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You seem like a person who works at a place that doesn't have an AI mandate. That sounds nice. I miss when we had nice things in the world like that. I will

You seem like a person who works at a place that doesn't have an AI mandate. That sounds nice. I miss when we had nice things in the world like that. I will never take that for granted again.

groundzeros2015 3mo ago
Why would you assume that?
- xantronix 3mo ago
  The wisdom to understand that velocity is not equal to value; and the optimism that this will all end at some point.
  - Retric 3mo ago
    Companies ultimately don’t have a choice here. They can do what works, or they can fail. Large enough companies with enough inertia can do really dumb things for a while, but even giants fall.
    - tonyhart7 3mo ago
      or they just need really capable AI that are better than 99% human
      - TheOtherHobbes 3mo ago
        If that ever happens the limiting factor will be management. Perhaps that's where it gets interesting.
    - wiether 3mo ago
      I'm confused by your answer because I can't tell which way you're going. Are you saying companies have to mandate AI everywhere? Or are you saying the exact opposite, as your second sentence suggests? I haven't heard of AI mandates in small companies, only in big ones.
      - delusional 3mo ago
        He's just making a general "efficient markets" argument. He's arguing that whatever happens in a couple of years will be the right thing, no matter what is happening now. That is essentially not an argument in any direction.
        geon 3mo ago
        Inshallah
        hdgvhicv 3mo ago
        It’s also one which ignores the “market can stay irrational longer than you can stay solvent”
    - lordkrandel 3mo ago
      If it works. Where is this 100x software output? I just see more AI tools to check it does not derail, but where is the actual software revolution, where all developers are fired? I'm still closing AI PR slop here
      - ben_w 3mo ago
        If it is 100x anything more interesting than line count, it will be micro-projects: Local barber wants a new website. Architecht wants to put their own plan into a numerical physics simulation library someone else wrote that has its own syntax. Schoolkid wants a customised word puzzle app for the foreign language they struggle with. They couldn't possibly code it themselves, but they can check what it is doing. Trust without verification though, we're waiting for AI's Challenger disaster equivalent.
      - fragmede 3mo ago
        I'm not going to speak to the output side of your comment, but yes, developers are being fired over AI. > The latest layoffs across all tech companies. So far in 2026, there have been 421 layoffs at tech companies with 157,807 people impacted (882 people per day). In 2025, there were 783 layoffs at tech companies w/ 245,953 people impacted (674 people per day). https://www.trueup.io/layoffs https://www.trueup.io/layoffs
        lordkrandel 3mo ago
        The fact that rich CEOs firing saying "it's because of AI" doesn't make it true. It's just marketing for investors
  - lazide 3mo ago
    That just means he’s not a middle manager or exec, not that he isn’t cashing the check from someone who is clearly a short sighted idiot.
    - xantronix 3mo ago
      It wasn't meant to be a literal statement, more just a reflection that the situation is so bleak that I cannot imagine a better future; anybody expressing even a little bit of it seems to me like a somebody who has not been crushed into compliance through force. Quoting the host of the recurring Quiz Broadcast sketch from That Mitchell and Webb Look: "Books mention 'hope'. What was 'hope'?"
plaguuuuuu 3mo ago
AI mandate is one of the best things that's happened to me. It's the easiest metric to game in the world. At one point my boss asked why my AI usage was lower than other team members. I instantly knew what to do. Every session is now run at ultracode effort. My automated PR review bot averages like $80 in usage per PR review.
- tudelo 3mo ago
  It is extremely easy to burn tokens if that is required. Explore this codebase. Team x wants y feature, research and generate a full plan. What does feature x in codebase y actually mean? Analyze code coverage in x. Map out code flow and find concurrency bugs in y and on and on... Oh and my favorite: Use 5 independent subagents to review code change and summarize the findings, and for any finding determine if they are real concerns
  - cevn 3mo ago
    The other day claude spun up 100 agents and took an hour to type 30k token document to tell me something was impossible to do. I googled it, found a pr on the 3rd link that showed it was possible. "You're absolutely right!!"
    - lostglass 3mo ago
      "You can't use reflection if the classes aren't in the class loader" "I see why you would think that however this should work, let's test it." -Claude, burning my company's money.
      - mikae1 3mo ago
        > Claude, burning my company's money. And the planet... While I experience some schadenfreude when reading these comments from programmers, I also can not help to wonder when this insanity will this end.
        3mo ago
lordkrandel 3mo ago
Get out of thay world ASAP. There are still companies actually doing work instead of burning investors money
cultofmetatron 3mo ago
as a CTO, its been crazy pushing back against these AI mandates. Almost always from VCs and non technical contributors. I'm pretty liberal about using AI but it has its limits. I think of them like swim fins. you can dive much deeper with them but if you didn't earn that ability, you can find yourself too deep to get your next breath of air. likewise, its important to never let the ai do work more than one ring outside of your knowledge base lest it do things you dont' understand and therefore can't audit.
- hibikir 3mo ago
  It's not unreasonable to mandate that one should try it for some of its safer uses, or to spend time teaching people what the good uses are, which keep growing... but mandating a significant part of the day-to-day is telling employees they have no agency in how they achieve objectives. For people that aren't technical, it shows they aren't good at the social either.
- surgical_fire 3mo ago
  The company I work for, thankfully, is a bit like that. The AI initiative there is a lot more in "let's try to find ways that this can be useful" instead of "let's use this to the maximum extent". So far it has been a mostly positive experience. We could figure out ways where it saves time instead of burning money in a token pit. The only downside is that code reviews are becoming the bottleneck. Every PR still needs a human reviewer, and that is not changing. The influx of PRs increased slightly, the rate of reviews not as much.
murphomatic 3mo ago
Our AI mandate is coming. I'm trying hard to be a voice of reason, but it's bows and arrows against the lightning, I'm afraid.

