Execs Confused and Horrified by the Huge AI Bills After Thinking They Could Replace Workers for Free

[u/IKeepItLayingAround]

https://www.yahoo.com/finance/technology/ai/articles/execs-confused-horrified-huge-ai-135718505.html?ncid=crm_19908-1475736-20260708-0--A

[u/EVJpodcast]

Execs don’t sound very smart in this case. 

[u/spypol → u/EVJpodcast]

Execs are just people failing upwards, who learned how to speak eloquently and promote themselves.

[u/got-trunks → u/spypol]

The entire world is just a bigger highschool with more complex social clubs. Thinking back over my life there are maybe like 3-4 people who I would trust with running something for me. Scary.

[u/raggamuffinchef → u/got-trunks]

Just had my 30th high school reunion. The one guy currently in aerospace manufacturing is the one I hoped would make it

[u/BugRevolutionary4518 → u/[deleted]]

Hell, one of the smartest people I know took over his dad’s plumbing business, and is excelling. He went to Cal with me. I thought he’d go into tech (that’s his degree iirc, EECS, but nope, he went into plumbing. He just did my elderly mom’s sewer lateral which wasn’t easy considering the city, red tape, etc. I got into another field after not liking law, and now I design buildings.

Life is a trip.

[u/ready_gi → u/BugRevolutionary4518]

It's wild how rewarding simple jobs and low pressure is. I used to be so career obssesed, worked as a designer for prestigious interior design firm. Then had angry awakening of how much i hated the industry, the bullshit.

Now im a ceramic artist and have small vintage shop. There's just no stress and it's great.

[u/3point147ersMorgan → u/ready_gi]

You can face high pressure in a plumbing job.

[u/LeoFrankenstein → u/3point147ersMorgan]

And quite a bit of shit too

[u/lew_rong → u/LeoFrankenstein]

And once in a while they combine to give you arse-spraying mayhem

[u/silverionmox → u/ready_gi]

Now im a ceramic artist and have small vintage shop. There's just no stress and it's great.

Is your revenue stream that stable?

[u/COMMENT0R_3000 → u/silverionmox]

nothing against /u/ready_gi, i want only the best for them lol, but everybody i talk to who says something like this actually made a gob doing the lucrative thing, & now there's no stress because they made a technical career change but actually they retired early lol

[u/9-11GaveMe5G → u/BugRevolutionary4518]

This whole thread sounds like an anti-college bot chain

[u/Lou_C_Fer → u/[deleted]]

I took one look at the rat race when I was a kid and knew that I would be happier living a life with less money and less stress. That's where critical thinking lead me. The effort required vs the rewards just aren't worth it to me.

[u/Poonchow → u/Lou_C_Fer]

But man does the world try to shit on you for opting out.

[u/RepulsiveLiving8570 → u/Poonchow]

Boy does it. They don't know peace and are often jealous when they see others content with what they have. People feel like they always need more. A new car, a promotion, a prettier smile, the newest tech gadget. You can't hold status. You are not the power your position grants you. No matter how much you spend on your outfit, we're all human underneath it all.

Instead of endlessly buying things to seperate ourselves from others, maybe we could gain more by collaborating and focusing on what we have in common. If only they knew that they hold the keys to their own cages. Businesses try to commodify your identity to sell it back to you, but you're not what you have, you're who you are. Who you are without any labels limiting who you're expected to be. Not what job you do. You might be a sales clerk, a police officer, an engineer, and you do act in that capacity, but thats something you do, that is not a limit to your being as a whole. You're more than you realize. All of you.

[u/Poonchow → u/RepulsiveLiving8570]

Hell yeah, brother.

[u/Accomplished-Text222 → u/got-trunks]

When I first got into people leadership, my dad told me: “people are who they were in the 6th grade playground. Just bigger and older”

This has proven to be so very true.

[u/Pippi-ki-yay → u/Accomplished-Text222]

When I applied for a promotion into my first management job, one of the directors who interviewed me (who I was already friends with) said, "girl, sometimes it's like running a daycare."

[u/aldegio → u/Pippi-ki-yay]

I wish I had been told this before I went into leadership 😂 because it’s true

I’m a charge nurse at an infusion center, and my entire staff is comprised of ladies. Then, all day it’s complaints and moodiness, like listening to teenage girls complaining about their first world problems, period cramps and headaches. For the record, I am also a lady, but I generally feel like announcing your back hurts everyday, to the room, like the patients want to hear it either, is either an attempt at attention in general, or they are malingering their way to being sent home for the day.

It got to the point where I had to start asking “do you want assistance or are you just wanting to get that off your chest?”

[u/Astralglamour → u/got-trunks]

Yep. So many decisions are made by handshake with pals of pals. This is what is happening with commissions and data center developers. It's often not massive amounts of money- its doing something for some friend of a friend they told you was cool. you pat my back ill pat yours and keep it in the circle mentality.

[u/Stormlightlinux → u/Astralglamour]

This is a charitable view, but also think about how tough it is to objectively evaluate people you don't personally have experience with. Anyone can lie to you about anything. Testimonials, data, before and after pictures, whatever. If you have low morals you just make them up. So if you have 5 strangers in front of you and no obvious differentiators, and then one person who also had all the same great things like what I mentioned but also an endorsement from someone you trust, that makes the decision much easier.

[u/blacksideblue → u/Stormlightlinux]

Now imagine you're the new guy in that group that got there by not fucking up and getting things done right but it turns out 1 of those 5 is dangerously incompetent and you're really there because the last guy before you was always fixing his mess until he became the patsy. You say anything and the group automatically assumes you're the snake trying to set someone up or force an open and fair market outside of the club.

When its a club via security clearances its understandable but beyond that its just plain market manipulation.

