Submitted 3 weeks ago by themachinestops@lemmy.dbzer0.com to technology@lemmy.world
https://fortune.com/article/ceo-laid-off-80-percent-workforce-sabotage-what-are-ai-skills/
Vaughan was surprised to find it was often the technical staff, not marketing or sales, who dug in their heels. They were the “most resistant,” he said, voicing various concerns about what the AI couldn’t do, rather than focusing on what it could. The marketing and salespeople were enthused by the possibilities of working with these new tools, he added.
So the people that had an actual idea of what the implications of using it might be weren’t on board? Huh. Weird.
"All the engineers said my “screen door on a submarine” was “stupid” and would “sink the ship”, so I fired them and hired new engineers!"
I mean this is the exact line of thinking turned an idiot CEO into a paste at the bottom of the ocean
I told AI to build me a submarine out of titanium.
Like the guy with the carbon fiber submarine. Every engineer told him it couldn’t be done, so he kept firing them until he had a staff of young, inexperienced engineers who would do what they were told, and just collect their paychecks.
Now their boss is dead, and there are no more paychecks.
Well at least that problem fixed itself.
Sales and marketing is often mostly bullshitting anyway. It also has a lot less risk and constraint associated to generated text having issues. Not surprised they were more on board. The tool is more fitting for those use cases anyway.
They’re also the people who build their career on never stirring the pot so they can make their clients feel special. They’re built to be sycophants and their jobs are, and this isn’t even necessarily a bad thing, a little more nebulous which means they’d feel the effects much less strongly.
“Pointlessly waffling for a living just got so much easier!”
Marketing people are known for beliving their own lies.
Seeing these kinds of people harness AI is so embarrassing. They feel empowered while doing some of the whackest stuff. In the end, it is still technical style work snd they are still awful at it.
rather than focusing on what it could
When you’re driving a car down the ski jumping ramp.
A recent MIT report indicates that 95% of generative AI pilots fail to deliver measurable returns on investment, highlighting significant challenges in successfully implementing AI in businesses
CEOs:
“When I do it, it will be different.
OpenAI marketing > MIT analysis, apparently
My question: what percentage of those failures to deliver were led by people who had no idea what they were doing and expected AI to “do it for them”?
Because it had nothing to do with AI
It was an excuse to slash the workforce with relatively little backlash.
and that’s how he achieved 75% profit margin. Let’s see him do that twice.
surprised he didn’t golden parachute out and reload with another company/
Did AI build that dogshit website of theirs too?
Wtf it just opened a video in full screen on iOS right away. When I closed it and wanted to scroll down I was suddenly dragging an icon. When tapping this icon it opens some „my personas“ dialog which I don’t even understand what it is supposed to be? What even is this shit ass site?
That's actually somewhat of a Safari bug.
Safari has this tendency of opening videos in full screen, if the video is natively embedded (not using a third party video player component), is set to auto play, and isn't flagged specifically for not opening automatically in full screen (this is a Safari specific flag that no other browser requires as no other browser has this stupid default behaviour).
Does it load exceptionally slow for you too?
ignitetech.ai it has to be like purposely bad I vibe code internal frontends and ive never had something look this bad
That website is really shit even by the low standards of most modern websites.
Looks ok without any JS.
looks best without a browser at all.
Nota bene: Not just laid off, replaced. And not replaced by AI. Replaced by other people. Basically spent a ton of money and talent and business disruption to turn over 80% of his workforce for shits and gigs.
that 80% adds profit to his pockets.
Probably overhired just after COVID like everyone else in the tech sector and then realized he had no idea what to do with all the extra people because he never really had a plan.
COVID excuse not required. CEOs overhiring is like birds flying south for the winter, the sun rising in the east, water being wet - it’s just what they do. 80% is a bit extreme, but he had the AI excuse, so…
Eh I’ve only been in the software industry for 6 years and change. The post-covid hiring boom was for me the first time I’d seen it done en masse and then the subsequent layoffs were the first time I’d seen that en masse, but neither affected me personally luckily.
I have no idea what was going on before that because I had no real reason to care, nobody wanted to hire me anyway before I got my first job in the industry lol
So Mondays are days off?
Where can I sign up
The question I put to management is “What do you want me to use AI for?”
I can’t get a consistent answer. Lots of stuff unrelated to my job duties. “Well, it’s so easy to make Facebook ads!” - “You know that’s not a thing I do, right?”
They don’t have an answer because they don’t know either. They’ve bought into the idea, and invested trillions, and now they’re all hoping to just churn the cream until it turns into something else, but they have no idea what it will be, or how to use it.
They’re just hoping some minion finally figures out a profitable model, so they can claim it as their own, give him a nominal raise and a nice office, and they can go make trillions off his idea.
Yeah, my boss told he’s under pressure from upper management and customers to add AI in our app. His answer is always “to do what?”. So far, nobody has provided an answer, but whenever we get one we’ll be happy to implement it.
CUSTOMERS=other ceos, and c-suites
InnerChoad
ignitiontech, where they ignited thier own company to the ground.
A company so small it doesn’t even have a Wikipedia page. No discernible products.
