3 ms·

I don't agree with firing the engineer, but if your company is paying for a tool that could help your productivity and you don't even try it, I would like to kn

I don't agree with firing the engineer, but if your company is paying for a tool that could help your productivity and you don't even try it, I would like to know the reason for that. It's a job, they are paying your time and they are paying for a tool that can help you. At least try it.

__loam 1y ago
What happens when you try it and it sucks?
- joshgachnang 1y ago
  You give that feedback?
  - lawn 1y ago
    And then get fired.
a_cardboard_box 1y ago
Because I have plenty of opportunities that don't involve dancing for a micromanaging sociopath.
medler 1y ago
They had one week to “onboard” and then were fired with no warning. The fact iscoding assistants show promise but just aren’t that helpful for most experienced engineers at this point, so installing the tool is just another time-wasting task. Maybe they didn’t get it done that week for the same reason people put off TPS reports and other management-driven make-work?
- itsdrewmiller 1y ago
  > “I said, ‘AI is important. We need you to all learn it and at least onboard. You don’t have to use it every day yet until we do some training, but at least onboard by the end of the week. And if not, I’m hosting a meeting on Saturday with everybody who hasn’t done it and I’d like to meet with you to understand why.’” They would rather go to a Saturday meeting than do the thing their CEO explicitly asked them to do in the very reasonable timeframe they were asked to do it.
  - pxc 1y ago
    Or maybe they took the CEO at his word, thinking > This LLM mandate is a terrible idea. And all I have to do to for an opportunity directly explain to the highest level of management why it's a terrible idea is say I haven't installed Codex yet.
- tuesdaynight 1y ago
  I'm sorry, but I disagree that Claude Code and alikes wouldn't be helpful for experienced engineers. Am I saying that they would make their day 1000x more productive? Nope, but I'm sure they wouldn't say that they are time-wasting tools. Honestly, at this point, I wouldn't trust an experienced engineer that refused to try them.
kjkjadksj 1y ago
Companies always dole out slop enterprise software their employees don’t use. Ours pays for g suite and ms products that serve identical uses just to keep up with the expectations that this is what enterprise software purchasing looks like. Am I to use both outlook and gmail simultaneously in order to not shirk the provided tooling?
- 000ooo000 1y ago
  Amen. Ours recently pushed a platform for comparing prices between the duopolies in our country to help us employees out with CoL. These duopolies are widely credited with contributing to the CoL problem. You just have to laugh.
- tuesdaynight 1y ago
  I understand your point, but if your company paid for Gmail and you still used fax, I would understand their position of asking for a reason for that. After trying Claude Code for some weeks, I understand why a company would expect every engineer to try to use it if they are eating the cost.
analog31 1y ago
My gut reaction is that becoming dependent on an employer to provide access to proprietary tooling is a step backwards for worker empowerment. My take on the past 20 years or so is that programmers gained enough market clout to demand a fair amount of agency over things like tooling and working conditions. One of the results is, for instance, that there are no more proprietary programming languages of any importance, that I'm aware of. Even the great Microsoft open-sourced their flagship language, C#. Non-developers like myself looked to the programming world with a bit of admiration or perhaps even envy. I use programming tools in my job, and would not choose a proprietary tool even if offered. The engineering disciplines that depended on proprietary tooling tend to be lower paying, with less job mobility. Maybe the tables have turned, and employers have the upper hand once again, so this may all be a moot point, or a period to look back on with fondness.
000ooo000 1y ago
AI is just a tool, and depending on ones seniority, a tool of possibly low value. Sacking people who elect not to commit to a tool, a tool THEY are best placed to evaluate in terms of value, is just as unhinged as sacking someone who uses VSCode over Rider. This is just another example of an idiot CEO, and it's depressing to think anyone might consider this anything else.

__loam 1y ago

What happens when you try it and it sucks?

joshgachnang 1y ago
You give that feedback?
- lawn 1y ago
  And then get fired.

a_cardboard_box 1y ago

Because I have plenty of opportunities that don't involve dancing for a micromanaging sociopath.

medler 1y ago

They had one week to “onboard” and then were fired with no warning. The fact iscoding assistants show promise but just aren’t that helpful for most experienced engineers at this point, so installing the tool is just another time-wasting task. Maybe they didn’t get it done that week for the same reason people put off TPS reports and other management-driven make-work?

itsdrewmiller 1y ago
> “I said, ‘AI is important. We need you to all learn it and at least onboard. You don’t have to use it every day yet until we do some training, but at least onboard by the end of the week. And if not, I’m hosting a meeting on Saturday with everybody who hasn’t done it and I’d like to meet with you to understand why.’” They would rather go to a Saturday meeting than do the thing their CEO explicitly asked them to do in the very reasonable timeframe they were asked to do it.
- pxc 1y ago
  Or maybe they took the CEO at his word, thinking > This LLM mandate is a terrible idea. And all I have to do to for an opportunity directly explain to the highest level of management why it's a terrible idea is say I haven't installed Codex yet.
tuesdaynight 1y ago
I'm sorry, but I disagree that Claude Code and alikes wouldn't be helpful for experienced engineers. Am I saying that they would make their day 1000x more productive? Nope, but I'm sure they wouldn't say that they are time-wasting tools. Honestly, at this point, I wouldn't trust an experienced engineer that refused to try them.

kjkjadksj 1y ago

Companies always dole out slop enterprise software their employees don’t use. Ours pays for g suite and ms products that serve identical uses just to keep up with the expectations that this is what enterprise software purchasing looks like. Am I to use both outlook and gmail simultaneously in order to not shirk the provided tooling?

000ooo000 1y ago
Amen. Ours recently pushed a platform for comparing prices between the duopolies in our country to help us employees out with CoL. These duopolies are widely credited with contributing to the CoL problem. You just have to laugh.
tuesdaynight 1y ago
I understand your point, but if your company paid for Gmail and you still used fax, I would understand their position of asking for a reason for that. After trying Claude Code for some weeks, I understand why a company would expect every engineer to try to use it if they are eating the cost.

analog31 1y ago

My gut reaction is that becoming dependent on an employer to provide access to proprietary tooling is a step backwards for worker empowerment. My take on the past 20 years or so is that programmers gained enough market clout to demand a fair amount of agency over things like tooling and working conditions. One of the results is, for instance, that there are no more proprietary programming languages of any importance, that I'm aware of. Even the great Microsoft open-sourced their flagship language, C#. Non-developers like myself looked to the programming world with a bit of admiration or perhaps even envy. I use programming tools in my job, and would not choose a proprietary tool even if offered. The engineering disciplines that depended on proprietary tooling tend to be lower paying, with less job mobility. Maybe the tables have turned, and employers have the upper hand once again, so this may all be a moot point, or a period to look back on with fondness.

000ooo000 1y ago

AI is just a tool, and depending on ones seniority, a tool of possibly low value. Sacking people who elect not to commit to a tool, a tool THEY are best placed to evaluate in terms of value, is just as unhinged as sacking someone who uses VSCode over Rider. This is just another example of an idiot CEO, and it's depressing to think anyone might consider this anything else.