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That sounds right as expectations, based on general industry sentiment and not wanting to be left flat footed in case those expectations play out. But it's goi

That sounds right as expectations, based on general industry sentiment and not wanting to be left flat footed in case those expectations play out. But it's going to take many more years of exploring the space to assess what happens to the departments where those CIO's and tech VP's pull on those levers. There are many examples of anticipated cost reduction strategies sending companies/departments/teams/industries over a cliff like Wile E Coyote when all the inherent limitations and side effects finally start to materialize. Revenue is a little more obvious and sure. You're either expanding a business line and generating revenue... or you're not. Finding good revenue-generating solutions would better protect the industry from facing a very bleak winter because it would more quickly confirm that there's tangible money to be made in there somewhere.

abakker 2y ago
I agree with you 100%. Remember RPA? Well...it's really telling to me how 5 years on from that hype cycle, stuff still isn't automated. Where I am maybe a little more cynical than you is that I'm not sure anyone in corporate IT has a long-termist view anymore. budgets in IT seem to have risen less than inflation in the last few years, while software, hardware and services prices have...not. "Digital" everything has added cost, most large enterprises are already partly outsourced and have taken the easy gains from labor arbitrage, and have now been signed up by the CEO to somehow deliver AI for the business. Its sad to me because most of every business would cease to function entirely without functioning IT, but it tends to have been run as a cost center to be minimized/extracted from, rather than a function like sales or marketing which are seen as being directly attached to revenue.
015a 2y ago
Yeah; a few weeks ago a family member asked me if I was concerned that AI is going to eat up all the software engineering jobs. I'm pretty unconcerned about it; but I am a little more concerned that hiring decision makers will think that it can. One of the reasons why I strongly feel that we're headed at lightspeed into an AI winter is: there's so much hype happening in the space right now that we're already seeing companies say things like "we're able to downsize 70% of department X thanks to productivity increases from AI". These efforts will almost universally and inevitably fail; not necessarily because AI will never be capable of doing what some business leaders believe it can, but because it can't do this yet, with agency. In a few very limited cases we'll see companies use this as an excuse to just lay off excess fat in the org, but it'll be far more common to see a pattern of layoffs + we're AI now -> profit up -> that's weird this company isn't developing nearly as many new things... -> re-hiring equal to or exceeding the layoffs -> company is never the same. AI hype right now is burning bridges with underdelivery; we're making too many big bets too early. In 20 years it'll be the case that someone will be trying to sell a substantially more capable AI system, and some business leader says "that looks awesome, lets give it a try in this random inconsequential corner of the business no one cares about" because 20 years ago her predecessor bet the farm on GPT-4, lost the company billions over the next decade, and shareholders are now far more hesitant; despite the fact that, in 20 years, it might be The Time.
- abakker 2y ago
  The reason I’m not as doom and gloom as this, is because it happens with every single cycle. Over promising and underperforming is basically every tech that comes to enterprises, because no technology helps people agree on what to do, what is important, what works, or when to do it. Only people decide that stuff, and people decide based on facts and preferences, though not often in that order :). There’s a reason people joke that CIO stands for “career is over”.

abakker 2y ago

I agree with you 100%. Remember RPA? Well...it's really telling to me how 5 years on from that hype cycle, stuff still isn't automated. Where I am maybe a little more cynical than you is that I'm not sure anyone in corporate IT has a long-termist view anymore. budgets in IT seem to have risen less than inflation in the last few years, while software, hardware and services prices have...not. "Digital" everything has added cost, most large enterprises are already partly outsourced and have taken the easy gains from labor arbitrage, and have now been signed up by the CEO to somehow deliver AI for the business. Its sad to me because most of every business would cease to function entirely without functioning IT, but it tends to have been run as a cost center to be minimized/extracted from, rather than a function like sales or marketing which are seen as being directly attached to revenue.

015a 2y ago

Yeah; a few weeks ago a family member asked me if I was concerned that AI is going to eat up all the software engineering jobs. I'm pretty unconcerned about it; but I am a little more concerned that hiring decision makers will think that it can. One of the reasons why I strongly feel that we're headed at lightspeed into an AI winter is: there's so much hype happening in the space right now that we're already seeing companies say things like "we're able to downsize 70% of department X thanks to productivity increases from AI". These efforts will almost universally and inevitably fail; not necessarily because AI will never be capable of doing what some business leaders believe it can, but because it can't do this yet, with agency. In a few very limited cases we'll see companies use this as an excuse to just lay off excess fat in the org, but it'll be far more common to see a pattern of layoffs + we're AI now -> profit up -> that's weird this company isn't developing nearly as many new things... -> re-hiring equal to or exceeding the layoffs -> company is never the same. AI hype right now is burning bridges with underdelivery; we're making too many big bets too early. In 20 years it'll be the case that someone will be trying to sell a substantially more capable AI system, and some business leader says "that looks awesome, lets give it a try in this random inconsequential corner of the business no one cares about" because 20 years ago her predecessor bet the farm on GPT-4, lost the company billions over the next decade, and shareholders are now far more hesitant; despite the fact that, in 20 years, it might be The Time.

abakker 2y ago
The reason I’m not as doom and gloom as this, is because it happens with every single cycle. Over promising and underperforming is basically every tech that comes to enterprises, because no technology helps people agree on what to do, what is important, what works, or when to do it. Only people decide that stuff, and people decide based on facts and preferences, though not often in that order :). There’s a reason people joke that CIO stands for “career is over”.