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So I worked for a year and a half at an AI startup that was way ahead of the curve on leveraging LLM's and other generative models. Like way ahead. I lost my jo

by siraris 4mo ago

So I worked for a year and a half at an AI startup that was way ahead of the curve on leveraging LLM's and other generative models. Like way ahead. I lost my job there months ago, but I can tell you that the AI psychosis is real and I watched it before a lot of the rest of the world. Maybe the CEO was always like this, but he went from being a likable, and liked person, to a fucking maniac. Multiple people who had worked with him for years that he brought on, were either fired or quit. One person who quit - who I would literally walk into the pits of hell for - told him straight up that he didn't know what happened to him, but he did not want to work with this version of the person he knew. I survived 3 layoffs before getting laid off, and you should see what they are producing now. If I didn't care about alienating myself from a lot of people, I'd share a link. It's honestly a mad king situation now. He's surrounded by a couple of sycophants - some of the most disliked, toxic people at the company, and who I've had the pleasure of working with - and the company is going down in flames. I 100% can see this being the case not only with Zuck, but with many other companies. I am flabbergasted that I am a lowly peon in the machine, and yet unless I'm missing something, I seem to be a lot smarter than most of the people I see running these companies. I honestly feel like someone in the future is going to write a Greek tragedy about this time, because it's going to get real bad very soon

itemize123 4mo ago
what decisions did the CEO do that you would believe is poor? Just conceptually if examples are make you too easily identifiable - iam purely curious.
intended 4mo ago
How much real productivity gains do you think people saw. I know that lines of codes and PRs go up, but how much of that actually moves the needle forward?
- jbs789 4mo ago
  If the company is going down in flames I’d say that’s a loss in productivity.
  - toobulkeh 4mo ago
    Not necessarily, as productivity is usually measuring output, not outcomes. Even then, outcomes at companies require external factors, like markets and competitors, and often don’t majorly depend on the company’s efforts.
    - jbs789 4mo ago
      Agree not “necessarily”
aylmao 4mo ago
> Maybe the CEO was always like this, but he went from being a likable, and liked person, to a fucking maniac. I might not know him, but I don't think he changed. I think the circumstances changed and they happened to lead to another expression of who he is. IMO the "AI psicosis" is just the latest expression of the hyper-capitalist ideology that has taken over Silicon Valley (and the USA). Engineering at these companies was special, because there was good money to be made from software at practically nil materials and distribution costs. It was all labour; very specific labour. Instead of a million-dollar idea taking months and lots of $$$ to prototype, mass-produce, and distribute, the right people could type for a week, press a button, and reach millions of people pretty much instantly. Of course capitalism is going to be kind on this type of labour. But as it becomes clear this labour can be replaced with cheaper automation, we just switch to see the other side of the coin; one employees in other industries have seen for a long time. As an employee, you're a human resource, a cost-center, and without proper labour protections, you get treated as such. Mark Zuckerberg has also always been like this. Not with the engineers back when they were more special, but with the content moderators for example, who have long been considered "replaceable". plenty has been written about how terrible it is to work in content moderation at Meta, the quotas, the little thought given to doing a good job, to mental health, etc. As engineers keep getting less special, they'll keep seeing the face of Zuckerberg that exploits resources, decreases cost, and demands higher margins. > I am flabbergasted that I am a lowly peon in the machine, and yet unless I'm missing something, I seem to be a lot smarter than most of the people I see running these companies. This has also long been the case, especially in other industries. I can assure you an average barista at Starbucks knows more about making good coffee and keeping customers happy than the CEO. Credit where credit is due, the CEO probably does know more about playing the politics, pleasing investors and how to ruthlessly optimize organizations.