Any poly market bets on how long this company actually lasts?
Their website barely even works it honestly looks like a scam organisation. I can’t find any description of what it is that they actually do which makes me believe that they don’t do anything.
a platform for AI-based email automation
the built a ChatGPT wrapper like all the other revolutionary AI companies lol the world needs more automated spam!
He REALLY hates paying employees and wants their pennies in his treasure horde, we get it.
He will be shocked when he discovers the shareholders don’t want to pay him, either. He’ll be like “what?!?! AI doing MY job? This is a travesty!” and then they will have security drag him out of the building screaming.
What the fuck is IgniteTech?
An “enterprise-software powerhouse”, allegedly.
Yeah looking it over it looks like they’re a tech accusation company. Basically they buy flailing or nearly failed companies suck anything out of them they can and then sell them. They probably purchased an AI company like you’re saying decided to go all in on it while purchasing and selling other companies as well. Having anything AI related right now bring big bucks when it comes to funding.
Exactly
If this dickhead is so smart, why does he even need a staff? I’m sure he can go start a company all by himself with just AI to work for him.
This reads like a very weird AI circlejerk. They repeatedly mention that AI is the solution every company should adopt, but fail to provide a single example of succesful application. And I mean a how not a reult. They say ‘company X KPI are this % better thanks to AI’, but not how they applied it. Just talk of AI mindset, and ‘culture’ but I would have liked to understand what exactly it was used for (like agents, chatbots, automation of something in particular). It just reads like a lot of patting in the back and hot air so far, which is a pity because I would be interested in reading about real life cases of successful AI implementaiom
“I am bad at managing my finances, and eventually need to get bailed out by the government, or end up next to the homeless guy I used to make fun of”.
Incredibly punchable face
that writer’s name is all you need to know. always look at the writer’s name and their previous work to identify industry shills
“That culture needed to be built. That was the key.”
“Like, I’m not gonna be able to replace these losers if they don’t fix this piece of shit tech for me, will I?”
I wonder how many employees are working on automating the CEO there first
When all of this is over, if this ever ends, I want psychologists to study this AI obsession CEOs have now. I want to see how they can look at AI and insist that everyone be forced to use something that hinders them rather than help.
Previously I added to my routine, to ask two stupid queries of ai every day, because that was the metric we were judged on. I can get that out of the way quickly, and get to my work.
Now we have to use a new ai tool that has a lot more telemetry, thanks Microsoft. Unfortunately I don’t know what metric they are using and the tool spies on everything. I can’t even just not use the ai features because the tool is horrible
He can have AI replace him too.
It is never the technology at fault. When it comes down to it, evil people want to exercise the power of their crown, damned be the consequences and injustice. AI is just the latest excuse to be a remorseless dickhead.
May a large object fall on him. Death is the only solution to these people.
so they had to sell to ai customers? what an idiot
If this guy is such a genius why doesn’t he tell us what exactly AI is for and whether it is beneficial to society at large?
So business grinds to a halt? That’s crazy.
anamethatisnt@sopuli.xyz 3 weeks ago
Thorry@feddit.org 3 weeks ago
Yeah this is called AI washing. Basically firing people, outsourcing all the jobs, stripping a company till there is nothing left. The goal is to maximize profits till the company is basically dead and then sell the husk. Because it’s done under the AI label, customers and other interested parties see it as being innovative and not just money grabbing.
Quazatron@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
Selling artificial intelligence to natural idiots.
otter@lemmy.ca 2 weeks ago
So they could have held paint drying Mondays instead, with the same overall effect
jaybone@lemmy.zip 3 weeks ago
Customers see it that way?
Tollana1234567@lemmy.today 2 weeks ago
Its HOW pe FIRMS operate.
sirboozebum@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
Private Equity is finding it increasingly difficult to offload the companies they have taken over.
With some luck, this dickhead will go broke.
dipcart@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
Very interesting. I appreciate the additional information. Saying its for AI but moving it to overseas contractors instead of actually moving it to AI that is actually overseas contractors (like that one AI company that was outed as being 700 Indian developers) is honestly kinda funny. AI is enshittification given form, I suppose.
Norrdec@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
Because AI is Actualy Indians :)
anamethatisnt@sopuli.xyz 3 weeks ago
I mean they have added a chatbot to their website and I’m sure they have replaced overseas first line support in many products with chatbots as well to encourage their customers to give up on getting support (and ensure that the customers that prevails and get sent to a human coworker are sufficiently pissed off).
Klox@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
The AI part is that the drug riddled CEO asked AI leading questions. The AI wholeheartedly agreed they should speed run late stage capitalism. What more confirmation is needed that AI is the future?
Tollana1234567@lemmy.today 2 weeks ago
and The indians ones might not be as good as the one in the states, so they are getting a much lower quality of product overall.
cronenthal@discuss.tchncs.de 2 weeks ago
This is the relevant context to this puff-piece, this should be stickied right at the top.
Tollana1234567@lemmy.today 2 weeks ago
i was going to comment how this resembles PE firm tactics, thats probably his endgoal, and AI is just a convenient excuse.