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> "With AI tools writing that code for us ... why pay for senior-level staff when you can promote a youngster who doesn't really know any better at a much lower

> "With AI tools writing that code for us ... why pay for senior-level staff when you can promote a youngster who doesn't really know any better at a much lower price?" he said. "Plus, once you have a seasoned programmer write code that is by law the company's IP and it is fed into an AI library, it basically learns it and the author is no longer needed." This betrays not only a misunderstanding of what LLMs can do, but a basic lack of knowledge of the software development lifecycle. Krishna gets paid $20 million a year to be this big of an idiot. He should lose his job immediately. He hasn't earned it. Remember, your company's management would do anything if it meant they could get a dollar. Never bend over backwards for these troglodytes.

n_ary 2y ago
This read to me like, why pay a proper experienced person to generate good and reliable results when you can combine to sub-par(no offense to junior engineers, but you don't know all the caveats and sharp edges yet) things where one feeds the other and continue to remain sub-par while mass money is shovelled to the AI forges so they can figure something out and blame the junior(human) and cite the nice little print that their system may generate false/incorrect things, when all the house of cards come crashing down.
- lenerdenator 2y ago
  That may very well be the case. Remember, what happens in five years time isn't Krishna's problem. What happens in the next 90 days is Krishna's problem. And if he can drastically reduce payroll while maintaining revenues in the next 90 days, he is judged by the market to be a good CEO.
FrustratedMonky 2y ago
Exactly They are also going for the entirely wrong market. Everyone is arguing about replacing programming jobs, "AI can't replace my job". But it is really just fractional. Lets say you have 5 marketing drones writing boring marketing material. AI allows them to do more, you still need humans to use the tools, and to edit, but now you only need 3. AI can't do the 'entire job' but it did enough to eliminate two positions. This is what is already happening. Do you think this stopped with the ESPN case? Companies didn't stop because they got caught, they just got better at it.
- exe34 2y ago
  I used to subscribe to this belief long before LLMs started confabulating, but I'm now starting to feel forced to concede that what will happen is that management will fire two marketing drones, the remaining three will use AI to write stuff, but then spend 5 drones worth of effort fixing the gish gallop. the overall quality will go down, the 3 drones will burn out, and the AI will be used to replace them entirely. the overall slop will be entirely useless.
  - FrustratedMonky 2y ago
    I've waffled back on forth on that same line of reasoning. Maybe it just needs to reach point where the AI "confabulating" is equal or less than human "confabulating". Plenty of humans BS, make errors. So AI just needs to reach parity to allow replacing the humans.
    - AnimalMuppet 2y ago
      Some humans are capable of saying "I don't know" or, better, "I'll find out".
      - exe34 2y ago
        I think that information needs to be included in the input stream. instead of asking a model "what did I have for breakfast", you give it an api it can query to look at your food journal and if something is not available, it's marked explicitly as unknown. if you make the human stressed enough, they will in fact tell you an answer whether or not they know the answer.
  - steveBK123 2y ago