[u/AI_moderated_failure → u/Astralglamour]

It genuinely is mostly favours to people who would go have a beer with you when you were at university. Getting into that club is tough without connections already. This is the real value of ivy league education, the actual schooling is maybe 5% better quality than your standard university. It's the people who go, funded by people who already have money and thus easier access to capital for whatever ideas you want to try out.

[u/Maxymous → u/got-trunks]

After reading Man's Search For Meaning and seeing what's coming with AI, the entire world looks like a giant concentration camp with smaller camps within it.

[u/Stamboolie → u/got-trunks]

Yah I've found myself thinking why are they doing that, in the past I'd try and reason with people, now it's oh they're stupid, makes my life so much easier.

[u/River_Tahm → u/spypol]

Many don’t even speak eloquently, they’re just bullies. They figured out how to skirt the limits, breaking the rules law and decorum all alike just enough that they’re rarely called out for it and never truly held accountable.

[u/strings_bells → u/River_Tahm]

They all know what they are doing. Majority of the tech managers wants projects with big budgets. What projects get approvals and funds by the C suite? Most recent cutting edge tech. It doesn't matter whether that tech works in the long run.. no one cares. They will move on to another project by then .. so IT managers get funding as long as they talk about AI, as it's the latest trend. It was cloud/big data/block chain etc before.. C suite can tell the board, investors etc that they are doing AI... everybody happy. Is it actually going to meet the ROI projected and promised? No one cares.. what is good for the Company and what is good for the Company management are not always the same...

[u/evilpenguin9000 → u/River_Tahm]

Gee, if out there was a prominent politician who embodied this perfectly. Hmm...

[u/Plasibeau → u/evilpenguin9000]

The scary part is that, nearly to a man, malignant narcissism is practically a requirement to reach billionaire/CEO/Presidential status. It's a trait all of them share. The difference is that this one is incapable of masking his baser instincts.

[u/Arkayb33 → u/Plasibeau]

You can't become a billion unless you are willing to take what you didn't earn. Fact. 

Nobody can ever work "hard enough" to make a billion dollars.

[u/steakanabake → u/Arkayb33]

or trillions.

[u/CatOfTechnology → u/spypol]

I posted this earlier and in a longer format, but I'll condense it for this one:

Executives do not fail upwards.

Failure is a state of mistakes, poorly informed actions and decisions, a lack of context for choices and their impacts, or, simply, an actual attempt at success that does not suceed.

Executives do not fail because their modern purpose is not to succeed.

An executive enters a business knowing full well that their goal is wealth extraction. They burn bridges for pennies on the dollar, harm the business in acceptable ways that will make line go up and then collect their "Okay, now fuck off." severance packages and trade places with someone else so that they can take another turn collecting generational wealth.

Failure is a process that involves attempting to succeed. Executives do not attempt to succeed. They are there to break things to make sure the next quarter looks good as many times as they can before too much is broken for it to work anymore and then they leave.

[u/TomorrowPlusX → u/CatOfTechnology]

Jesus christ, that's succinct

[u/Speartree → u/CatOfTechnology]

I've seen that happen in companies, and the last few decades I've seen that happen in government services. For some reason people were clamoring that government services were too slow and bureacratic and should be run more like businesses. And it brought the job hopping managers.  On the surface they look more motivated and invested than the old guard, which had directors who would not do much as long as everything ran smoorhly. 

Now they got managers who get hired with their business plan to shape up the service. The plan needs to be implemented whether it turns out to be a workable idea or not. The manager gets to put on their cv that they thoroughly restructured service X and they move on to another position before the whole thing crumbles too badly. It's the people under that level who work hard to keep things functioning despite the managers.

[u/SeasonMundane → u/Speartree]

I never understood the concept of running government like a business. They have two fundamentally different purposes. I’ve worked in both government and private sector jobs. Government is generally slower for a reason. You can’t make mistakes like you can in the private sector. It’s not a good fit for AI’s probabilistic model. Yes mistakes are made, governments can be slow and inefficient. But I’ve seen just as much inefficiency in Fortune 20 companies, it just manifests differently.

[u/XYZ2ABC → u/CatOfTechnology]

It’s funny because I have worked at a company that at times had the opposite. Yes they made money, and they were good at it. Trust me. But customers & product were always first. The founder/CEO has even said “you don’t like what we’re doing, don’t buy the stock”

I was listening today to a CEO that has a lot of same. They took the company private. Rules are “Make the customer feel satisfied”. Not something you can make a “3 steps to success” and roll out company wide. It has to be genuine to be of value.

There are companies that do this. They are the exception for sure.

What so many executives forget, and what was drilled into me at the first company, is that every customer interaction is a brand impression, good or ill.

[u/ArenjiTheLootGod → u/spypol]

Not even all that eloquently tbh, corporate leadership these days is basically a culturally incestuous cesspit of failsons and failgrandsons who have no clue how anything works because they were born and raised in an environment utterly detached from how 99% of the population lives and who only have the positions that they do because of the family they were born into.

[u/steve626 → u/spypol]

I worked in the R&D group of a multinational, multi-Billion dollar company. I noticed that some of the PhDs that they would hire to work at the bench were really bad at their jobs. They made mistakes, were sloppy, etc. those were the ones that would get promoted to team leads and then managers. The smart competent ones that could function were stuck at the bench because they were actually productive.

[u/f8Negative → u/spypol]

And fuck other ppl over with zero remorse.

[u/ChromosomeDonator → u/f8Negative]

That is the actual #1 way to become successful in capitalist world. Just lack empathy and do not give a fuck about human beings at all, and abuse the labor and efforts of other people as much as you can get away with. Even if illegal. After all, being fined for it just means it is legal for a price.

In other fields we would call this person a psychopath, but in capitalist society they are celebrated.

[u/dsarche12 → u/[deleted]]

These days I think many of them do

[u/Icy-person666 → u/[deleted]]

Seems like a waste of energy, a magic 8 ball would probably be all that is needed.

