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I have a more charitable view on the "AI-first" movement. When you're a CEO, the last thing you want is for your company to miss a major tech shift. We've seen

I have a more charitable view on the "AI-first" movement. When you're a CEO, the last thing you want is for your company to miss a major tech shift. We've seen this story play out repeatedly - companies that didn't adapt to Windows, to internet, or to mobile, ended up struggling or dying. The tricky part is that you can't just think or talk your way into a new paradigm - the entire company has to act. After all, good ideas and breakthroughs often come from individuals in the trenches instead of from executives. This means exploring new possibilities, running experiments, and constantly iterating based on what you learn. But the reality is that most people naturally resist change. They get comfortable with how things work today. In many companies, you're lucky if employees don't actively fight against new approaches. This is why CEOs sometimes need to declare company-wide mandate. Microsoft did this in the mid-90s with their famous "Internet Tidal Wave" pivot when Bill Gates sent that memo redirecting the entire company. Intel forced its "right-hand turn" when CPU business was still nascent. Without these top-down pushes, organizations tend to keep doing what they've always done. Or to say the least, such top-down mandate at least sends a clear message to the entire company, potentially triggering a cultural shift. The "AI-first" thing may well be overhyped, but it's probably just leaders trying to make sure their companies don't get left behind in what looks like a significant shift. Even if the mandate fails, at least the company can learn something valuable. Note I'm talking about directions. The mandate can fail badly due to poor execution, but that's a different topic.

remich 1y ago
Yeah but there's a significant difference in the leader of a company shifting the goals, product, or market of a company in a top-down way and a leader attempting to shift the implementation details of goals in a top-down way. The former is the entire job of a CEO, the latter is micro-managing of the first order.
- oddthink 1y ago
  Yes, but the message from Shopify leadership is "it's part of your job to mess around with this stuff and see what works". Not "use AI at all costs". The general feeling I'm getting is that using this AI stuff is important, but it's a learned skill, and we want as many people as possible to get familiar enough with it to have actual opinions. I find that pretty unobjectionable.
  - remich 1y ago
    That's one reading, and if that happens to be the correct reading then I agree it's unobjectionable. To me, though, making it part of a performance review process makes it closer to the "use AI at all costs" requirement than a request for devs to mess around with new technologies.
    - oddthink 1y ago
      There was a 1-5 Likert scale self-rating on "leveraging AI" and a free-text box. I rambled about using claude code to help summarize my daily notes, cursor for implementation, using the chatgpt ui for broad questions (what happened to internal project X, how do I configure airflow again, etc.), then experiments with the find-the-right-table-for-you SQL generator. That seemed like about the level folks were going for. There are some people who are really into it. The sql-generator's great for PMs; ops are experimenting with moderation triage. I personally have mixed feelings, but I'll futz with it on company time (and api $) to see if I can get it to do something useful. It'll mess up tensor alignment, but I can fix that. So, yes, it was in the performance review. No, it wasn't a big deal. Yes, it seems to me like a reasonable nudge to get over the activation energy of learning to use the thing.
      - remich 1y ago
        Tangental - what is the SQL tool you're referring to? Is that internal?
        oddthink 1y ago
        It's internal. But it's basically hooking up SQL code generation to the docs and schema of most of the tables in the data warehouse. I don't know the details, but probably also some extra stuff in the prompt to give a bit of context. It started as a few-days hack that then got momentum.

remich 1y ago

Yeah but there's a significant difference in the leader of a company shifting the goals, product, or market of a company in a top-down way and a leader attempting to shift the implementation details of goals in a top-down way. The former is the entire job of a CEO, the latter is micro-managing of the first order.

oddthink 1y ago
Yes, but the message from Shopify leadership is "it's part of your job to mess around with this stuff and see what works". Not "use AI at all costs". The general feeling I'm getting is that using this AI stuff is important, but it's a learned skill, and we want as many people as possible to get familiar enough with it to have actual opinions. I find that pretty unobjectionable.
- remich 1y ago
  That's one reading, and if that happens to be the correct reading then I agree it's unobjectionable. To me, though, making it part of a performance review process makes it closer to the "use AI at all costs" requirement than a request for devs to mess around with new technologies.
  - oddthink 1y ago
    There was a 1-5 Likert scale self-rating on "leveraging AI" and a free-text box. I rambled about using claude code to help summarize my daily notes, cursor for implementation, using the chatgpt ui for broad questions (what happened to internal project X, how do I configure airflow again, etc.), then experiments with the find-the-right-table-for-you SQL generator. That seemed like about the level folks were going for. There are some people who are really into it. The sql-generator's great for PMs; ops are experimenting with moderation triage. I personally have mixed feelings, but I'll futz with it on company time (and api $) to see if I can get it to do something useful. It'll mess up tensor alignment, but I can fix that. So, yes, it was in the performance review. No, it wasn't a big deal. Yes, it seems to me like a reasonable nudge to get over the activation energy of learning to use the thing.
    - remich 1y ago
      Tangental - what is the SQL tool you're referring to? Is that internal?
      - oddthink 1y ago
        It's internal. But it's basically hooking up SQL code generation to the docs and schema of most of the tables in the data warehouse. I don't know the details, but probably also some extra stuff in the prompt to give a bit of context. It started as a few-days hack that then got momentum.