    Yes the causality is reversed in a lot of peoples minds but this is more in-line with some other "innovations" were enforced. Big Boss reads Gartner. Gartners says do X. Big Boss mandates X, and gets the cost savings they want by firing or hiring freeze. The quality/quantity of the output was hard to measure compared to the concrete reduction on the spend side. 20 years ago it was offshoring. I recall a job where managers were all essentially given the offer at budget season - you can have 5 hires in Bangalore or 0 hires in US. Not a pot of money and managers deciding X vs Y, it was simply an ultimatum X or 0. Certainly it worked, however it was first forced in many areas where it didn't work, top-down. AI efficiencies will happen similarly.
tempodox 2y ago
You see this in so many tech companies. Once the product is “done”, technical leadership is out and clueless beancounters take the reins.
hiddencost 2y ago
IBM has been a dead man walking for decades. If the goal is functional software you're right. However there are two goals at IBM: planet scale patent portfolio and satisfying the letter of their contracts at the Lowe's possible cost. If they can find a way to get paid without staff they'll be delighted. Unfortunately their core competency is hiring 20x as much staff as needed for a job, at the Lowe's quality they can achieve.
- LeftHandPath 2y ago
  This Forbes article from 2017 seemed to hit the nail on the head, regarding their outsourcing to India being a major problem: https://www.forbes.com/sites/panosmourdoukoutas/2017/10/06/ibm-should-cut-down-on-outsourcing-to-india/ https://www.forbes.com/sites/panosmourdoukoutas/2017/10/06/i...
  - AnimalMuppet 2y ago
    "Outsourcing to AI" could be seen as the latest attempt at making the "outsourcing to India" dream work.
adriancr 2y ago
Here's a counter point: - They are saying that maliciously as signalling for cost savings. - They know this will slowly rot and destroy long term development. Probably screamed from all sides internally. - They are doing this to meet their own targets. - If everyone is doing this, it means their competitors are also taking the hit, so it might not be as bad for them long term going this route. It's a similar thing as everyone having bad call centers.
- lenerdenator 2y ago
  You're right about the first three; they've made up a number which gets them the maximum return on shares. Most of Krishna's compensation is shares. I don't think they care about competition at all, though. In fact, I'd venture to say that most publicly-traded companies are helmed by people who don't care about the competition beyond what it means for share price. And share price is itself a relatively poor metric for long-term sustainability and growth at a company, because most of the people who are supposed to care about it as an indicator of those things are already hedged and ready to divest at a moment's notice. No one with any real voting power at most major companies has put all of their eggs in the company basket; they diversify. Executives who are compensated in shares also get compensated so well that they reach the point of diminishing returns on what money can buy you in a given society. If you, for a decade, get paid $1.5 million in cash, then get bonuses for meeting short-term performance targets, there's basically nowhere in the Western world you can't exist comfortably. And that's before you exercise stock options. So the risk of failure has no real bite to it.
rsynnott 2y ago
I mean, to be fair, it's IBM. Like, the bar for CEO performance is extremely low; they haven't been what you'd call on the up since the 80s.
zeptian 2y ago
ex-ibm here. Some context from an earlier thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41558554#41561970 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41558554#41561970 Basically, management rot sets in with MBAs in charge who have no clue how software products get built. They see coders as overhead. Big Mistake. Short-term, it leads to some improved profits. Long term, it leads to cultural rot. and the org is doomed. Happening to amazon and aws as we speak.
- lenerdenator 2y ago
  The sad thing is, Krishna supposedly has a PhD in electrical engineering. I get that from the MBA brainrot crowd, but he's supposed to know better.

