4 ms·

Do we know for a fact there are Microsoft employees who were told they have to use CoPilot and review its change suggestions on projects? We have the option to

by cebert 1y ago

Do we know for a fact there are Microsoft employees who were told they have to use CoPilot and review its change suggestions on projects? We have the option to use GitHub CoPilot on code reviews and it’s comically bad and unhelpful. There isn’t a single member of my team who find it useful for anything other than identifying typos.

jsheard 1y ago
> Do we know for a fact there are Microsoft employees who were told they have to use CoPilot and review its change suggestions on projects? It wouldn't be out of character, Microsoft has decided that every project on GitHub must deal with Copilot-generated issues and PRs from now on whether they want them or not. There's deliberately no way to opt out. https://github.com/orgs/community/discussions/159749 https://github.com/orgs/community/discussions/159749 Like Googles mandatory AI summary at the top of search results, you know a feature is really good when the vendor feels like the only way they can hit their target metrics is by forcing their users to engage with it.
- XorNot 1y ago
  Which almost feels unique to AI. I can't think of another feature so blatently pushed in your face, other then perhaps when everyone lost their minds and decided to cram mobile interfaces onto every other platform.
  - Frost1x 1y ago
    To some degree I think part of its “hey look here, we’re doing LLMs too we’re not just traditional search” positioning. They feel the pressure of competition and feel forced to throw whatever they have in the users face to drive awareness. Whether that’s the right approach or not, not so sure, but I suspect that’s a lot of it given that OpenAI is still the poster boy and many are switching to using things like ChatGPT entirely in place of traditional search engines.
  - diggan 1y ago
    > I can't think of another feature so blatently pushed in your face Passkeys. As someone who doesn't see the value of it, every hype-driven company seems to be pushing me to replace OPT 2FA with something worse right now.
    - deleted 1y ago
      [deleted]
    - simonw 1y ago
      It's because OTP is trivially phishable: setup a fake login form that asks the user for their username and password, then forwards those on to the real system and triggers the OTP request, then requests THAT of the user and forwards their response. Passkeys fix that.
      - diggan 1y ago
        Except if you use a proper password manager that prevents you from using the autofill on domains/pages others than the hardcoded ones. In my case, it would immediately trigger my "sus filter" if the automatic prompt doesn't show up and I would have to manually find the entry.
        ipsi 1y ago
        And yet that's not enough, even when someone very definitely knows better: https://www.troyhunt.com/a-sneaky-phish-just-grabbed-my-mailchimp-mailing-list/ https://www.troyhunt.com/a-sneaky-phish-just-grabbed-my-mail... Turns out that under certain conditions, such as severe exhaustion, that "sus filter" just... doesn't turn on quickly enough. The aim of passkeys is to ensure that it _cannot_ happen, no matter how exhausted/stressed/etc someone is. I'm not familiar enough with passkeys to pass judgement on them, but I do think there's a real problem they're trying to solve.
        diggan 1y ago
        If you're saying something is less secure because the users might suffer from "severe exhaustion", then I know that there aren't any proper arguments for migrating to it. Thanks for confirming I can continue using OTP without feeling like I might be missing something :)
  - hoistbypetard 1y ago
    "social" in the mid '00s was like that.
- dsign 1y ago
