbon fiber.
Titanic sub was made from carbon fiber. Titanium is what he should have used.
Like the guy with the carbon fiber submarine. Every engineer told him it couldn't be done, so he kept firing them until he had a staff of young, inexperienced engineers who would do what they were told, and just collect their paychecks.
Now their boss is dead, and there are no more paychecks.
Sales and marketing is often mostly bullshitting anyway. It also has a lot less risk and constraints associated to generated text having issues. Not surprised they were more on board. The tool is more fitting for those use cases anyway.
Marketing people are known for beliving their own lies.
Because it had nothing to do with AI
It was an excuse to slash the workforce with relatively little backlash.
and that's how he achieved 75% profit margin. Let's see him do that twice.
surprised he didn't golden parachute out and reload with another company/
A recent MIT report indicates that 95% of generative AI pilots fail to deliver measurable returns on investment, highlighting significant challenges in successfully implementing AI in businesses
CEOs:
“When I do it, it will be different.
Probably overhired just after COVID like everyone else in the tech sector and then realized he had no idea what to do with all the extra people because he never really had a plan.
COVID excuse not required. CEOs overhiring is like birds flying south for the winter, the sun rising in the east, water being wet - it's just what they do. 80% is a bit extreme, but he had the AI excuse, so...
A company so small it doesn't even have a Wikipedia page. No discernible products.
Any poly market bets on how long this company actually lasts?
Their website barely even works it honestly looks like a scam organisation. I can't find any description of what it is that they actually do which makes me believe that they don't do anything.
a platform for AI-based email automation
the built a ChatGPT wrapper like all the other revolutionary AI companies lol the world needs more automated spam!
Nota bene: Not just laid off, replaced. With other people.
Basically spent a ton of money and talent and business disruption to turn over 80% of his workforce for shits and gigs.
The question I put to management is "What do you want me to use AI for?"
I can't get a consistent answer. Lots of stuff unrelated to my job duties. "Well, it's so easy to make Facebook ads!" - "You know that's not a thing I do, right?"
They don't have an answer because they don't know either. They've bought into the idea, and invested trillions, and now they're all hoping to just churn the cream until it turns into something else, but they have no idea what it will be, or how to use it.
They're just hoping some minion finally figures out a profitable model, so they can claim it as their own, give him a nominal raise and a nice office, and they can go make trillions off his idea.
He REALLY hates paying employees and wants their pennies in his treasure horde, we get it.
He will be shocked when he discovers the shareholders don't want to pay him, either. He'll be like "what?!?! AI doing MY job? This is a travesty!" and then they will have robot security drag him out of the building screaming.
What the fuck is IgniteTech?
An "enterprise-software powerhouse", allegedly. Basically they bought an AI startup and decided that this was their entire personality now.
Exactly
If this dickhead is so smart, why does he even need a staff? I’m sure he can go start a company all by himself with just AI to work for him.
I assume that's the goal he's aiming for. Wonder who will buy his stuff when it's just CEOs and their AI still employed.
that writer's name is all you need to know. always look at the writer's name and their previous work to identify industry shills
This is a paid promotion. Its one of the ones you pay an extra $1000 and they hide the sponsored tag.
This reads like a very weird AI circlejerk. They repeatedly mention that AI is the solution every company should adopt, but fail to provide a single example of succesful application. And I mean a how not a reult. They say 'company X KPI are this % better thanks to AI', but not how they applied it. Just talk of AI mindset, and 'culture' but I would have liked to understand what exactly it was used for (like agents, chatbots, automation of something in particular). It just reads like a lot of patting in the back and hot air so far, which is a pity because I would be interested in reading about real life cases of successful AI implementaiom
I used to joke that the CEO of my former employer must subscribe to some magazine called "CEO Weekly" in which they must periodically mention, in a similar "no examples of usage, just KPIs" manner, webchat. She would always forget about it promptly and then random number of weeks later bug my boss again.
I told him if they want me to come up with how they can use webchat and be their solutions designer they need to double my salary. $60k USD was not enough for being a tier 3 systems admin, a fax and telephony specialist, and figuring out their use cases for them just to check a box that says "we have it!"
"I am bad at managing my finances, and eventually need to get bailed out by the government, or end up next to the homeless guy I used to make fun of".
I wonder how many employees are working on automating the CEO there first
From the article:
Vaughan was surprised to find it was often the technical staff, not marketing or sales, who dug in their heels. They were the “most resistant,” he said, voicing various concerns about what the AI couldn’t do, rather than focusing on what it could. The marketing and salespeople were enthused by the possibilities of working with these new tools, he added.
Not surprising the people with technical skills that aren’t actually replaceable by LLMs would be against forced AI adoption. Good luck maintaining a code base created with vibe coding. Meanwhile the CEO probably looks at ChatGPT and realizes it could basically do everything he already does (write emails and make high level decisions without actually having to worry about their implementation) and then incorrectly thinks it’s the case for everyone else.
“That culture needed to be built. That was the key.”
"Like, I'm not gonna be able to replace these losers if they don't fix this piece of shit tech for me, will I?"
It is never the technology at fault. When it comes down to it, evil people want to exercise the power of their crown, damned be the consequences and injustice.
AI is just the latest excuse to be a remorseless dickhead.
Previously I added to my routine, to ask two stupid queries of ai every day, because that was the metric we were judged on. I can get that out of the way quickly, and get to my work.
Now we have to use a new ai tool that has a lot more telemetry, thanks Microsoft. Unfortunately I don’t know what metric they are using and the tool spies on everything. I can’t even just not use the ai features because the tool is horrible
May a large object fall on him. Death is the only solution to these people.
When all of this is over, if this ever ends, I want psychologists to study this AI obsession CEOs have now. I want to see how they can look at AI and insist that everyone be forced to use something that hinders them rather than help.
This clickbait title format is getting really old. 5 years later, I wish editors would pick something else.
