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CEOs laying off engineers for AI is a good thing. It's a natural selection mechanism whereby poorly run companies will fail extremely quickly. These are bad c

CEOs laying off engineers for AI is a good thing. It's a natural selection mechanism whereby poorly run companies will fail extremely quickly. These are bad companies with horrible leadership that are wasting resources. Their existence is a net negative to society and our industry. Good bye to the garbage Klarna's and DuoLingos. No one will miss you.

deathanatos 1y ago
> It's a natural selection mechanism whereby poorly run companies will fail extremely quickly. Sure, but at the short term cost of engineers' livelihoods. Or were you thinking C-suite would be held to account for the failure?
- throwanem 1y ago
  So you'd rather be a parasite than a free agent?
  - gopher_space 1y ago
    It's a mutualistic relationship. I get paid to learn and employers get to ingest my nutrient-rich metabolite. Poorly run companies can be an opportunity to direct development towards whatever I'm curious about, and that's usually beneficial to both parties.
    - throwanem 1y ago
      That would be commensalism at best, phoresy perhaps also, but never mind. You're not exactly wrong, but you may be depending on the financial equivalent of a nutrient waste spill: an alga, assuming this bloom is forever.
      - gopher_space 1y ago
        It's more about reading the room and being proactive with my decades of experience, but I take and enjoyed your point. I needed to look up phoresy and loved it! Thank you.
- FredPret 1y ago
  No-one has to hold the C-suite to account or directly communicate with them in any way. You just need investors and consumers to allocate capital to their competitors. The flow of capital and consumer preference is a decentralized communication method. Price signals, supply and demand, and government regulations are a form of stigmergy.
mancerayder 1y ago
Right. Except jobs are useful to help people pay rent/mortgage, food and other essentials. How is it good if companies fail? Who gives a crap if bad companies fail or don't fail? And for that matter how is it good or bad for you and me if bad companies fail or succeed despite being poorly run? I'm curious about the context of your judgment.
- FredPret 1y ago
  Bad companies tie up capital and talent unproductively. If a CEO is making a tech product, but knows so little about tech that he's replacing engineers with 2025's AIs, we're all better off if that CEO goes and does something else, and those engineers go work for technical people. Temporary stability is not a substitute for long-term prosperity. Creative destruction.
- criley2 1y ago
  If paying rent, mortgage and food is all that matters, why not just pay people to dig ditches and then pay them to fill them back in? Why go through the rigamarole of engineering at all? If we accept that we should be productive, then it seems easy to justify that engineers should be working at good, well run companies producing real value for society.
  - mancerayder 1y ago
    In theory I agree, companies should be productive. In practice having worked in financial services and ad tech, at high salaries in each, it was absolutely the equivalent of intellectual digging of ditches for pay. The only job I ever had that felt productive was in academia, and the pay was off the charts low.

deathanatos 1y ago

> It's a natural selection mechanism whereby poorly run companies will fail extremely quickly. Sure, but at the short term cost of engineers' livelihoods. Or were you thinking C-suite would be held to account for the failure?

throwanem 1y ago
So you'd rather be a parasite than a free agent?
- gopher_space 1y ago
  It's a mutualistic relationship. I get paid to learn and employers get to ingest my nutrient-rich metabolite. Poorly run companies can be an opportunity to direct development towards whatever I'm curious about, and that's usually beneficial to both parties.
  - throwanem 1y ago
    That would be commensalism at best, phoresy perhaps also, but never mind. You're not exactly wrong, but you may be depending on the financial equivalent of a nutrient waste spill: an alga, assuming this bloom is forever.
    - gopher_space 1y ago
      It's more about reading the room and being proactive with my decades of experience, but I take and enjoyed your point. I needed to look up phoresy and loved it! Thank you.
FredPret 1y ago
No-one has to hold the C-suite to account or directly communicate with them in any way. You just need investors and consumers to allocate capital to their competitors. The flow of capital and consumer preference is a decentralized communication method. Price signals, supply and demand, and government regulations are a form of stigmergy.

mancerayder 1y ago

Right. Except jobs are useful to help people pay rent/mortgage, food and other essentials. How is it good if companies fail? Who gives a crap if bad companies fail or don't fail? And for that matter how is it good or bad for you and me if bad companies fail or succeed despite being poorly run? I'm curious about the context of your judgment.

FredPret 1y ago
Bad companies tie up capital and talent unproductively. If a CEO is making a tech product, but knows so little about tech that he's replacing engineers with 2025's AIs, we're all better off if that CEO goes and does something else, and those engineers go work for technical people. Temporary stability is not a substitute for long-term prosperity. Creative destruction.
criley2 1y ago
If paying rent, mortgage and food is all that matters, why not just pay people to dig ditches and then pay them to fill them back in? Why go through the rigamarole of engineering at all? If we accept that we should be productive, then it seems easy to justify that engineers should be working at good, well run companies producing real value for society.
- mancerayder 1y ago
  In theory I agree, companies should be productive. In practice having worked in financial services and ad tech, at high salaries in each, it was absolutely the equivalent of intellectual digging of ditches for pay. The only job I ever had that felt productive was in academia, and the pay was off the charts low.