  Holy sh*t I didn't know this was going on. It's like an AI tsunami unleashed by Microsoft that will bury the entire software industry... They are like Trump and his tariffs, but for the software economy. What this tells me is that software enterprises are so hellbent in firing their programmers and reducing their salary costs they they are willing to combust their existing businesses and reputation into the dumpster fire they are making. I expected this blatant disregard for human society to come ten or twenty years into the future, when the AI systems would actually be capable enough. Not today.
  - diggan 1y ago
    > What this tells me is that software enterprises are so hellbent in firing their programmers and reducing their salary costs they they are willing to combust their existing businesses and reputation into the dumpster fire they are making. I expected this blatant disregard for human society to come ten or twenty years into the future Have you been sleeping under a rock for the last decade? This has been going on for a long long time. Outsourcing been the name of the game for so long people seem to forgot it's happening it all.
- nyarlathotep_ 1y ago
  >Like Googles mandatory AI summary at the top of search results, you know a feature is really good when the vendor feels like the only way they can hit their target metrics is by forcing their users to engage with it. People like to compare "AI" (here, LLM products) to the iPhone. I cannot make sense of these analogies; people used to line up around the block on release day for iPhone launches for years after the initial release. Seems now most people collectively groan when more "innovative" LLM products get stuffed into otherwise working software. This stuff is the literal opposite of demand.
mtmail 1y ago
Depends on team but seems management is pushing it from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44031432 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44031432 "From talking to colleagues at Microsoft it's a very management-driven push, not developer-driven. Friend on an Azure team had a team member who was nearly put on a PIP because they refused to install the internal AI coding assistant. Every manager has "number of developers using AI" as an OKR, but anecdotally most devs are installing the AI assistant and not using it or using it very occasionally. Allegedly it's pretty terrible at C# and PowerShell which limits its usefulness at MS." "From reading around on Hacker News and Reddit, it seems like half of commentators say what you say, and the other half says "I work at Microsoft/know someone who works at Microsoft, and our/their manager just said we have to use AI", someone mentioned being put on PIP for not "leveraging AI" as well. I guess maybe different teams have different requirements/workflows?"
- 4ggr0 1y ago
  you can directly link to comments, by the way. just click on the link which displays how long ago the comment was written and you get the URL for the single comment. (just mentioning it because you linked a post and quoted two comments, instead of directly linking the comments. not trying to 'uhm, actually'.)
- lovehashbrowns 1y ago
  All of that is working, at least, because the very small company I work for with a limited budget is working on getting an extremely expensive copilot license. Oh no, I might have to deal with this soon..
- diggan 1y ago
  > Depends on team but seems management is pushing it The graphic "Internal structure of tech companies" comes to mind, given if true, would explain why the process/workflow is so different between the teams at Microsoft: https://i.imgur.com/WQiuIIB.png https://i.imgur.com/WQiuIIB.png Imagine the Copilot team has a KPI about usage, matching the company OKRs or whatever about making sure the world is using Microsoft's AI enough, so they have a mandate/leverage to get the other teams to use it regardless of if it's helping or not.
RajT88 1y ago
The push for copilot usage is being driven by management at every level.