[u/zdubs → u/Icy-person666]

Signs point to yes

[u/ColoRadBro69 → u/EVJpodcast]

We should replace them with ChatGPT! 

[u/Hayce → u/ColoRadBro69]

The exact reason they thought everyone could be replaced with chatbots is because 90% of execs could be outperformed by chatbots.

[u/Empty_Insight → u/Hayce]

Seriously though, I'd have better success talking to a chatbot and expecting them to comprehend an issue than the CEO/COO. All the CFOs I've ever dealt with were pretty chill considering I am thorough and reasonable in my requests, but the CEOs/COOs... they just don't know their head from their ass.

I recall at least five situations where the execs e-mailed me about a problem that I had already proposed a fix for, months before treating it as though it was some novel issue that could not have been prevented.

At least ChatGPT would be able to process that I had already proposed a solution to this, and even if it didn't implement it, would be aware that it existed and now might be a good time to refer back to it.

Seriously, let's replace the executives with chatbots. I am 100% down for this.

[u/JDogg126 → u/ColoRadBro69]

I’m pretty confident that all the mass layoffs were due to prompting ai with “how can I get a bigger bonus without doing any real work?”

[u/FourLiveBears → u/EVJpodcast]

This is the thing people need to realize about execs, CEOs etc.

They're not thinkers. Most of them are quite dumb as evidenced by the likes of Musk and Trump. They're just aggressive do-ers. They start doing and they do and they do until one of the things they do succeeds and then they just keep doing in that direction forever.

There are thousands if not millions of people like them around the globe. They're just the ones that got lucky.

Anyone who thinks capitalism is a meritocracy is a goddamn idealistic fool. Our society is not run by the smartest and best among us. Just the most persistent, aggressive, and often, cruel. Not the ones who had the best ideas or intentions, just the ones that wouldn't take no for an answer.

[u/thatsme55ed → u/FourLiveBears]

There are a very very few who actually built something from scratch. They had to be in the right place at the right time with the right skills and talent, but they did in fact have the right set of skills and talent.

Those are the people who create companies that grow to enormous level of success in one lifetime. Guys like Buffett and Morris Chang (the guy who founded TSMC) legit created something few people on the planet could.

Unfortunately for everyone one of those exceptional individuals there are a thousand assholes who do fail upwards and somehow wind up in charge.

[u/ithinkitslupis → u/thatsme55ed]

Morris Chang literally shuttled institutional knowledge from Texas Instruments into a Taiwanese government established and funded company that recruited him and he had no equity in initially. On day one he took over an already running fab the government had set up without him.

Certainly he fits all the boxes of right time, right place, and talented...but he didn't really build from scratch.

Warren Buffet's company is a lot more built from scratch but he did have a little extra advantage of being a son of a Congressman, good education, and a wealthy social net which he raised initial seed money from.

[u/jawndell → u/FourLiveBears]

This is 100% true.

I work in a big tech company.  The people who get promoted to high levels are the ones who just do without thinking AND GET LUCKY.  That’s the big caveat.  They fuck up a million things and something hits, and all of sudden they become a star.  Not talent or intelligence, just dumb luck. 

[u/Toxaplume045 → u/jawndell]

Also why starting life with money is a huge help. You can simply afford to keep doing and can fail more times to fish for that hit.

[u/TCsnowdream → u/EVJpodcast]

We should flood the field with articles, papers, and ‘studies’ about how AI can and should replace all executives as a matter of fact.

And then of course generate tons of discourse on Reddit about it lol.

[u/LnStrngr → u/EVJpodcast]

You could probably replace them with AI to a great result.

[u/Fit-Produce420]

How the tables have turned, they have become the consumer and they don't like it.

[u/Three_Twenty-Three → u/[deleted]]

We did this where I work! From the top down, they ran headlong into encouraging AI for writing email, corresponding with clients, writing employee reviews, and just about everything they could think of! Which AI? It didn't matter! Use AI to write better!

And then Legal weighed in and suddenly we were guided to one specific AI that (supposedly) isn't hemorrhaging our confidential data.

[u/TorandoSlayer → u/Three_Twenty-Three]

Narrator: It was, in fact, hemorrhaging their confidential data

[u/RetardedSimian → u/TorandoSlayer]

I read this with Ron Howard's voice.

[u/mercury_pointer → u/RetardedSimian]

"The Gang Hemorrhages Confidential Data"

[u/miner_cooling_trials → u/RetardedSimian]

I read it Leonard Nimoy’s voice

[u/SteveSauceNoMSG → u/miner_cooling_trials]

Morgan Freeman is my go-to narrator.

[u/ihatemovingparts → u/SteveSauceNoMSG]

Team Gilbert Gottfried here.

[u/25thNite → u/Three_Twenty-Three]

Lmao as someone who works in a law firm its mind boggling how they keep encouraging us to use AI.  I literally work with patents and we have the lawyers and management saying to feed office actions and exam reports through AI in order to summarize stuff to report.  I keep saying I'll use it, but then I bring up is it completely confidential or even accurate in the summaries, but they say it should be okay.  Which basically means they aren't even sure, but they want to put it out to the public that we as a law firm are implementing AI.

Even the demo of an IP assistant showing us how AI can read an examination report and generate a reporting email summarizing everything to the client took like 5 minutes to generate and it did it completely wrong.  Lmao

[u/RyvenZ → u/25thNite]

I dont know many in law but when AI started booming I asked a lawyer friend if they were doing anything because I exoected it couod help a lot with paralegal work. She said the firm has stood by not wanting to expose any proprietary information externally and for that reason alone, they have avoided AI

[u/HUFF-MY-SHIT → u/[deleted]]

Oh, believe me, if sometime in the future AI becomes cheaper to use, they’ll jump write back on it without hesitation and throw their staff right out like trash. This will not be viewed as a learning experience.

[u/junkmail88 → u/HUFF-MY-SHIT]

Good thing that it won't be getting any cheaper, then.

