[SirensOfTitan]

I think executives are excited about AI because it confirms their worldview: that the work is a commodity and the real value lies in orchestration and strategy.

It doesn't help that the west has a clear bias wherein moving "up" is moving away from the work. Many executives often don't know what good looks like at the detail level, so they can't evaluate AI output quality.

[peacebeard]

This is definitely part of it.

I think another part of it is that AI tools demo really well, easily hiding how imperfect and limited they are when people see a contrived or cherry-picked example. Not a lot of people have a good intuition for this yet. Many people understand "a functional prototype is not a production app" but far fewer people understand "an AI that can be demonstrated to write functional code is not a software engineer" because this reality is rapidly evolving. In that rapidly evolving reality, people are seeing a lot of conflicting information, especially if you consider that a lot of that information is motivated (eg, "ai is bad because it's bad to fire engineers" which, frankly, will not be compelling to some executives out there). Whatever the new reality is going to be, we're not going to find out one step at a time. A lot of lessons are going to be learned the hard way.

[ryandrake]

Another thing that I think is critical: AI (by default) responds to you like the leadership-idealized version of an employee: Totally subservient, humble, pleasant, endlessly excited, and always, always telling you that you're absolutely right. AI is like an energetic intern who knows his place on the totem pole and wants to please. The kind of Yes Man, I'll Do It Man that CEOs consider the ideal employee.

[Esophagus4]

> AI tools demo really well

Yes, and they work really well for small side projects that an exec probably used to try out the LLM.

But writing code in one clean discrete repo is (esp. at a large org) only a part of shipping something.

Over time, I think tooling will get better at the pieces surrounding writing the code though. But the human coordination / dependency pieces are still tricky to automate.

[gerdesj]

MD here, of a really small company (and I'm not a doctor).

I'm (mildly) excited by LLMs because I love a new shiny tool that does appear to have quite some utility.

My analogy these days is a screwdriver. Let's ignore screw development for now.

The first screwdrivers, which we still use, are slotted and have a habit of slipping sideways and jumping (camming out). That's err before LLMs ... something ... something.

Fast forward and we have Philips and Pozi and electric drivers. Yes there were ratchet jobs, and I still have one but the cordless electric drilldriver is nearly as magical as the Dr Who sonic effort! That's your modern LLM that is.

Now a modern drilldriver can wrench your wrist if you are not careful and brace properly. A modern LLM will hallucinate like a nineties raver on ecstasy but if you listen carefully and phrase your prompts carefully and ignore the chomping teeth and keep them hydrated, you may get something remarkable out of the creature 8)

Now I only use Chat at the totally free level but I do run several on-prem models using ollama and llama.cpp (all compiled from source ... obviously).

I love a chat with the snappily named "Qwen3.5-35B-A3B-UD-Q4_K_XL" but I'm well aware that it is like an old school Black and Decker off of the noughties and not like my modern De Walt wrist knackerers. I've still managed to get it to assist me to getting PowerDNS running with DNSSEC and LUA and configuring LACP and port channel/trunking and that on several switch brands.

You?

[Eufrat]

> I'm (mildly) excited by LLMs because I love a new shiny tool that does appear to have quite some utility.

I really think a lot of folks were conned by a smooth operator and a polished demo, so now everyone has to suffer though having this nebulous thing rammed down our throats regardless of its real utility because people with higher pay grades believe it has utility.

It feels like a lot of “AI is inevitable; you are failing to make this abundant future inevitable by your skepticism.”

[tdeck]

> Your team's screwdriver usage is only 30% of the company's target. 80% of other teams at Taylor Manufacturing Co. are leveraging Screw Driving tools more often as a regular part of their daily work. If your team doesn't improve, we'll need to come up with a retraining plan.

> But we're the accounting team?

> Doesn't matter. This is a SD-Native company now. We believe everyone can be more productive with an SD-based workflow.

[sigbottle]

Classic kafka trap! The mere sign of resistance is a sign of a deeper psychological incompatibility that fundamentally needs to be worked through until you agree with the state.

[smrtinsert]

The dreaded "not aligned"!

[gamblor956]

This is actually a really good analogy, because electric drivers are the wrong tool 99% of the time and most people don't use them.

[gerdesj]

I drive an EV and am a complete tool!

[indistinction]

>A modern LLM will hallucinate like a nineties raver on ecstasy but if you listen carefully and phrase your prompts carefully and ignore the chomping teeth and keep them hydrated, you may get something remarkable out of the creature 8)

Like what - the world's most advanced blowjob?

[gerdesj]

Perhaps I should have gone for Sherlock Holmes doing morphine as an analogy. Mind you the '90s raver fits for some models or is it the prompter ...

[smrtinsert]

One hundred percent. Leadership consolidating around like the rebirth of offshoring.

For the record all your prompts are tracked and easily viewable by whoever oversees it at your company. Don't prompt more than you have to and certainly don't give it your best ids. This is value at scale.

[argee]

Jeff Bezos famously said “your margin is my opportunity,” I feel like Steve Jobs could’ve just as easily said “your slop is my opportunity.” (And he sort of did with “insanely great”)

[pigpop]

The reasons given in the article are much more compelling.

[enoint]

I don’t think so. The article is about a manager who thinks in systems and an individual contributor preoccupied with process work. The GP comment gets closer to incentives.

[echelon]

Work is delivering value.

Yes, we have craftsmanship, but at the end of the day everything is ephemeral and impermanent and the world continues on without remembering us.

I think both the IC and executive are correct in superposition.

[bitwize]

Indeed. Even the ur-craftsman, John Carmack, says that delivering value to customers is pretty much the only thing that matters in development. If AI lets you do that faster, cheaper, you'd be a fool not to use it. There's a reason why it's virtually a must in professional software engineering now.

[glouwbug]

Right, but Carmack has always delivered. I need someone without Carmack’s ability to show me what value they can deliver with AI

[whattheheckheck]

They cant, its your job to train them or take their salary