I do like the paradox (oxymoron?) of being made redundant with AI, so they’re using AI to render their former companies redundant.
But in the end it pushes for more AI software; I’m not sure who wins.
One of the keys to a successful revolution is not purging all your allies by means of purity tests.
We can cheer someone on when they strike back at the establishment, regardless of how recently they may have joined the cause.
Yep, that usually happens only _after_ the successful revolution
Still this broader effort looks more like performance art since the people who decide what SaaS to use are on the other side of this devide
Not that I think this particular instance is particularly high-effort, but almost all revolutionary acts appear performative. That's kind of the point?
You don't bring publicity to your cause by keeping your head down and staying quiet (and as they say, any publicity is good publicity).
> We can cheer someone on when they strike back at the establishment, regardless of how recently they may have joined the cause.
I’m with you on that, I understand I may have come across as bitter in my earlier comment.
What worries me still is the push to more AI as a response even while AI is a main driver for jobs being cut, and it taking a more and more central place in both the establishment (expected) and the revolution (unexpected and unwanted).
I, for one, do not welcome our new AI/SI overlords.
Welcome to the Industrial Revolution, comrade Marx! We must seize the means of production
This is the nature of people. It is a good thing to realize the leopards are bad, even if it takes getting your own face eaten to notice. Look at the positive a little!
I would say it is even more ironic. Many years before, SaaS companies and IT in general were the ones making people fired. New software reduces the need for manual labour, hence less people are hired and somebody is fired as well. Accounting, marketing, retail managers, taxi drivers - list goes on. Now SW devs joined the club of those receiving their own medicine.
For example I know at least one country (but I suspect many more are just I did not checked) where the IT creates a big enough chunk of GDP and hires a lot of people. Much more than it disrupted initially.
But more than this IT allowed so far for much more people to get a very good job and have a very decent life. Up until the promises of AI the IT industry was an industry that was hiring a lot of people and producing a lot of money in their economies. Not only by sales tax or sales but also by circulating money via paying their employees and thus along with IT a lot of other businesses where created.
Any other kind of a project - construction, hardware design, media production - has an end. Once it's done people have to switch to another project.
But with software there's an expectation that it's never done, it's always subtly broken, and I can't help but think that this expectation gets baked into methodologies which produce software.
Also these are SAAS products, the kind that have predictable patterns of development, not one off software consultancies, so you're not actually making a good comparison.
Lay-offs only look hypocritical to people who are confusing for-profit companies with cooperatives. FWIW, personally, I like the idea of cooperative, but it seems otherwise rather unpopular.
Regarding predictable patterns, note that managers are incentivized to do busy work rather than report that software is "done". E.g. if you're a manager and you know that you already implemented all reasonable features and only need minor maintenance, would you report that to executives, risking your job? Or would you try (perhaps subconsciously) make some bullshit excuse: "we need such and such features to boost our revenue, also we need to migrate to <new-framework> to increase performance to be competitive, so yeah, we need more people"? It might not even seem an excuse because it's what everyone does -- all managers are like that.
There's a give and take here that your analysis refuses to acknowledge. "Meta" is not a physical entity that can protect its property, it relies on humans engaging in the ruse (for money to be clear, ie a job).
> Regarding predictable patterns, note that managers are incentivized to do busy work rather than report that software is "done".
This is an abject failure of the executive levels then, given that managing that sort of thing is their role. More or less brings us back to the same point of "why do we all have to suffer because the C-suite can't do their jobs?".
In the hyper NIH, not-invented-here world we live in now, 3rd party software, if any is to be trusted, is about the trust in the humans, and the humans behind this project are not selling it well by declaring war on their employers. We're talking about replacing million-dollar software deals here.
"poetic justice" is a common term for what you describe
dude-with-hand-on-other-dudes-shoulder-meme.jpg
In the AI age, no one buys software because it's "worth it". You pay a premium because you expect reasonable thought and care about the about the product and support. Sure we can switch over to ICQ or Microsoft Teams or Google chat, which is all essentially free for most corporate customers. But people pay for Slack because it's a known entity, slightly nicer to work with and frankly I just don't want to think about the decision so I pay $8 or whatever per user to not have to think about it.