[u/thecoastertoaster → u/Fit-Produce420]

our ceo just added AI to our company’s tech stack” to start analyzing team meetings, sales, trends, product skus (we have over 1M)…

it’s been fucking every imaginable thing up - meeting minutes include incorrect names, completely wrong keywords, relevant dates and financials. I can only imagine how fucked up things are on the sales data and SKUs side.

I’d love to know how much they’re paying for this AI bullshit, and how much they’re paying to inevitably fix the damage with a human.

[u/BelleRouge6754 → u/thecoastertoaster]

My GP added an AI customer service agent that you have to interact with to book an appointment. I did so, got annoyed that it didn’t understand, so rang up instead. The person happened to mention that it was going to be difficult because they didn’t have any availability of [obscure language name I can’t pronounce] translators. I was like what’s up with that, I don’t need a translator?! Apparently the AI had made a note that I did. Those things are stupid and useless at the very thing they’re meant for (transcribing, summarising), I can’t even imagine them trying to analyse actual numbers lmao.

[u/tristeecfome → u/BelleRouge6754]

Problem is that an AI can be right 95% of the time.

But the 5% that is wrong, it's catastrophically wrong. Because they report wrong information with the same confidence as correct information.

If a person it's not sure about something, they will say it. An AI will always sound confident.

And unlike a human, they won't learn from their mistakes. They will continue to report wrong information.

[u/PseudoY → u/tristeecfome]

If a person it's not sure about something, they will say it. An AI will always sound confident.

It's such a weird fucking thing to confront them with the mistakes and then going "oh. But now I got it right! (Makes up another number)!"

They will do this 10 times in row if you keep correcting them.

They're just language probability models. They don't understand anything.

[u/amILibertine222 → u/PseudoY]

Shhhhhh. The true believers in the inevitable AI singularity might hear you and start proselytizing their new AI religion where you’ll be turned into a battery for ever doubting the ai god.

[u/Egathentale → u/PseudoY]

It's inherent in the way these LLMs are trained. If you ask one "What's the square root of 98678?", and it tells you "I don't know." it's considered a failure and gets eliminated, but if it says "52" then it gets iterated on, because hey, at least it gave an answer. This is effectively a selective breeding pressure that leads to LLMs that will always give you an answer, even if blindingly wrong, and then the tech bros will tell you it's fine, because they just need more data centers, and it will fix it, when the foundation itself if broken.

[u/arachnophilia → u/Egathentale]

this. it's basically trained on user satisfaction. any answer, even if wrong, pleases a user who doesn't know better. flattery pleases users. repeating a user's own ideas pleases a user. so those things do well.

we select for bullshit, we get bullshit.

[u/emergency_poncho → u/tristeecfome]

I think 95% accuracy is overstating it. Try doing a test: ask questions to any AI model on a topic that you're actually an expert on. You'll see tons of errors, inaccuracies, misleading data, etc.

It's just the answers are given so confidently and written so well that most people are persuaded the information is right.

[u/pocketchange2247 → u/thecoastertoaster]

My fiancee and I are keeping track of people's addresses for our save the dates and invites using Google Sheets. They recently added a "Drag Fill with Gemini" option next to the normal drag fill option on each cell. Of course it's bigger than the normal drag fill dot so you accidentally go to that instead.

But the funny part is that when I just tried it out for the hell of it, I clicked it thinking it would just fill one cell. Nope. It filled and overwrote every address down the entire column with completely made up addresses that it pulled out of its ass. Couldn't tell what was real or not.

Luckily, I knew I was doing it and could click undo to go back to normal. But imagine someone accidentally doing it in a work spreadsheet for a mailing list with thousands of addresses. You can't tell which ones are correct or even actually exist. If you didn't realize you did it you could mail out tons of personal information or merchandise to people it shouldn't go to or to addresses that just don't exist. But good job, AI! You just filled a bunch of cells with worthless slop to make it look like you did something!

[u/affordable_firepower → u/thecoastertoaster]

Some meetings where I work are recorded by AI and an automatic summary of the meeting is emailed out to everyone on the invite list.

Which includes people that were trash talked in the meeting.

[u/just_mark → u/affordable_firepower]

why would you trash talk people in a meeting with public record ?

seem kinda stupid, even without AI

[u/SteveFrench12 → u/Fit-Produce420]

They dont care. Theyll just hire more people for a few years and then lay them off again once the ai is better and/or cheaper. We never win against them

[u/KnuteViking → u/SteveFrench12]

No, tying your company to Enterprise level AI software locks these companies into a nightmare scenario. In trying to avoid unionization they will be fundamentally locking themselves into a worse form of collective bargaining, where all their AI agents are owned by one company who now functionally controls their company. These executives are going to get a rude awakening. Sticker shock is just the first stage.

[u/spastical-mackerel → u/KnuteViking]

Haha, so true. Claude was down a few days ago and everyone from marketing to HR to engineering was literally completely paralyzed

EDIT: we were all paralyzed.

[u/Brobeast → u/KnuteViking]

Its actually kind of wild to hear the story's about how brazen these "ai agents" are sticking it to these companys. How they come in and "setup" the system, only while a million questions remain and they shrug as they walk out the door lol.

Im paraphrasing a bit, but essentially they overpromised tf out of these systems, and gave little to no insight on how the economics worked. Lot of these companys had zero idea what they were in for once the next quarter rolled around, and they actually bothered to crunch the numbers.

Modern day Ai snakeoil salesmen, except I find these ones more funny then the ones that conned the common man/woman.

[u/CondescendingShitbag]

Oh look, now you have half the staff, nominal efficiency gains (if lucky), and several times higher operating costs than before. Congrats, you played yourselves!