by cebert 1y ago

jsheard 1y ago

> Do we know for a fact there are Microsoft employees who were told they have to use CoPilot and review its change suggestions on projects? It wouldn't be out of character, Microsoft has decided that every project on GitHub must deal with Copilot-generated issues and PRs from now on whether they want them or not. There's deliberately no way to opt out. https://github.com/orgs/community/discussions/159749 https://github.com/orgs/community/discussions/159749 Like Googles mandatory AI summary at the top of search results, you know a feature is really good when the vendor feels like the only way they can hit their target metrics is by forcing their users to engage with it.

XorNot 1y ago
Which almost feels unique to AI. I can't think of another feature so blatently pushed in your face, other then perhaps when everyone lost their minds and decided to cram mobile interfaces onto every other platform.
- Frost1x 1y ago
  To some degree I think part of its “hey look here, we’re doing LLMs too we’re not just traditional search” positioning. They feel the pressure of competition and feel forced to throw whatever they have in the users face to drive awareness. Whether that’s the right approach or not, not so sure, but I suspect that’s a lot of it given that OpenAI is still the poster boy and many are switching to using things like ChatGPT entirely in place of traditional search engines.
- diggan 1y ago
  > I can't think of another feature so blatently pushed in your face Passkeys. As someone who doesn't see the value of it, every hype-driven company seems to be pushing me to replace OPT 2FA with something worse right now.
  - deleted 1y ago
    [deleted]
  - simonw 1y ago
    It's because OTP is trivially phishable: setup a fake login form that asks the user for their username and password, then forwards those on to the real system and triggers the OTP request, then requests THAT of the user and forwards their response. Passkeys fix that.
    - diggan 1y ago
      Except if you use a proper password manager that prevents you from using the autofill on domains/pages others than the hardcoded ones. In my case, it would immediately trigger my "sus filter" if the automatic prompt doesn't show up and I would have to manually find the entry.
      - ipsi 1y ago
        And yet that's not enough, even when someone very definitely knows better: https://www.troyhunt.com/a-sneaky-phish-just-grabbed-my-mailchimp-mailing-list/ https://www.troyhunt.com/a-sneaky-phish-just-grabbed-my-mail... Turns out that under certain conditions, such as severe exhaustion, that "sus filter" just... doesn't turn on quickly enough. The aim of passkeys is to ensure that it _cannot_ happen, no matter how exhausted/stressed/etc someone is. I'm not familiar enough with passkeys to pass judgement on them, but I do think there's a real problem they're trying to solve.
        diggan 1y ago
        If you're saying something is less secure because the users might suffer from "severe exhaustion", then I know that there aren't any proper arguments for migrating to it. Thanks for confirming I can continue using OTP without feeling like I might be missing something :)
- hoistbypetard 1y ago
  "social" in the mid '00s was like that.
dsign 1y ago
Holy sh*t I didn't know this was going on. It's like an AI tsunami unleashed by Microsoft that will bury the entire software industry... They are like Trump and his tariffs, but for the software economy. What this tells me is that software enterprises are so hellbent in firing their programmers and reducing their salary costs they they are willing to combust their existing businesses and reputation into the dumpster fire they are making. I expected this blatant disregard for human society to come ten or twenty years into the future, when the AI systems would actually be capable enough. Not today.
- diggan 1y ago
  > What this tells me is that software enterprises are so hellbent in firing their programmers and reducing their salary costs they they are willing to combust their existing businesses and reputation into the dumpster fire they are making. I expected this blatant disregard for human society to come ten or twenty years into the future Have you been sleeping under a rock for the last decade? This has been going on for a long long time. Outsourcing been the name of the game for so long people seem to forgot it's happening it all.
nyarlathotep_ 1y ago
>Like Googles mandatory AI summary at the top of search results, you know a feature is really good when the vendor feels like the only way they can hit their target metrics is by forcing their users to engage with it. People like to compare "AI" (here, LLM products) to the iPhone. I cannot make sense of these analogies; people used to line up around the block on release day for iPhone launches for years after the initial release. Seems now most people collectively groan when more "innovative" LLM products get stuffed into otherwise working software. This stuff is the literal opposite of demand.

mtmail 1y ago

Depends on team but seems management is pushing it from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44031432 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44031432 "From talking to colleagues at Microsoft it's a very management-driven push, not developer-driven. Friend on an Azure team had a team member who was nearly put on a PIP because they refused to install the internal AI coding assistant. Every manager has "number of developers using AI" as an OKR, but anecdotally most devs are installing the AI assistant and not using it or using it very occasionally. Allegedly it's pretty terrible at C# and PowerShell which limits its usefulness at MS." "From reading around on Hacker News and Reddit, it seems like half of commentators say what you say, and the other half says "I work at Microsoft/know someone who works at Microsoft, and our/their manager just said we have to use AI", someone mentioned being put on PIP for not "leveraging AI" as well. I guess maybe different teams have different requirements/workflows?"

4ggr0 1y ago
you can directly link to comments, by the way. just click on the link which displays how long ago the comment was written and you get the URL for the single comment. (just mentioning it because you linked a post and quoted two comments, instead of directly linking the comments. not trying to 'uhm, actually'.)
lovehashbrowns 1y ago
All of that is working, at least, because the very small company I work for with a limited budget is working on getting an extremely expensive copilot license. Oh no, I might have to deal with this soon..
diggan 1y ago
> Depends on team but seems management is pushing it The graphic "Internal structure of tech companies" comes to mind, given if true, would explain why the process/workflow is so different between the teams at Microsoft: https://i.imgur.com/WQiuIIB.png https://i.imgur.com/WQiuIIB.png Imagine the Copilot team has a KPI about usage, matching the company OKRs or whatever about making sure the world is using Microsoft's AI enough, so they have a mandate/leverage to get the other teams to use it regardless of if it's helping or not.

RajT88 1y ago

The push for copilot usage is being driven by management at every level.