- e40 4mo ago
  I agree, people don’t change, the circumstances change to expose their true self.
sensanaty 4mo ago
Same exact story for me in my prior company that I left lol. In my exit interview I said "I love literally every single person in the company, except for $PERSON because $PERSON has lost their fucking mind and is going to kill this company with their psychotic AI push". I was the 30th dev to leave in 2 months, in a company that had ~40-50 devs to begin with.
Schlagbohrer 4mo ago
Can someone explain to me the symptoms of AI psychosis that you have witnessed? Because I know several 2nd hand stories of people going through this but I haven't seen it myself up close. I am curious about it because this is gonna be the new widespread-social-ill of the next decade
- SpicyLemonZest 4mo ago
  I work with one guy who's just completely lost the ability consensus-build ideas with human beings. When he reaches consensus with his AI assistants on a design, analysis, plan of action, etc., he's extremely resistant to considering any other options or accepting any other input. When people do push back, he makes insinuations that they had better get with the times or AI is going to replace them. An AI native developer, of course, would not ask annoying questions like "what is the purpose of this change" or "how do you know this will make things better"; this is a time for action, don't you see? Fortunately for me, he's not senior enough to make my life miserable. But if he ran our engineering org I have no doubt he'd inflict many of the same problems the source article describes on us. Reassigning software engineers to data labeling has all the hallmarks of an idea that came through this process; any human manager would immediately identify the obvious, showstopping problems with it, but to an AI whose experience of the world is exclusively mediated through written text it's not so obvious.
  - tedmiston 4mo ago
    > I work with one guy who's just completely lost the ability consensus-build ideas with human beings. When he reaches consensus with his AI assistants on a design, analysis, plan of action, etc., he's extremely resistant to considering any other options or accepting any other input. When people do push back, he ... To me this reads like a personal resistance to feedback / resistance to behavior change or a very jr eng more than agent related. Code isn't sacred — LLMs often easily generate absurdly overcomplicated garbage spaghetti code, but this appears to be getting better, and they are "steerable" towards better outputs with a few rounds of revisions, and some light process around a light spec, TDD, etc.
wilkommen 4mo ago
I have had the chance recently to meet my boss's boss and my boss's boss's boss at my current job and it is amazing how in this era of robber-baron capitalism we seem to be promoting exclusively the most unserious, irresponsible, and magical-thinking among us. The fish does seem to be rotting from the head. And it's not just some companies or institutions, it seems to be all of them. At least during the gilded age, the robber barons were serious people. I'd rather have Vanderbilt or Carnegie as my economic royalty than Mark Zuckerberg or Peter Thiel. Vanderbilt and Carnegie may have been evil, but at least they had their heads on straight.
mystickphoenix 3mo ago
The funny (not-so-funny?) thing is that reading this if I didn't know better, I'd figure we worked at the same company and I'm sure that most people reading this have a similar story. That's the sad state of the tech industry right now. The reins are controlled by a few at the top that seem to be exceptionally vulnerable to believing whatever AI slop is presented to them, whether it comes from AI or from their underlings. It'll sure be interesting to see where this goes in the next year or so. The companies that have flamed out due to C* AI Psychosis. I'm sure the next set of "startup leadership" books will be around "how to avoid AI psychosis" and/or "how to use AI psychosis for fun and profit!"