n_ary 2y ago

This read to me like, why pay a proper experienced person to generate good and reliable results when you can combine to sub-par(no offense to junior engineers, but you don't know all the caveats and sharp edges yet) things where one feeds the other and continue to remain sub-par while mass money is shovelled to the AI forges so they can figure something out and blame the junior(human) and cite the nice little print that their system may generate false/incorrect things, when all the house of cards come crashing down.

lenerdenator 2y ago
That may very well be the case. Remember, what happens in five years time isn't Krishna's problem. What happens in the next 90 days is Krishna's problem. And if he can drastically reduce payroll while maintaining revenues in the next 90 days, he is judged by the market to be a good CEO.

FrustratedMonky 2y ago

Exactly They are also going for the entirely wrong market. Everyone is arguing about replacing programming jobs, "AI can't replace my job". But it is really just fractional. Lets say you have 5 marketing drones writing boring marketing material. AI allows them to do more, you still need humans to use the tools, and to edit, but now you only need 3. AI can't do the 'entire job' but it did enough to eliminate two positions. This is what is already happening. Do you think this stopped with the ESPN case? Companies didn't stop because they got caught, they just got better at it.

exe34 2y ago
I used to subscribe to this belief long before LLMs started confabulating, but I'm now starting to feel forced to concede that what will happen is that management will fire two marketing drones, the remaining three will use AI to write stuff, but then spend 5 drones worth of effort fixing the gish gallop. the overall quality will go down, the 3 drones will burn out, and the AI will be used to replace them entirely. the overall slop will be entirely useless.
- FrustratedMonky 2y ago
  I've waffled back on forth on that same line of reasoning. Maybe it just needs to reach point where the AI "confabulating" is equal or less than human "confabulating". Plenty of humans BS, make errors. So AI just needs to reach parity to allow replacing the humans.
  - AnimalMuppet 2y ago
    Some humans are capable of saying "I don't know" or, better, "I'll find out".
    - exe34 2y ago
      I think that information needs to be included in the input stream. instead of asking a model "what did I have for breakfast", you give it an api it can query to look at your food journal and if something is not available, it's marked explicitly as unknown. if you make the human stressed enough, they will in fact tell you an answer whether or not they know the answer.
- steveBK123 2y ago
  Yes the causality is reversed in a lot of peoples minds but this is more in-line with some other "innovations" were enforced. Big Boss reads Gartner. Gartners says do X. Big Boss mandates X, and gets the cost savings they want by firing or hiring freeze. The quality/quantity of the output was hard to measure compared to the concrete reduction on the spend side. 20 years ago it was offshoring. I recall a job where managers were all essentially given the offer at budget season - you can have 5 hires in Bangalore or 0 hires in US. Not a pot of money and managers deciding X vs Y, it was simply an ultimatum X or 0. Certainly it worked, however it was first forced in many areas where it didn't work, top-down. AI efficiencies will happen similarly.

tempodox 2y ago

You see this in so many tech companies. Once the product is “done”, technical leadership is out and clueless beancounters take the reins.

hiddencost 2y ago

IBM has been a dead man walking for decades. If the goal is functional software you're right. However there are two goals at IBM: planet scale patent portfolio and satisfying the letter of their contracts at the Lowe's possible cost. If they can find a way to get paid without staff they'll be delighted. Unfortunately their core competency is hiring 20x as much staff as needed for a job, at the Lowe's quality they can achieve.

LeftHandPath 2y ago
This Forbes article from 2017 seemed to hit the nail on the head, regarding their outsourcing to India being a major problem: https://www.forbes.com/sites/panosmourdoukoutas/2017/10/06/ibm-should-cut-down-on-outsourcing-to-india/ https://www.forbes.com/sites/panosmourdoukoutas/2017/10/06/i...
- AnimalMuppet 2y ago
  "Outsourcing to AI" could be seen as the latest attempt at making the "outsourcing to India" dream work.

adriancr 2y ago

Here's a counter point: - They are saying that maliciously as signalling for cost savings. - They know this will slowly rot and destroy long term development. Probably screamed from all sides internally. - They are doing this to meet their own targets. - If everyone is doing this, it means their competitors are also taking the hit, so it might not be as bad for them long term going this route. It's a similar thing as everyone having bad call centers.

lenerdenator 2y ago
You're right about the first three; they've made up a number which gets them the maximum return on shares. Most of Krishna's compensation is shares. I don't think they care about competition at all, though. In fact, I'd venture to say that most publicly-traded companies are helmed by people who don't care about the competition beyond what it means for share price. And share price is itself a relatively poor metric for long-term sustainability and growth at a company, because most of the people who are supposed to care about it as an indicator of those things are already hedged and ready to divest at a moment's notice. No one with any real voting power at most major companies has put all of their eggs in the company basket; they diversify. Executives who are compensated in shares also get compensated so well that they reach the point of diminishing returns on what money can buy you in a given society. If you, for a decade, get paid $1.5 million in cash, then get bonuses for meeting short-term performance targets, there's basically nowhere in the Western world you can't exist comfortably. And that's before you exercise stock options. So the risk of failure has no real bite to it.

rsynnott 2y ago

I mean, to be fair, it's IBM. Like, the bar for CEO performance is extremely low; they haven't been what you'd call on the up since the 80s.

zeptian 2y ago

ex-ibm here. Some context from an earlier thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41558554#41561970 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41558554#41561970 Basically, management rot sets in with MBAs in charge who have no clue how software products get built. They see coders as overhead. Big Mistake. Short-term, it leads to some improved profits. Long term, it leads to cultural rot. and the org is doomed. Happening to amazon and aws as we speak.

lenerdenator 2y ago
The sad thing is, Krishna supposedly has a PhD in electrical engineering. I get that from the MBA brainrot crowd, but he's supposed to know better.