Yes, much like the “we’re all family but we’re reducing headcount by…”
Treat people like professionals: admit that you did a bad job but that you’d rather protect yourself and not give up any of your salary/benefits and instead you are going to layoff your “family”.
It’s more than one thing. Yes there’s definitely some populism and maybe some astroturfing from outside groups - but actual electricity costs are going up and the average consumer can’t really get anymore efficient, so they’re indirectly subsidizing this stuff. Computers and related hardware have gone up in price. And then you’ve got all of the “AI layoffs” that also result in real-world pain.
I see some similarities to 3D printing here. It’s great that everyone can make their own toothbrush holder (or whatever) but I’m probably not going to pay for someone’s weekend project.
I’m “seeing” more devs stepping into the SendCutSend stage where they’re cleaning up/fixing/productizing vibe coded projects so maybe there will be some new demand in that space?
These are all very neat things and I’m very pleased to see the hacker spirit move into AI, but I gotta admit - some of this just comes across as “what did you print with your printer?”
Another recent thread mentioned that AI has helped devs build better “shop jigs.” This seems to be where the rubber is meeting the road for AI-powered development. So maybe more people will be developing custom tooling for their own little problems but you still need reliable, deterministic, interchangeable tools to realize the value of all these shop jigs.
Unfortunately many states (north eastern states that spread salt on their roads I’m looking at you) have rolled back their safety inspections - but this is the perfect application of a reasonable state-sanctioned activity. Tax tires, inspect vehicles, write fixit tickets, and let insurance handle the rest of the edge cases where deadbeats caused harm with their slick-tired jalopies.
I mean…I guess. But this is ridiculous - how many layers does our technology need to bash through to update two records on remote systems? I get that value is being added at some point - but just charge some micropayment for transactions. This is just too much.
I guess Meta still needs some people to run the core business (ads/social media rageslop) but your point about 2021 staffing levels would suggest they haven't been able to innovate or bring anything new to market in the past 5 years. Llama has certainly been impressive but doesn't really add more money to the pile or more eyeballs to the ad inventory.
It would be nice if someone with another big pile of money could put some of these ex-employees to work so us mid-level schlubs don't have to compete with former FOAMers (new initialism for the hyperscalers of layoffs) for 'regular' tech jobs, but it appears there are no new ideas or markets to capture.
I agree - and I've noticed that these AI transformations tend to lay bare the many issues, inconsistencies, and other problems with workspace functions and data. Unfortunately the people that are usually in charge of these projects do not have the seniority or sway to actually change the broken processes or aren't on the right team to remove cruft. Usually you have to wait until a salesperson misquotes something from an AI summary before these issues get unblocked because they actually affected revenue.
Not only are businesses already doing that - they're not even cleaning up their source material so LLMs are generating garbage outputs from the old inconsistent trash that haunts Confluence, Google Drive, and all of the other dumping grounds for enterprise ephemera. Oftentimes "AI transformation" is just a slightly better search engine that regurgitates your old strategy (that didn't work the first time) and wraps it up in new sycophantic language that C-levels use to bulldoze the budgets and timelines of actual skilled front line employees.
I do believe that LLMs and AI provide actual value, but the "workspace" is usually the passive aggressive CYA battleground for employees to appear productive in-spite of leadership's blind-spots, ossified business practices, and "aligned" decision-making that doesn't actually fix a broken org. Maybe this release will be the one that finally challenges nepo-hires, not-invented here, and all of the other corpo crap that defines "enterprise" business.
I guess OpenAI couldn't train AdManagerGPT to ignore the client (except when it's time to renew), suggest more ad spend, and turn off any of the features that let you control your budget.
For internal stuff you’re absolutely correct - but using “main stream” design language (the current trend of rounded 3 column AI layouts, corporate Memphis, skeuomorphism, stock photos of help desk workers, wordart, etc) that isn’t unique makes your brand forgettable. Sure it was mind blowing when it first came out but it quickly loses its uniqueness and starts becoming a sign of crapiness/scaminess/enshitificarion.
Your users will never make it to your no-nonsense backend if your marketing is completely cookie cutter.
Let’s just stretch copyright to cover movement/location as a protected creative expression. It’s somewhat ridiculous but we’ve already established case law and technology for handling/mishandling protected assets.
(IANAL - in the US) I think it's worth clarifying that the third-party doctrine is probably what applies here. You used someone else's computer (Google search and the recorded search history, Claude and the conversation history, or cell phone providers and the tower ping records) and you had no expectation of privacy or any sort of confidentiality (e.g. lawyer/spouse/protected medical info).
I understand that other countries handle this differently and might have more privacy restrictions, but this seems to come down to a judge asking a neutral third-party to testify to what they know about a subject and them responding with search history/chat logs/location pings. I guess if you want to do crimes then you need to stop intentionally revealing incriminating evidence to unbound third-parties.
Domestic students sometimes get a local/in-state discount so they actually cost more since they aren't paying as much tuition upfront. GP also alluded to international students coming to the US to learn and then taking their big brains back home instead of starting a company here. This was already an issue before Trump II but has been exacerbated by ICE's gestapo tactics along with all of the other roadblocks that Trump and team are trying to insert via executive order, strategic defunding, and all the other mob/shakedown behavior.
Just include helicopter rides in the ticket. These aren't adventures anymore - just "natural" theme parks for monied elites that need talking points and social media posts flexing their wealth. Does Six Flags charge your insurance for security to drive you back to your car?
CMSs allow non-technical people to update the site - that's why WordPress, Drupal, and all of the shambling corpses of "digital experience platforms" still command the dollars and eyeballs that they do.
Go ahead and give your content people access to a static site builder and see how quickly the process falls apart. Static site generators are perfect for engineers but terrible for the marketing people that are the actual "customers" of your public-facing website.
None of this should come as a surprise. The scoundrels got the mob in power (again) and they’re just going to keep breaking things and stealing the money until stopped or dead.
I think we've learned a couple of times that lighting placement, temperature, and shadow-casting are not ideal [0]. Also some of the newer lighting does actually fade to a different color [1] so it's not just the base temperature of the new lights.
Treat people like professionals: admit that you did a bad job but that you’d rather protect yourself and not give up any of your salary/benefits and instead you are going to layoff your “family”.