[simonw]

You have to try pretty hard to get to "all that jackshit 1800 code changes per week that the CTO boasts about, mean absolutely nothing in terms of value" from what he said on that podcast.

(We still don't even know what Uber's planned AI budget for 2026 was. They didn't reveal that when asked - in https://www.theinformation.com/newsletters/applied-ai/uber-c... it says "He wouldn’t disclose exact figures of the company’s software budget or what it spends on AI coding tools").

[hansmayer]

I don't have to try at all - I think anyone who spent as much as an internship, let alone years at a modern tech corp would have no trouble distilling the absolutely clear message - we are spending too much for too little value. And actually wtf am I explaining myself? Every major tech outlet interpreted it like that too. It's not that hard Simon.

[simonw]

I think that both you and the other major tech outlets interpreted that poorly.

[hansmayer]

Oh really? How about the king of non-tech-outlets and digestible, shallow bites for the not-reading-books-middle-class, the Business Insider?

https://www.businessinsider.com/uber-coo-andrew-macdonald-ai...

You know their business is literally correct interpretation of the C-Suite statements.

[simonw]

I think Business Insider are not a particularly high quality publication - they're prone to clickbait - and that headline is an example of why I think that.

Hah, I just checked their homepage and here they go again amplifying that COO fragment from that podcast:

https://www.businessinsider.com/tokenmaxxing-debate-uber-exe...

> "That link is not there yet, right?" Macdonald said in comments that went viral, racking up over 2 million views on X. "I think maybe implicitly there is more that is getting shipped, but it's very hard to draw a line between one of those stats and, 'OK, now we're actually producing 25% more useful consumer features.'"

Yeah, something going "viral on X" is clearly a sign that it's quality information!

[hansmayer]

So no one got it right? Myself, tech outlets, non-tech outlets, everyone on twitter, etc?

[simonw]

That's why I wrote a whole section about it. I was deeply disappointed at how little thought people had appeared to put into this before amplifying the misleading headlines.

For someone who cares about media hype - https://hn.algolia.com/?query=author%3Ahansmayer%20hype&type... - you don't seem to be very discerning with regards to this particular story.