[u/Dense-Fisherman-4074 → u/CondescendingShitbag]

I mean if you ask me it’s not even about the current AI costs, it’s the future ones. AI companies aren’t making money yet, in fact they’re absolutely bleeding money. At some point they’re going to need to try and turn those investments into profit, and the free/cheap ride for users is going to come to an end. It’s the same fucking enshittification story we’ve seen from Silicon Valley time and time again. They’re laying off their workforces to invest in a solution that so far has no predictable future expenses and business model, other than you can absolutely predict the products they’re using will either go under or get way more expensive.

[u/Maladaptive_Ace → u/Dense-Fisherman-4074]

addiction to the growth paradigm. Growth isn't always imperative!

[u/GreenFox1505]

BUT THE PICKAXE SALESMAN SAID THERE WAS GOLD IN THEM HILLS! 

[u/71r3dGam3r → u/GreenFox1505]

"The pickaxe salesman said to keep buying pickaxes and I'll hit that motherload of gold. Sunk cost fallacy? Oh yeah, the pickaxe salesman told me that's a lie from people trying to mine all the gold for themselves."

[u/TheTangoFox → u/GreenFox1505]

49ers went out to California to look for gold.

Levi Strauss sold them denim.

Now the San Francisco 49ers don't even play in San Francisco, but they do play in Levi's Stadium...

[u/BorrisBorris]

My VP told me today he wants to get one of the software engineers to join him on a “vibe coded project” but he isn’t sure the engineer has vibe coded before so he’s not sure if they will be able to do it… these execs and VPs think they are doing something amazing and have solved work but in reality they are creating unmaintainable garbage that no one actually wants.

[u/jmclondon97 → u/BorrisBorris]

He thinks he would be better than the software engineer? Lmao!

[u/gaqua → u/jmclondon97]

One of our VPs in logistics vibe coded an app that watches container shipments from our vendors and warehouses and creates a report daily that tells him when something will be late, early, or have any kind of modified schedule or fees.

He was so proud of it that he started showing it to everybody in the company saying “I have no software experience at all, and I was able to do this in only a few days.”

One of the software engineers pointed out to him that this exact information already exists in our Oracle software and all you have to do is click this filter. It takes five seconds.

The VP said “does it show you a daily report in email? Or on Slack?”

The software engineer pointed to the checkmark boxes that let you send a report to email, or Slack, or Microsoft Teams, even lets you choose if you want it twice a day, daily, weekly, or monthly.

He also pointed out that this VP is on an email distribution that gets a weekly summary of all the same information. It had a really pretty visual dashboard as well.

To his credit, the VP said “well I guess that’s why we have you guys. Jesus I feel like an idiot.”

He’s actually a pretty good dude, but he sometimes gets in the weeds on new tools and hype around new technology. Back when NFTs were big, he suggested we sell NFTs to our VIP customers. When somebody pointed out that there’s no reason any customer would buy an NFT from us because there’s no expectation of profit or ROI, he said “you know, I need to turn off my fucking Gizmodo Newsletter.”

[u/Kermit_the_hog → u/gaqua]

They didn’t even accuse the engineers of trying to sabotage his vibe project to steal its budget for their grubby selves?!? Dude.. never let that VP leave! 

[u/FishyWishySwishy → u/[deleted]]

Hey, this was a nice spot of positivity today. I wish Jake many long years of being a bit weird but a very good boss. 

[u/DIRECTCURRENT59 → u/[deleted]]

This reminds me of r/StoriesAboutKevin (in a good way) you should post it there lmao. Amazing write up.

[u/MattMercersBracelets → u/DIRECTCURRENT59]

Yes Jake is like the anti-Kevin!

[u/carefulkamikaze → u/[deleted]]

Protect Jake at all costs

[u/scifishortstory → u/[deleted]]

I love Jake

[u/Soggy_Parking1353 → u/[deleted]]

What a dude. What a dude.

[u/Kermit_the_hog → u/[deleted]]

Honestly.. I kind of really want to work for Jake too. 

[u/Chaoticallyorganized → u/[deleted]]

We should all have a Jake in our lives ❤️. What a good dude.

[u/HackOnWheels → u/[deleted]]

Damn, I haven't met him and I already love Jake.

I hope to work for a Jake someday and maybe even be a Jake eventually.

[u/LastBlastInYrAss → u/[deleted]]

"When asked why he didn't buy any for his female staff he said "HR told me not to as it could be misconstrued.""

omg

[u/ParadoxPerson02 → u/[deleted]]

Based on what you’ve shared here, I imagine this is lore for OG Jake from State Farm but has now moved on from his iconic khakis since he talked to that guy late at night in that commercial.

[u/fundraiser → u/[deleted]]

ok seriously is your company hiring? DM me, i want to keep this company and Jake on my radar!

[u/ohgodcoffeeohyesss → u/[deleted]]

All my homies love Jake

[u/DrShitpostMDJDPhDMBA → u/[deleted]]

Your own personal Michael Scott. Incredible.

[u/kerripotter → u/[deleted]]

Crying laughing reading these out loud to my husband. Barely made it through the Pink Lady Medical Waiver.

[u/r0thar → u/[deleted]]

Jake was just a logistics specialist.

'just' - My very first real job, the company had already nearly gone under, not from lack of business, but from lack of payment from customers due to IT or invoicing mess ups. The lowly 'logistics' guy in shipping casually mentioned that he had kept a copy of every single docket, so he was locked with them in a room and some accountants and they manually created invoices from that paperwork to get the money coming in. That guy went from driving forklifts to a very well paid specialist in not many years.

[u/Grablicht → u/[deleted]]

I bought my first Cole Haan shoes 3 weeks ago. They are so good!

[u/Fluffy-duckies → u/[deleted]]

Subscribe to Jake Facts!

[u/Casiquire → u/[deleted]]

People with ADHD/autism can be fantastic in positions like that. It's a shame how much we miss out on just thanks to unfriendly structures

[u/MarvinLazer → u/[deleted]]

I want to work there now.

