[stego-tech]

> So this is my thesis now - if you’re a senior who neglects this new tool, you’re going to be out of a job soon-ish.

Work(ed) for a company super big on a force of agents. Brought them into my workflows early on, before the company even pivoted. Ran them at home on private hardware (that 3090 had to do something), at work when access was opened up. Provided valuable feedback on hallucinations (e.g., fabricating the existence of a MongoDB CLI module wholesale, documentation and all) and barriers to adoption. Pitched an integration of four disparate systems across ~20 data points to create tenancy in a core product line from scratch, with said AI at the center of it for customer service and workload creation, reducing engineers to approvals only for ~20 tickets a week averaging ~40hrs of work, freeing up said engineers for actually valuable work instead of handholding customers through routine tasks. Got great feedback and enthusiasm on it.

RIFed this year.

Doesn't matter whether you're bullish or bearish on it, the only thing that ever really matters is if scrubbing your line item from a spreadsheet will net someone higher up than you a bonus. That's what's driving this AI mania, and what needs to be addressed via policy before these employers gut themselves and the economy in the process.

[bluefirebrand]

> Work(ed) for a company super big on a force of agents.

> RIFed this year

Yeah that's why they are big on the force of agents, so they can justify trimming their workforce

Anyone who doesn't see this is kind of a sucker

[stego-tech]

Oh, 100%, and I knew that going in. Still, I'm the type of worker (sucker? sap?) that will go down with the ship if it helps the rest of the folks get into lifeboats. I know I can take care of myself when stuff hits the fan, and I'm never one to half-ass my output because of my own cynicism.

I'm hoping that pays off for me someday. Thus far, it's just been a lot of burnout/layoff cycles.

[bluefirebrand]

> Still, I'm the type of worker (sucker? sap?) that will go down with the ship if it helps the rest of the folks get into lifeboats

> engineers to approvals only for ~20 tickets a week averaging ~40hrs of work, freeing up said engineers for actually valuable work instead of handholding customers through routine tasks

Not trying to be too judgy here but to me it sounds more like you are the one helping sink the ship than help everyone to life boats

Something to think about. Agreeing to bring AI into our workflows is actually digging out the foundation beneath our own feet (and our coworkers feet)

[stego-tech]

The situation was way more complex than that - we were on borrowed time anyway, and this was our attempt to pivot away from a single on-prem private cloud group into the team overseeing both the enterprise pipeline and multi-cloud work. It would’ve freed us from busywork babysitting other teams’ own stuff while we were gradually chipped away via a war of attrition so we could actually build useful stuff to justify our long term existence and make us indispensable, a strategy that had buy-in at the time.

Ah well. At least seeing me get RIFed hopefully sent up signal flares with the rest of the team to GTFO while they can, and I had a lot of good accomplishments towards the end in particular. Take the good where I can find it, I suppose.

[jgilias]

Sure, but what choice do you have as an individual? Try and adjust to the new reality and maybe get RIFed anyway, or not adjust to it and get RIFed with 90% certainty. Power looms won.

[jgilias]

Man, that’s rough. I hope you’re doing well!

Totally agree with you on the line-item point. My point there was that if a 50% RIF is in the works, the people who haven’t figured out how to become more efficient using AI would be more likely to be affected. Statistically.

But again, hope you’re doing well and everything has worked out for you!

[stego-tech]

I’m a month in, and it’s rough as hell. But I at least have a runway for the first time in my career, so I’m profoundly grateful for that.

Still optimistic that my generalist skillset and adaptability to new technologies (like AI) will make me an asset for IT teams who can’t afford multiple specialists in rough economic times like these.