Rian van der Merwe
Anuj AhoojaIn the last five years, we've gone from "employees will never have to go into an office" to "employees need to be in the office because creative and innovative work can only be done face-to-face between humans" to "lol we don't need humans"
Anyway, the refactoring projects after this phase are going to be hell
ohmrun@quillmatiq And by "Hell", I hope you mean "Quite Lucrative"
Asta [AMP]@ohmrun @quillmatiq to which I may also point out: hey, wouldn't this be a great time to unionize and/or form a guild? So that when they need to hire for the refactoring projects, they're working against a unified labor force instead of one they can cast off as easily?
@aud @quillmatiq Rich people can afford historians that know about the stone masons.
What do you do?
What do you do?
@ohmrun @quillmatiq well, you certainly don't discuss strategy in public before the unionization/guild forming even happens ; )
@aud @quillmatiq Look at AI, they'll hire you to manage it and fire *you* when *it* goes wrong.
I'm happy to scrape twigs together at this point.
I'm happy to scrape twigs together at this point.
@ohmrun @quillmatiq I'm aware. Are you suggesting that's a reason people should not organize...?
@aud @quillmatiq I'm super fucking organised and about ready to die, where are all you cunts?
@quillmatiq Doing the same thing. Tone is weird and they seem to be encouraging people to talk about things in the open, which... not a wise idea.
@aud Yup. Red flags *everywhere*. Appreciate you trying to keep the conversation productive.
@aud @quillmatiq yeah wow that was a very rapid mask-off
Bet looking into their posting history will be quite telling!
(e: lol and I just saw they came in hard on the tail end with an alt to pout, because of course they did)
draNgNon@ohmrun @quillmatiq totally my thoughts as well
Alerta! Alerta!@quillmatiq After the "We don't need Humans" we might be indeed living in hell.
Temperature wise at least....
@quillmatiq LLMs certainly are maximising technical debt!
Baloo Uriza@quillmatiq You spelled "rewrite from scratch" wrong.
marcink@quillmatiq At least they’re shaping up to be well-paid hell: difficult, urgent, unavoidable, in many cases security- or safety-critical. Back to the employee’s market for the lucky group who gained experience before companies decided it’s cheaper to rent LLMs than to build skills and relationships with juniors.
Kevin Riggle@quillmatiq to be fair the refactoring projects from the previous phases were also hell
Ana@quillmatiq oh wow this is accurate!!
Bytebro 🇬🇧 🇺🇦 🇬🇱@quillmatiq ...but we still need you to be in the office.
Bruce Heerssen 
Firing people over email is so much less satisfying.
@quillmatiq
Basically, we need to feed you just enough that you're capable of consuming, and breeding new consumers. Crack on then...
Basically, we need to feed you just enough that you're capable of consuming, and breeding new consumers. Crack on then...
Boris@quillmatiq refactoring projects after humans are not nice either :)
Ian K. Rogers ikr?╭ರ_ಠ@quillmatiq CEOs and HR could be replaced by AI so easily nobody would even notice.
DavidBut their responsibility is diffused into other people. Without the people there's no way to diffuse it
clewPretty sure they’re hoping for “computer said it not my legal fault”, while steering what the computer says.
Andy Wootton@ianrogers @quillmatiq It could be hard on consultants if AI copies what all their competitors are doing and asks their own staff what to do, without any help from them.
@woo I think you overestimate the strategic input most CEOs & HR provide. Most literally measure"success" as simple growth, and their "strategy" usiually is just to copy others, er, "benchmark against industry best practices". LLMs are capable of being as "innovative" as most CEOs. Let's cross-leverage our synergies to produce win-win scenarios LOL
@ianrogers Then I think I failed to communicate what I believe.
@woo haha no worries, tone is hard online :)
solitarywalker@ianrogers @quillmatiq Management could be replaced by 6 hour workdays.