[u/takemy_oxfordcomma → u/[deleted]]

Jake sounds awesome

[u/the_itsb → u/[deleted]]

Jake is a delightful weirdo, and you are a gifted communicator! your stories are perfect little tidbits of entertainment, with just the right amount of details.

wishing you and Jake all the happiness and smiles you've brought us. 💖

[u/RokkosModernBasilisk → u/gaqua]

“you know, I need to turn off my fucking Gizmodo Newsletter

I get why he could be a little annoying from the rest of the story but I'd fucking kill for leadership at my current job to be that self aware. Fuck me

[u/Feeling_Inside_1020 → u/RokkosModernBasilisk]

Yeah, a dude that admits when they’re wrong when IT shows them the way? Where the fuck are these managers at?

[u/addiktion → u/gaqua]

The engineer forgot to point out the best part of building software, which is there's no more associated cost with that completed deterministic work that already happened. They continue to reap the benefits with 0 tokens needed.

Basically there are very few win-win use cases that haven't been accounted for already in a lot of software.

[u/TanyIshsar → u/gaqua]

This guy sounds like a surprisingly good VP.

[u/theDomicron → u/gaqua]

So I have ADHD and after reading your follow up post describing who might be the world's singularly most qualified management employee, I want to say something about this vibe coding project of his:

Some of the other comments have said he's wasting time and resources. Technically he is, but if I'm guessing right he's got a bunch of free time because he's got a group of employees who are busting their ass getting shit done and doing it effectively because he's not busy micromanaging them.

[u/Frozboz → u/gaqua]

To his credit, the VP said “well I guess that’s why we have you guys. Jesus I feel like an idiot.”

This is great. Hold on to this guy. In my 25+ years in software development I've met maybe two people at that level who would say the same.

[u/SacralScenes → u/gaqua]

The amount of money and time he wasted on that vibe coding. And the damage to his reputation done by pitching NFTs… oof. Still sounds like a good guy.

[u/MattRecovery23 → u/SacralScenes]

Overall I'd be happy with a boss like that. Clearly he's kind of an idiot but at least he can admit when he's wrong and not double down and make it everyone else's problem

[u/lethargy86 → u/MattRecovery23]

Curious enough to dive elbow-deep into something on his own? Maybe learn a thing or two? Head and shoulders above any VP-level I've ever worked with

[u/critical_meat → u/lethargy86]

My thoughts exactly, sounds like a guy that is working hard to keep in touch with the actual boots on the ground work. And owns his bullshit.

Good boss.

[u/gaqua → u/MattRecovery23]

Nobody knows everything. And in his defense, he's the first to admit when he's wrong and change positions.

He also can be convinced by even entry-level staff if they show him data. I once saw a Customer Service rep who had been here less than a year show him how we were wasting money asking for returned product in some instances if the product failed. Even if we were able to find that the product had no fault and re-sell it as a refurb or something, the time cost and logistics costs were higher than just sending a new product to the customer and asking them to recycle/trash/whatever the old one.

Up to that point, nobody had done the full workup on the math after the logistics costs had changed, so Jake verified his math was right then changed the entire company's refurb policy for those products because a customer service rep brought it up. Ended up being a win-win for both customers and for us.

[u/singabajito → u/gaqua]

Is Jake hiring?

[u/fundraiser → u/gaqua]

Jake sounds like the greatest executive on this planet. are you all hiring? i would die for that man

[u/Feringomalee → u/SacralScenes]

We all do dumb things from time to time. When an exec gets told by a subordinate they wasted time and effort for nothing or that their idea is bad, many get petty and vindictive. This guy owned it, cut his losses, and let everyone move on. Reputation gilded imo.

[u/eleanor61 → u/BorrisBorris]

Imagine a vibe code approach to a procedure in a healthcare setting. Code blues for everyone.

[u/foobarbizbaz → u/eleanor61]

Find some healthcare startups on LinkedIn and take a few interviews. It’s absolutely terrifying what some healthcare tech companies are maintaining with a skeleton team on a shoestring budget with no compliance to speak of. I spoke to someone recently whose startup was building an AI call-screening system (basically IVR… but, you know, nondeterministic) for patients with a 4-person engineering team (two of them overseas contractors) and no on-call rotation. One of the founders was a doctor, so of course they were already installed in a few large hospitals.

Shit’s fucked.

[u/nonotan → u/foobarbizbaz]

One of the founders was a doctor, so of course they were already installed in a few large hospitals.

This might vary by country, but aren't regulations around IT in hospitals famously strict? Not quite aerospace strict, sure, but it seems like it'd be an uphill battle to get something like that approved, even if the hospital wanted it.

[u/Spectrum1523 → u/nonotan]

In the US this would largely depend on the state. Some states have famously strict regulation and some less so. If you are trying to make a call taking system for people calling the hospital to get them routed to places or make appointments there's probably a fairly low barrier to entry most places. Just stick the usual disclaimer at the front of the call - if you're having a life-threatening emergency please hang up and dial 911 - and you aren't creating much risk

[u/1966goat → u/eleanor61]

Vibe code blues

[u/leova → u/BorrisBorris]

Ask him what he thinks vibe coding means

[u/disposableaccountass → u/leova]

“Vibe” is what the AI won’t harsh while you’re doing it.

Vibe coder: Ai make this thing AI: gosh, what a great idea for a thing, here you go! Vibe coder: this doesn’t work AI: great point! That obviously won’t work! You’re so smart, it doesn’t have this, I’ve added it for you! Vibe coder: now I’m getting this error! AI: wow, how astute of you to find that error, that’s because it’s missing that thing, I’ve fixed it for you.

And on and on…

[u/ColoRadBro69]

We've been told at work from above to ratchet down the use of AI that they've been requiring because the costs keep going up. 