by siraris 4mo ago

itemize123 4mo ago

what decisions did the CEO do that you would believe is poor? Just conceptually if examples are make you too easily identifiable - iam purely curious.

intended 4mo ago

How much real productivity gains do you think people saw. I know that lines of codes and PRs go up, but how much of that actually moves the needle forward?

jbs789 4mo ago
If the company is going down in flames I’d say that’s a loss in productivity.
- toobulkeh 4mo ago
  Not necessarily, as productivity is usually measuring output, not outcomes. Even then, outcomes at companies require external factors, like markets and competitors, and often don’t majorly depend on the company’s efforts.
  - jbs789 4mo ago
    Agree not “necessarily”

aylmao 4mo ago

> Maybe the CEO was always like this, but he went from being a likable, and liked person, to a fucking maniac. I might not know him, but I don't think he changed. I think the circumstances changed and they happened to lead to another expression of who he is. IMO the "AI psicosis" is just the latest expression of the hyper-capitalist ideology that has taken over Silicon Valley (and the USA). Engineering at these companies was special, because there was good money to be made from software at practically nil materials and distribution costs. It was all labour; very specific labour. Instead of a million-dollar idea taking months and lots of $$$ to prototype, mass-produce, and distribute, the right people could type for a week, press a button, and reach millions of people pretty much instantly. Of course capitalism is going to be kind on this type of labour. But as it becomes clear this labour can be replaced with cheaper automation, we just switch to see the other side of the coin; one employees in other industries have seen for a long time. As an employee, you're a human resource, a cost-center, and without proper labour protections, you get treated as such. Mark Zuckerberg has also always been like this. Not with the engineers back when they were more special, but with the content moderators for example, who have long been considered "replaceable". plenty has been written about how terrible it is to work in content moderation at Meta, the quotas, the little thought given to doing a good job, to mental health, etc. As engineers keep getting less special, they'll keep seeing the face of Zuckerberg that exploits resources, decreases cost, and demands higher margins. > I am flabbergasted that I am a lowly peon in the machine, and yet unless I'm missing something, I seem to be a lot smarter than most of the people I see running these companies. This has also long been the case, especially in other industries. I can assure you an average barista at Starbucks knows more about making good coffee and keeping customers happy than the CEO. Credit where credit is due, the CEO probably does know more about playing the politics, pleasing investors and how to ruthlessly optimize organizations.

e40 4mo ago
I agree, people don’t change, the circumstances change to expose their true self.

sensanaty 4mo ago

Same exact story for me in my prior company that I left lol. In my exit interview I said "I love literally every single person in the company, except for $PERSON because $PERSON has lost their fucking mind and is going to kill this company with their psychotic AI push". I was the 30th dev to leave in 2 months, in a company that had ~40-50 devs to begin with.

Schlagbohrer 4mo ago

Can someone explain to me the symptoms of AI psychosis that you have witnessed? Because I know several 2nd hand stories of people going through this but I haven't seen it myself up close. I am curious about it because this is gonna be the new widespread-social-ill of the next decade

SpicyLemonZest 4mo ago
I work with one guy who's just completely lost the ability consensus-build ideas with human beings. When he reaches consensus with his AI assistants on a design, analysis, plan of action, etc., he's extremely resistant to considering any other options or accepting any other input. When people do push back, he makes insinuations that they had better get with the times or AI is going to replace them. An AI native developer, of course, would not ask annoying questions like "what is the purpose of this change" or "how do you know this will make things better"; this is a time for action, don't you see? Fortunately for me, he's not senior enough to make my life miserable. But if he ran our engineering org I have no doubt he'd inflict many of the same problems the source article describes on us. Reassigning software engineers to data labeling has all the hallmarks of an idea that came through this process; any human manager would immediately identify the obvious, showstopping problems with it, but to an AI whose experience of the world is exclusively mediated through written text it's not so obvious.
- tedmiston 4mo ago
  > I work with one guy who's just completely lost the ability consensus-build ideas with human beings. When he reaches consensus with his AI assistants on a design, analysis, plan of action, etc., he's extremely resistant to considering any other options or accepting any other input. When people do push back, he ... To me this reads like a personal resistance to feedback / resistance to behavior change or a very jr eng more than agent related. Code isn't sacred — LLMs often easily generate absurdly overcomplicated garbage spaghetti code, but this appears to be getting better, and they are "steerable" towards better outputs with a few rounds of revisions, and some light process around a light spec, TDD, etc.

wilkommen 4mo ago

I have had the chance recently to meet my boss's boss and my boss's boss's boss at my current job and it is amazing how in this era of robber-baron capitalism we seem to be promoting exclusively the most unserious, irresponsible, and magical-thinking among us. The fish does seem to be rotting from the head. And it's not just some companies or institutions, it seems to be all of them. At least during the gilded age, the robber barons were serious people. I'd rather have Vanderbilt or Carnegie as my economic royalty than Mark Zuckerberg or Peter Thiel. Vanderbilt and Carnegie may have been evil, but at least they had their heads on straight.

mystickphoenix 3mo ago

The funny (not-so-funny?) thing is that reading this if I didn't know better, I'd figure we worked at the same company and I'm sure that most people reading this have a similar story. That's the sad state of the tech industry right now. The reins are controlled by a few at the top that seem to be exceptionally vulnerable to believing whatever AI slop is presented to them, whether it comes from AI or from their underlings. It'll sure be interesting to see where this goes in the next year or so. The companies that have flamed out due to C* AI Psychosis. I'm sure the next set of "startup leadership" books will be around "how to avoid AI psychosis" and/or "how to use AI psychosis for fun and profit!"