You seem like a person who works at a place that doesn't have an AI mandate. That sounds nice. I miss when we had nice things in the world like that. I will never take that for granted again.

groundzeros2015 3mo ago

Why would you assume that?

xantronix 3mo ago
The wisdom to understand that velocity is not equal to value; and the optimism that this will all end at some point.
- Retric 3mo ago
  Companies ultimately don’t have a choice here. They can do what works, or they can fail. Large enough companies with enough inertia can do really dumb things for a while, but even giants fall.
  - tonyhart7 3mo ago
    or they just need really capable AI that are better than 99% human
    - TheOtherHobbes 3mo ago
      If that ever happens the limiting factor will be management. Perhaps that's where it gets interesting.
  - wiether 3mo ago
    I'm confused by your answer because I can't tell which way you're going. Are you saying companies have to mandate AI everywhere? Or are you saying the exact opposite, as your second sentence suggests? I haven't heard of AI mandates in small companies, only in big ones.
    - delusional 3mo ago
      He's just making a general "efficient markets" argument. He's arguing that whatever happens in a couple of years will be the right thing, no matter what is happening now. That is essentially not an argument in any direction.
      - geon 3mo ago
        Inshallah
      - hdgvhicv 3mo ago
        It’s also one which ignores the “market can stay irrational longer than you can stay solvent”
  - lordkrandel 3mo ago
    If it works. Where is this 100x software output? I just see more AI tools to check it does not derail, but where is the actual software revolution, where all developers are fired? I'm still closing AI PR slop here
    - ben_w 3mo ago
      If it is 100x anything more interesting than line count, it will be micro-projects: Local barber wants a new website. Architecht wants to put their own plan into a numerical physics simulation library someone else wrote that has its own syntax. Schoolkid wants a customised word puzzle app for the foreign language they struggle with. They couldn't possibly code it themselves, but they can check what it is doing. Trust without verification though, we're waiting for AI's Challenger disaster equivalent.
    - fragmede 3mo ago
      I'm not going to speak to the output side of your comment, but yes, developers are being fired over AI. > The latest layoffs across all tech companies. So far in 2026, there have been 421 layoffs at tech companies with 157,807 people impacted (882 people per day). In 2025, there were 783 layoffs at tech companies w/ 245,953 people impacted (674 people per day). https://www.trueup.io/layoffs https://www.trueup.io/layoffs
      - lordkrandel 3mo ago
        The fact that rich CEOs firing saying "it's because of AI" doesn't make it true. It's just marketing for investors
- lazide 3mo ago
  That just means he’s not a middle manager or exec, not that he isn’t cashing the check from someone who is clearly a short sighted idiot.
  - xantronix 3mo ago
    It wasn't meant to be a literal statement, more just a reflection that the situation is so bleak that I cannot imagine a better future; anybody expressing even a little bit of it seems to me like a somebody who has not been crushed into compliance through force. Quoting the host of the recurring Quiz Broadcast sketch from That Mitchell and Webb Look: "Books mention 'hope'. What was 'hope'?"

plaguuuuuu 3mo ago

AI mandate is one of the best things that's happened to me. It's the easiest metric to game in the world. At one point my boss asked why my AI usage was lower than other team members. I instantly knew what to do. Every session is now run at ultracode effort. My automated PR review bot averages like $80 in usage per PR review.

tudelo 3mo ago
It is extremely easy to burn tokens if that is required. Explore this codebase. Team x wants y feature, research and generate a full plan. What does feature x in codebase y actually mean? Analyze code coverage in x. Map out code flow and find concurrency bugs in y and on and on... Oh and my favorite: Use 5 independent subagents to review code change and summarize the findings, and for any finding determine if they are real concerns
- cevn 3mo ago
  The other day claude spun up 100 agents and took an hour to type 30k token document to tell me something was impossible to do. I googled it, found a pr on the 3rd link that showed it was possible. "You're absolutely right!!"
  - lostglass 3mo ago
    "You can't use reflection if the classes aren't in the class loader" "I see why you would think that however this should work, let's test it." -Claude, burning my company's money.
    - mikae1 3mo ago
      > Claude, burning my company's money. And the planet... While I experience some schadenfreude when reading these comments from programmers, I also can not help to wonder when this insanity will this end.
      - 3mo ago

lordkrandel 3mo ago

Get out of thay world ASAP. There are still companies actually doing work instead of burning investors money

cultofmetatron 3mo ago

as a CTO, its been crazy pushing back against these AI mandates. Almost always from VCs and non technical contributors. I'm pretty liberal about using AI but it has its limits. I think of them like swim fins. you can dive much deeper with them but if you didn't earn that ability, you can find yourself too deep to get your next breath of air. likewise, its important to never let the ai do work more than one ring outside of your knowledge base lest it do things you dont' understand and therefore can't audit.

hibikir 3mo ago
It's not unreasonable to mandate that one should try it for some of its safer uses, or to spend time teaching people what the good uses are, which keep growing... but mandating a significant part of the day-to-day is telling employees they have no agency in how they achieve objectives. For people that aren't technical, it shows they aren't good at the social either.
surgical_fire 3mo ago
The company I work for, thankfully, is a bit like that. The AI initiative there is a lot more in "let's try to find ways that this can be useful" instead of "let's use this to the maximum extent". So far it has been a mostly positive experience. We could figure out ways where it saves time instead of burning money in a token pit. The only downside is that code reviews are becoming the bottleneck. Every PR still needs a human reviewer, and that is not changing. The influx of PRs increased slightly, the rate of reviews not as much.

murphomatic 3mo ago

Our AI mandate is coming. I'm trying hard to be a voice of reason, but it's bows and arrows against the lightning, I'm afraid.