[u/Thetijoy → u/ColoRadBro69]

sounds like you need ai to draft a clarification email to the higher ups, don't forget to do it for each of them individually.

[u/KB_Sez]

They believed the hype of the people selling it... who are weeks away from bankruptcy if they don't keep selling it.

[u/CharlotteLucasOP → u/KB_Sez]

Explains why every other ad is trying to sell me Very Professional AI Services when I’m not in a profession that could even functionally use AI. Not that I’d bother spending money on it, even if I had that kind of money/power within my industry.

[u/dm_me_kittens → u/CharlotteLucasOP]

I work in medical data and I thank my lucky stars every day that my company decided not to go down the AI rabbit hole. I work with the primary source, so there was some concern that my job could have been taken. However I know how documentation can be extremely finicky, and the AI is only as good as the people who it was programmed off of (IE doctors who put in contradictory notes in their H&Ps, inconsistent nursing charting, the patient being a bad historian, etc), so I foresaw it not going anywhere in my field. In fact one of our biggest clients tried to go toward AI and began migrating their facilities away from us... only to be back a few months later.

This was genuinely one of the biggest rug-pulls that everyone but the executives saw coming.

[u/InfamousBrad → u/KB_Sez]

I put in five and a half years at one of the biggest names in consumer finance, and I can tell you that my experience is that at any sufficiently large company, everybody above the executive vice president level is putty in the hands of a big-company sales representative. No skepticism at all, pure unfiltered gullibility.

At most what they want to know is "are the other companies' execs buying or signing up for this?" And they don't even check if the sales rep is lying. Because what's going on in their minds is "if I make the same mistake as everybody else, I won't be personally punished."

And as long as credit is stolen or otherwise shared, but blame is personalized, that's how it's always going to be. They don't want to be right. They want to be normal.

[u/deadline_zombie → u/InfamousBrad]

Because what's going on in their minds is "if I make the same mistake as everybody else, I won't be personally punished."

I remember hearing the saying "No one was ever fired for buying blue". Companies felt safer buying from the blue chip companies, even if it was more expensive, than a new company with better equipment or cheaper prices. Part of it was that if something went wrong, the big companies have the money to fix it or compensate accordingly.

[u/Any-Mathematician946 → u/KB_Sez]

Isn't that a pyramid scam

[u/JRockstar50 → u/Any-Mathematician946]

More of a ponzi scheme

[u/Soggy_Parking1353 → u/JRockstar50]

Sounds like an inverse funnel system

[u/adilly]

This is literally happening where I work and I have no idea what changed in the last few months.

7 months ago execs at my company seemed clear eyed about AI. “It can do wonderful things but we don’t know the projected costs”

Just this last week I’m on a call about replacing level one offshore help desk folks with an AI tool that doesn’t really exist yet. Everyone on the call is so onboard with “90% of IT work can be done by AI! We don’t need people!”

So my dumb ass asks: “ what are the projected costs 5 years from now for these AI tools?”

I get blank stares. So I continue….

“We know how much our off shore resources cost now…and we can predict how much they cost in the future…what’s the cost modeling for these AI tools and what’s our savings over the next five years?”

I’m not trying to sound like a smart ass. I’m genuinely asking. The SVP on the call just says:

“We will be replacing our human capital with AI resources”.

….and the meeting continued. I felt like I was in a comedy sketch. I couldn’t believe this was actually happening….

[u/BadLuckBlackHole → u/adilly]

'member when Republicans used to claim that they were job creators? Pepperidge Farm remembers...

"Human capital" so disgusting...

[u/The_Bucket_Of_Truth → u/adilly]

So did they buy a bunch of AI stocks or something? Or are they just like so many we hear about that only think in 3 month increments rather than 3 or 5 years? Do they all figure they can jump ship before this all goes wrong if it's a bad idea?

[u/ObliviousAstroturfer → u/adilly]

Yeah - that's the real kicker, these are costs while the AI companies are currently operating at a loss even after all the circular economy shenanigans. The fuck do they think is the end-goal of selling these tokens at a loss?

Oh well. Ego > eco, I've been through that when we were moving back offices to central location. Even when we knew the turnaround on tasks that can cause MASSIVE (10k for minor infraction to 100-300k for special transports a month) costs in JIT chain increased from "why is it taking 3 whole days to get to the 10 minute task" to "we told you we'll do it 3 weeks ago, stop asking" - even then the execs made their call, and it's unsightly for them to admit a bad call or cut our losses over sunk cost...

[u/WildcatCinder1022]

I hope they all go bankrupt

[u/57696c6c → u/WildcatCinder1022]

Personally. That’s the only way they’ll learn. 

[u/Actionbrener → u/57696c6c]

Lmao, execs NEVER learn, they whip their workers/employees harder until they get their bonus. Then they get ousted rinse and repeat.

[u/f8Negative → u/Actionbrener]

Correct. They simply retire.

[u/ywingpilot4life]

This is proof that C-Suite execs are just following the hype cycle, herd mentality.

[u/purpleburgundy → u/ywingpilot4life]

that's what happens when everyone's tenure is 2-3 years, top to bottom.

[u/tristeecfome → u/ywingpilot4life]

Dude, before AI, a bunch of companies were jumping in on NFT and the Metaverse.

If they believed that NFTs would be the next big thing, they will believe literally anything.

At least AI actually has some uses.

[u/Zolo49]

Oh no, it's the entirely predictable consequences of our own dumb decisions!

[u/orbital-technician]

As a STEM worker, executives are not generally that intelligent. They're aggressive. They plow forward with anything that seems to make money, even if it wrecks you long term.

Global leadership genuinely is unhealthy. We need to bring actual strategists to the forefront. This 3 month mentality is toxic AF.

You can't convince a billionaire they're an idiot, because their bank account shows a large number. "More money equals more smart!" While they drool over their kitchen table.

