[hyperpape]

Right, but if you say something essential in a meeting with 10 people and it has to percolate through five levels of management to reach the front-lines and gets watered down, that could be much more lost, even millions.

Scale cuts both ways.

What matters isn't how big the meeting is, it's how important the material is, and how well presented it is.

[wolvoleo]

I don't think I've ever heard a top leader say anything essential in such a meeting. The stuff they work on is not related to my job at all. It's all gartner level strategy stuff. In our company they do take time talking about it in large calls but it's always boring and never relevant. And a lot of political spin you have to poke through to see the real message.

If I ever attend it just put it on mute and look at the slides while I do some real work. That way my attendance gets registered and it doesn't stress me out later with too much stuff left hanging.

That percolation is also translation of what they say to things that are relevant at my level. Like what we will be working on next year, if there's going to be bonus or job losses.

I couldn't give a crap about the company's strategy as a whole and that's not my job anyway. Why should I. I'm not here because I believe in some holy mission. I just wanna do something I like and get paid.

[hyperpape]

Most of those meetings are pretty damn fluffy. No one goes back to their desk and does anything different because they've introduced new company values and the acronym is S.M.I.L.E.

But this meeting is a course correction for how they're using AI, which is a huge initiative. He'll be trying to sell the right balance of "keep using the technology, but don't fuck anything up."

Too cautious, everyone freezes and there's a slowdown[0]. Too soft, everyone thinks it's "another empty warning not to fuck up" and they go right back to fucking everything up because the real message was "don't you dare slow down." After the talk, people will have conversations about "what did they really mean?"

[0] If you hate AI, feel free to flip the direction of the effect.

[wolvoleo]

Well this is the main problem with AI right now isn't it? How to use it successfully without having it fuck up.

How are they expecting some juniors to do this when the industry as a whole doesn't know where to begin yet?

Like that Meta AI expert who wiped her whole mailbox with openclaw. These are the people who should come up with the answers.

Ps I mostly hate AI but I do see some potential. Right now it feels like we're entering a fireworks bunker looking for a pot of gold and having only a box of matches for illumination.

What we need to know from management is exactly what you mention. Do we go all out and accept that shit will hit the fan once in a while (the old move fast and break things) or do we micromanage and basically work manually like old. And that they accept the risk either way. That kind of strategy is really business leader kind of work. Blaming it on your techs when it inevitably goes wrong is not.

Because the tech as it is right now is very non-deterministic. One day it works magic and the next day it blows up.

And yes that SMILE thing was a good example. Been in too many of those time wasters.

[Throwaay19832]

Lol this reads like some transcript from the court of an ancient Roman Emperor.