"the binding constraint has moved from can you build it to can you tell whether it’s right."
The company I work for is currently trying to accelerate internal AI adoption, and recently laid off people to help force it. As I've written here before, this merely pools accountability (not removing it) and things will break in unexpected ways as people are not domain experts in these new areas added to their jobs.
I wonder if we will see a large reversal in a few years, or if AI will somehow be able to fix this too
This gets at the biggest gap I see in AI discussions - the accountability
It doesn't disappear when you make 1 person do the work of 3. It simply is aggregated
Suppose you had a pod of a PM, designer, and analyst. Leadership lays off the designer and analyst and now the PM can move faster with AI. Hooray!
Well...when the complaints about how it looks on xyz device roll in, who is implementing that? Or you launch the product with much fan fare, adoption is terrible - you double check the numbers and oops, the sizing you had from Claude was actually 10x off.
Who is holding the bag? You are! Not Claude
I'm convinced this is one reason we are seeing slower than expected adoption of AI broadly in tech companies, because it's hard to trust - we know Claude can make mistakes but how do you know what's right vs not? Most people don't want to sense check so they just keep doing the work the way they know best.
I think this could be one thing that pops the AI bubble - execs try to force this, people go along, and results are not any better for this reason. Sure you save some salaries and ship more quickly, but you don't build the right thing and you are fixing more things after launch. Which one is actually better?
There's currently a billboard up in San Francisco that basically says "use AI to reduce your saas costs".
And I'm thinking - has anyone actually done that for something meaningful?
Replacing salesforce as your crm or replacing Shopify as your e-commerce platform?
I get the hype but AI doesn't remove accountability, it just moves it up. Oh you can do with 1 person what 3 people used to do? Great, that 1 person is now accountable for 3 person's jobs. And people are naturally uncomfortable with that - you need to understand what's going on and be able to investigate / fix. It's different than say, weaving machines replacing jobs because weaving machines were consistent. 1 person could confidently produce what x weavers could before. But AI is not, and that variability in output & quality introduces massive friction.
So as of now, in both software and people, there's a real limit to how much AI can replace because the remaining people still are equally accountable.
Author has a point that some people take it too far but he's losing forest for trees.
People are responsible for their emotional responses. But you also will be impacted by their reaction. It's unrealistic to assume that people will always act unemotional - they are not Spocks. It makes sense to do some padding / emotional prework. If you don't you will end up actually spending MORE time getting what you want.
Example: you are giving feedback to a peer
Direct: this is a poor user experience. Our customers tell us they want xyz, but this experience is doing the opposite. Can you change it?
Padded: hey can I share some feedback on this experience? (Yes) ok our customers tell us they want xyz, but the experience seems to be doing the opposite. Can you help me understand?
Most people would feel more defensive and closed with the first approach than the second, which will make it less likely they will want to help, listen to you, or take you seriously. They'll just be focused on defending themselves. Whereas with the second, you can start to have an actual discussion.
And it's not just the opener, it's throughout.
Words have power. Two sentences can mean the same thing but can lead to different reactions from people.
Or you might not mention something that significantly influences how something is interpreted.
I just gave this feedback yesterday to a team member. The problem was in a presentation she presented a strong conclusion based on a shaky methodology and people tore into it. She basically was attributing an effect to a change pre/post, not with a holdout.
Her underlying data was sound, she had diligently collected the timing of events and such, but she didn't realize how pre/post methodology could be perceived as shaky.
The whole thing could have been avoided had she said something like "we didn't have a hold out, and all of this effect likely isn't from the cause, but directionally there's smoke - our campaigns performed x before, and y after. So this is worth testing to help validate this hypothesis"
Now their message goes from
"This big bad thing happened so I'm going to fix it" to "I don't know exactly what happened, but there's one factor that directionally had an impact so I'm going to test it to validate and can scale from there".
Both essentially say the same thing: there's an opportunity for upside and that's why this is worth testing. But the reaction will be different, so it behooves all of us to be mindful of that.
"In the next 10 years, Colley’s goal is to earn enough to go back to making Roblox games as a hobby."
Kid is making $400k PER MONTH...and he wants to do this for 10 YEARS before he is comfortable retiring. Apparently his FIRE number is $40M.
Everyone's threshold is different and personal. But I think it can reflect a level of anxiety about the cost of living. You aren't OK having $1M or even $10M - you need something far beyond before you feel OK to quit. It's not his fault, more of something the young generations are facing as their parents struggle with the relentless cost of living vs stagnated wages for most except the "laptop class".
Parent of 2 kids. Parents receive enough judgement. Do whatever works for you!
-cloth diapers? Awesome
-train early? Awesome
-train later? Awesome
There's trade offs for each, and you are going to figure out what works best for you.
If you want to train later and the diaper companies make more money, that's how a market is supposed to work. They're providing a product you value. So all good!
Not an engineer but reminds me of a similar situation I've seen interviewing
Sometimes we'll ask market sizing questions. We will say it's a case question, it's to see their thought process, they're supposed to ask questions, state assumptions, etc.
Occasionally we'd get a candidate that just doesn't get it. They respond "oh I'd Google that". And I'll coach them back but they just can't get past that. It's about seeing how you approach problems when you can't just Google the answer, and we use general topics that are easily accessible to do so. But the downside is yes, you can google the answer.
Every morning I close all work browser tabs from prior day. 99% of them I don't need again/can just reopen if I need. The 1% I'll note on a todo list or keep open somewhere.
A real doctor is accountable.
They might both "know" a lot of things but implicitly the party who is accountable is going to be more trustworthy.
And I don't see that going away until AI companies must be licensed for application x and can lose their license / be sued if engaging in malpractice.