“Every single Monday was called ‘AI Monday,’” Vaughan said, with his mandate for staff that they could work only on AI. “You couldn’t have customer calls; you couldn’t work on budgets; you had to only work on AI projects.” He said this happened across the board, not just for tech workers, but also for sales, marketing, and everybody else at IgniteTech. “That culture needed to be built. That was the key.”
A recent MIT report indicates that 95% of generative AI pilots fail to deliver measurable returns on investment, highlighting significant challenges in successfully implementing AI in businesses
CEOs:
What the fuck is IgniteTech?
Vaughan was surprised to find it was often the technical staff, not marketing or sales, who dug in their heels. They were the “most resistant,” he said, voicing various concerns about what the AI couldn’t do, rather than focusing on what it could. The marketing and salespeople were enthused by the possibilities of working with these new tools, he added.
So the people that had an actual idea of what the implications of using it might be weren’t on board? Huh. Weird.
“All the engineers said my “screen door on a submarine” was “stupid” and would “sink the ship”, so I fired them and hired new engineers!”
- CEO of now defunct “Screen Door Subs Inc.”
I told AI to build me a submarine out of titanium.
- Stockton Rush (if he were alive today)
Seeing these kinds of people harness AI is so embarrassing. They feel empowered while doing some of the whackest stuff. In the end, it is still technical style work snd they are still awful at it.
Like the guy with the carbon fiber submarine. Every engineer told him it couldn’t be done, so he kept firing them until he had a staff of young, inexperienced engineers who would do what they were told, and just collect their paychecks.
Now their boss is dead, and there are no more paychecks.
“I am bad at managing my finances, and eventually need to get bailed out by the government, or end up next to the homeless guy I used to make fun of”.
- This guy.
This reads like a very weird AI circlejerk. They repeatedly mention that AI is the solution every company should adopt, but fail to provide a single example of succesful application. And I mean a how not a reult. They say ‘company X KPI are this % better thanks to AI’, but not how they applied it. Just talk of AI mindset, and ‘culture’ but I would have liked to understand what exactly it was used for (like agents, chatbots, automation of something in particular). It just reads like a lot of patting in the back and hot air so far, which is a pity because I would be interested in reading about real life cases of successful AI implementaiom
This is a paid promotion. Its one of the ones you pay an extra $1000 and they hide the sponsored tag.
Previously I added to my routine, to ask two stupid queries of ai every day, because that was the metric we were judged on. I can get that out of the way quickly, and get to my work.
Now we have to use a new ai tool that has a lot more telemetry, thanks Microsoft. Unfortunately I don’t know what metric they are using and the tool spies on everything. I can’t even just not use the ai features because the tool is horrible
The basic stats I can see are the prompt count, number of active days, and last active date. By default reports are anonymised but that can be turned off by the admin.
Iirc paid licenses let you do data purview searches on prompts. But I can’t see that in my one as we only use the basic.
The question I put to management is “What do you want me to use AI for?”
I can’t get a consistent answer. Lots of stuff unrelated to my job duties. “Well, it’s so easy to make Facebook ads!” - “You know that’s not a thing I do, right?”
They don’t have an answer because they don’t know either. They’ve bought into the idea, and invested trillions, and now they’re all hoping to just churn the cream until it turns into something else, but they have no idea what it will be, or how to use it.
They’re just hoping some minion finally figures out a profitable model, so they can claim it as their own, give him a nominal raise and a nice office, and they can go make trillions off his idea.
This clickbait title format is getting really old. 5 years later, I wish editors would pick something else.
If this dickhead is so smart, why does he even need a staff? I’m sure he can go start a company all by himself with just AI to work for him.
I assume that’s the goal he’s aiming for. Wonder who will buy his stuff when it’s just CEOs and their AI still employed.
That will never happen unless CEOs can actually explain what they want.
When all of this is over, if this ever ends, I want psychologists to study this AI obsession CEOs have now. I want to see how they can look at AI and insist that everyone be forced to use something that hinders them rather than help.
If this guy is such a genius why doesn’t he tell us what exactly AI is for and whether it is beneficial to society at large?
I hope his schmeckel no longer works.
Nota bene: Not just laid off, replaced. With other people.
Basically spent a ton of money and talent and business disruption to turn over 80% of his workforce for shits and gigs.
“They ruthlessly cut costs, R&D, and employee benefits and then replace existing employees with overseas contractors. Innovation and growth take a back seat to sheer profitability.”
This is the operating manual that explains why IgniteTech’s much-publicized AI purge feels more like a familiar private-equity play.
[…]
IgniteTech is owned by ESW. For anyone who’s watched the ESW orbit, that vagueness is not accidental. ESW’s playbook, summarized in a long explanatory dossier that has circulated inside the industry, is blunt: buy distressed software, strip costs, move work to an hourly contractor model through a unit like Crossover (which has been described in Forbes as a “global software sweatshop”), and squeeze recurring revenue out of an existing customer base rather than invest in new products.This is the relevant context to this puff-piece, this should be stickied right at the top.
Yeah this is called AI washing. Basically firing people, outsourcing all the jobs, stripping a company till there is nothing left. The goal is to maximize profits till the company is basically dead and then sell the husk. Because it’s done under the AI label, customers and other interested parties see it as being innovative and not just money grabbing.
So they could have held paint drying Mondays instead, with the same overall effect
“Every single Monday was called Paint Dry Monday” Vaughan said, with his mandate for staff that they could only watch paint dry. “You couldn’t have customer calls; you couldn’t work on budgets; you had to only watch paint dry.” He said this happened across the board, not just for tech workers, but also for sales, marketing, and everybody else at IgniteTech. “That culture needed to be built. That was the key.”
Customers see it that way?
Depends who they define as “customers”, probably. The little people using the stuff aren’t customers, in their eyes.
Selling artificial intelligence to natural idiots.
Very interesting. I appreciate the additional information. Saying its for AI but moving it to overseas contractors instead of actually moving it to AI that is actually overseas contractors (like that one AI company that was outed as being 700 Indian developers) is honestly kinda funny. AI is enshittification given form, I suppose.
The AI part is that the drug riddled CEO asked AI leading questions. The AI wholeheartedly agreed the company should speed run late stage capitalism. What more confirmation is needed that AI is the future?
Because AI is Actualy Indians :)
I mean they have added a chatbot to their website and I’m sure they have replaced overseas first line support in many products with chatbots as well to encourage their customers to give up on getting support (and ensure that the customers that prevails and get sent to a human coworker are sufficiently pissed off).
