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After his stunt with the mass firings "because of AI," employees now bring prototypes, not slides, to meetings with Jack Dorsey. These clowns live in a dreamwo

by hapless 6mo ago

After his stunt with the mass firings "because of AI," employees now bring prototypes, not slides, to meetings with Jack Dorsey. These clowns live in a dreamworld created by their PAs and cronies

alephnerd 6mo ago
Most early stage companies are now doing the same thing as well. It's basically a re-invention of the "build fast and test" model that was the norm amongst startups in the late 2000s and early 2010s. Yes it led to some degree of tech debt, but it also made it easier to experiment, validate, and identify good and bad workflows. At least in my network, we don't think AI will replace all workers and we strongly believe AI will lead to a significant amount of tech debt, but we do also recognize a lot of work in tech today is busywork and will be automated away in the hands of actual engineers with domain expertise.
- irjne 6mo ago
  The build fast and test model was nonsense to begin with. Ultimately it’s a way of saying “I have no vision so I just want to quickly throw a bunch of shit on the wall and see what sticks”.
  - alephnerd 6mo ago
    How is it nonsense? Vision doesn't matter - customer feedback matters. You start off with a hypothesis (X will solve Y's problem by doing ...), you build a prototype, and then you start testing with multiple Ys. Based on that feedback, you then tweak your initial hypothesis or you scrap it and pivot. The whole point of engineering is to build tools that solve a specific class of problems for the buyer.
    - irjne 6mo ago
      [dead]
      - dpkirchner 6mo ago
        > A famous person once said the customer doesn’t know what they want until it’s shown to them. That's the test part, is it not?
      - phil21 6mo ago
        Most people are not Steve Jobs, and do not have such a vision. Or the ability and capital to see such a thing through to the end. Steve Jobs also had a number of visions that didn't work out so well too - he learned and interated from them. Thus, for most folks releasing a product and getting to market/revenue is more important than anything else. Then iterate from there. YMMV of course. But the older I get, the more I realize "just get it done" is far more important than almost any other metric there is. There is a ton of navel gazing in tech that provides negative value. If I had released some of the things I worked on in the past vs. carefully designing and polishing them, I might still be working on them today. Competing products have maybe 50% of the "quality" of even my prototypes of 10 years ago - but they exist in the market and are used every day by customers to generate income.
      - deleted 6mo ago
        [deleted]
    - 0gs 6mo ago
      this is totally just the revenge of scrum, and i love it. hyperscrum
duxup 6mo ago
An old coworker of mine got his first job out of school with IBM. IBM hadn't done many layoffs ever at that point and apparently didn't have system for it. He showed up on layoff day and they laid everyone off with a very generous baseline layoff package, including substantial education benefits. So he just went back to school on their dime for several years ;)

by hapless 6mo ago

After his stunt with the mass firings "because of AI," employees now bring prototypes, not slides, to meetings with Jack Dorsey. These clowns live in a dreamworld created by their PAs and cronies

alephnerd 6mo ago

Most early stage companies are now doing the same thing as well. It's basically a re-invention of the "build fast and test" model that was the norm amongst startups in the late 2000s and early 2010s. Yes it led to some degree of tech debt, but it also made it easier to experiment, validate, and identify good and bad workflows. At least in my network, we don't think AI will replace all workers and we strongly believe AI will lead to a significant amount of tech debt, but we do also recognize a lot of work in tech today is busywork and will be automated away in the hands of actual engineers with domain expertise.

irjne 6mo ago
The build fast and test model was nonsense to begin with. Ultimately it’s a way of saying “I have no vision so I just want to quickly throw a bunch of shit on the wall and see what sticks”.
- alephnerd 6mo ago
  How is it nonsense? Vision doesn't matter - customer feedback matters. You start off with a hypothesis (X will solve Y's problem by doing ...), you build a prototype, and then you start testing with multiple Ys. Based on that feedback, you then tweak your initial hypothesis or you scrap it and pivot. The whole point of engineering is to build tools that solve a specific class of problems for the buyer.
  - irjne 6mo ago
    [dead]
    - dpkirchner 6mo ago
      > A famous person once said the customer doesn’t know what they want until it’s shown to them. That's the test part, is it not?
    - phil21 6mo ago
      Most people are not Steve Jobs, and do not have such a vision. Or the ability and capital to see such a thing through to the end. Steve Jobs also had a number of visions that didn't work out so well too - he learned and interated from them. Thus, for most folks releasing a product and getting to market/revenue is more important than anything else. Then iterate from there. YMMV of course. But the older I get, the more I realize "just get it done" is far more important than almost any other metric there is. There is a ton of navel gazing in tech that provides negative value. If I had released some of the things I worked on in the past vs. carefully designing and polishing them, I might still be working on them today. Competing products have maybe 50% of the "quality" of even my prototypes of 10 years ago - but they exist in the market and are used every day by customers to generate income.
    - deleted 6mo ago
      [deleted]
  - 0gs 6mo ago
    this is totally just the revenge of scrum, and i love it. hyperscrum

duxup 6mo ago

An old coworker of mine got his first job out of school with IBM. IBM hadn't done many layoffs ever at that point and apparently didn't have system for it. He showed up on layoff day and they laid everyone off with a very generous baseline layoff package, including substantial education benefits. So he just went back to school on their dime for several years ;)