[u/fibgen → u/orbital-technician]

Hey that ketamine isn't going to snort itself

[u/IWannaLolly → u/orbital-technician]

Toxic investors are a huge part of this as well. Accepting venture capital is sometimes like selling your soul.

[u/Daxx22 → u/IWannaLolly]

Turning everything into an investement vehicle. Profit extraction is litterally killing us.

[u/That_Club7834 → u/orbital-technician]

Because progress ultimately doesn’t matter, share prices do.

The CEO’s job is basically to make the shareholders more value, that’s ALL. If it breaks next quarter, that’s next quarter’s problem. If it turns out to be a big lie in 3 years, who knows if they’ll still be there— and it doesn’t matter, because the shares already went up.

[u/ducationalfall]

Execs must have been using ChatGPT for company strategy.

[u/fibgen → u/ducationalfall]

ChatGPT is better than most execs at company strategy if you ask it to plan for the company's long term interest, rather than planning to cash out / job hop upwards as fast as possible

[u/WowWhatABillyBadass]

Execs are the most AI replacable aspect of a business. 

[u/CullingSongs]

If they think it's bad now, wait until Anthropic/OpenAI perpetually increase their prices each year/quarter and they are utterly stuck in their contract. Womp womp, dickholes.

[u/tcn33]

This is what happens when you sign up for face-eating leopards as a service.

[u/Krazy1813]

AI sales tech bros be like drug dealers giving out samples and then people are surprised when it all goes to shit, maybe capitalism will learn from this and try to focus on sustainable business not max profit chasing🤞

[u/redit3rd → u/Krazy1813]

The difference between the drug dealers and the AI salesman is the drug dealer knows what their product is, but AI companies are asking the clients to figure out how to make AI useful and worthwhile. 

[u/rudebii]

So instead of negotiating with human labor, because labor unions bad, they’re now being held by the short and curlies by giant AI companies who will raise prices on them at will, with no promises of an improving product (and probably a shittier one as times goes by).

[u/GrandpaDon]

I was told at work today that my AI usage is the lowest at the company and that's a problem apparently, even though all my work is done in other tools. So now I'm just going to run up the tab on BS. 

[u/GreedyCricket8285 → u/GrandpaDon]

Yep. We had a guy on one of my teams score the lowest in AI engagement in the division. He was warned to get his numbers up, even though he was producing good work, clearing tickets, doing what was otherwise expected. The next report, he was still at the bottom so they put him on a PIP. Absolutely bonkers.

If you're a software engineer (or even not, it's easy enough to do this...), ask your AI to create a script to prompt itself every day at some random time. You can make this as detailed as you feel is necessary. You can even have it create a set of questions to ask itself about your current job or career. For example, have it create a CSV of 500 most commonly asked questions in software development. Then have it read that file and answer them. Create a script to run it daily, picking a random assortment of 10-20 of those questions.

[u/MisterNighttime → u/GrandpaDon]

I have heard a couple of stories about people being dinged for under-utilising AI, so they just set it to playing some freeware farming simulator or something in the background while they get on with the actual work.

[u/CaravelClerihew]

Remember that many Execs - and AI users in general - are Boomers who's ideas around AI are based on billionaire hypemen and a surface level understanding of the half-remembered sci-fi from their youth decades ago.

[u/Mysterious-Item162 → u/CaravelClerihew]

Speaking as a Boomer, I have no trust in AI. Period. I will not use it willingly and frankly if my job tried to require me to use it, I would retire.

[u/texanfan20 → u/CaravelClerihew]

Most execs in my company are not Boomers but are being pushed by the Board of Directors who are retired Boomers and they are pushing AI because they have seen the stock market overreact to the AI frenzy. They are just pushing AI to get a bump in the stock price.

[u/Meme-Botto9001]

Wait till they realize their profits and share prices are going down because every company has fired its well payed employees for AI and only minimum wage or low pay manual jobs are left….so no customers left, no profits generated and all that is left is AI‘s talk to another very efficient.

[u/dumboldnoob]

just wait another 10 years, there won’t be anyone to promote up to middle management, then everything really will go to shit

[u/BuryTheFacists]

Normally when Execs fail others get fired. People got fired first, now execs are failing. So what happens now?

[u/Objective-Aardvark87 → u/BuryTheFacists]

They get laid off with 20 million parachute?

[u/fartlips69]

Aww, is somebody sad about high monthly subscription rates?

[u/ThrustersToFull]

Yep. I’ve got my own business (a marketing, design and events agency) and we’ve been dropped my clients because “AI can do it all for free!!” Obviously it can’t, but the levels of delusion are alarming: one client thought an AI would run their 4000-delegate events for them “with robots or something, I’ve seen they can be connected to ChatGPT now and that’s what we are basing the whole business on now.”

It’s a mental illness.

[u/SubiKai81]

I love this for every single company. So much. F them. I hope people are smart and demand more money when these companies start rehiring.

[u/Bobocannon]

Execs and other c-suite cronies found to be complete morons that have no idea how anything actually works.

In other news, fork found in kitchen.

[u/tempsunbeam212]

Turns out the only thing more expensive than paying actual engineers is paying an enterprise cloud provider to confidently hallucinate their work.

[u/Kralizek82]

My boss told me to use more AI because AI is the future.

I built a workflow that allows me to work on tickets across three projects in parallel.

I got the talk: I use too much AI.

Now I do LinkedIn games while an agent does one task at time.

🙄

[u/HotDecision8128]

Execs don't understand capitalism? Because being able to use A.I. for free or for cheap indefinitely is like the opposite of capitalism. Data centers have to make as much profit as possible for their shareholders. And so that is their only goal.

[u/AvailableReporter484]

Tax these fucks so we can have UBI already and be freed from meaningless toil

[u/CharvelSoloist → u/AvailableReporter484]

Tax robot labor the same way you would human labor.

[u/thrax7545]

Maybe we should be replacing execs with AI.
Probably save the company more money that way…