Monte Freeman@ianrogers @quillmatiq Some could argue that this had already happened with “HR”.
That department became “mostly useless” after it got renamed from “Personnel” by the early tech bros.
That department became “mostly useless” after it got renamed from “Personnel” by the early tech bros.
DemonHouser@quillmatiq "lol we don't need humans, but they still need to be in an office."
Andrew LeaheyBut … still get back to the office.
Brian MacDonald@andrew @quillmatiq We want you in the office until the moment we replace you with a machine. Then we want you to leave immediately.
Machine never complains about having to be in the office....
das-g@quillmatiq If "creative and innovative work" is to be done by "AI" and can allegedly only really be done on-site, can we require the neural networks to run on-premise rather than in the cloud? 🤔
dr2chase@das_g @quillmatiq Obviously we'll move the offices to the data centers. Housing's cheap there, too. Not much social infrastructure, but who needs that?
Fiona@quillmatiq In the end, it seems like many managers mostly want humans around so they can lord over them.
Fitz Bushnell@quillmatiq Almost like the reasons given for executive decisions aren't rational at all... 😉
wajajan@quillmatiq Another five years and we'll be called out of our holidays to work our bums off, because AI "made us so much more productive"!
EdgePlease. Who will be buying the things they sell? When no one has a job?
Greg Bell@quillmatiq inb4 they require the AIs to inhabit robots that sit in the office
@ferrix Does feel like the final form, doesn't it?
@quillmatiq until the layoffs, the AIs unionize and get scabbed by outsourced poor humans, who then have to inhabit the office robots.
Corpomancer@quillmatiq What can Corporate say, we told a little lie, a big lie and then lied some more, but we got the job done!
Or was that also a lie?
Magess 
@quillmatiq except somehow the last two are true *simultaneously*
@quillmatiq Yes, we’re at the people are not good enough slaves stage so were going to make replacements. Terminally insane.
Neromabene@quillmatiq To say it has been a wild ride would be a massive understatement.
Chris RealAnd without employees, who needs supervisors?
Their memos will be eventually enshrined in museums.
Kaloriteller@quillmatiq It will bite em by their ass. Then they will send out "pls come back" letters and they will come back, which is a shame.
Mira@quillmatiq From my spouse: wasn’t the whole push to RTO due to dropping office real estate values, so how will they square that circle with AI?
My thought is that they’ve successfully got property values up and sold their exposure, so they don’t care if it crashes
@mira Some of it was related to commercial retail, but there were other reasons: soft layoffs (RTO or quit), tax incentives, and employee control are probably mixed in there somewhere.
@quillmatiq No doubt the soft layoffs were a big reason, along with control of employees also, can’t comment on tax advantages/liabilities (no knowledge)
Jay@mira @quillmatiq That might be part of it, but I’d think a larger part is middle managers losing control of their underlings while output remains good, thereby threatening to make their positions redundant. And middle managers tend to have a lot more pull with the C-suite than the average peon does…
@quillmatiq And is a big contributor to why a friend of mine who has a brilliant mind, and ****desperately**** wants/needs to work; can’t find a job in the IT industry right now.
It’s frustrating to the point of being infuriating and me wanting the silvery nanovirus thingies from “I, Robot” for all the “AI thingies”……just so I can see my friend have a better chance of getting a job again. 😢
It’s frustrating to the point of being infuriating and me wanting the silvery nanovirus thingies from “I, Robot” for all the “AI thingies”……just so I can see my friend have a better chance of getting a job again. 😢
Isocat@quillmatiq …to "lol we don't need humans but the humans still have to come into the office because um um um collaborative um culture um um look we had to so they have to".
the gripe ibis@quillmatiq we need humans to be in an office to maintain real estate prices. no, they do not do work. they are not paid. they cannot leave.
Patrick@quillmatiq, full-time office for just spreadsheets and emails after we spread outwards from cities during pandemic is a brilliant strategy to create natural attrition.