AI Uncovers A Company's Real Priorities

This is something of a rant, so…sorry.

One of the things that AI in software dev has gifted us is a first-class bullshit filter. Consider your backlog or strategic plan. Most companies have long lists of things they want to do. They spend a fortune on creating and managing those lists. Millions spent on market research and product development. Entire departments dedicated to improvement. Then along comes AI, and most of those same companies react with "Yay! We can now fire all those expensive engineers." I call bullshit.

What they're doing is keeping the pace of work constant by reducing the workforce in proportion to perceived (possibly not real, but still perceived) productivity increases. Those companies never intended to even start anything on those expensive lists. Those features were never going to be built. Those bugs were never going to be fixed. Creating and managing those lists was all about fiefdoms and power—busy work that keeps the managers' paychecks coming. The lists are entirely political and entirely fictional. If that weren't the case, those companies would be looking at AI and saying, "Finally. We can get some of this stuff done!" They aren't.

So, what the introduction of AI has done is make the bullshit crystal clear. If you fire people, you don't care about improvement; you don't care about getting those "essential" things done; you don't care about market expansion or new customers; you don't "put your employees first." What you do care about is maximizing profit by providing the least value with the least effort.

I don't necessarily see anything wrong with that—it's a viable business strategy if your plan is to bail as soon as you go public—but let's at least be honest about it. The pretense benefits nobody. In fact, we could save a ton of money by dropping the pretense entirely and not doing the busywork.

We can argue whether mediocrity is a good business strategy. It certainly leaves you vulnerable to competition. But the AI has made the company's actual strategic goals crystal clear: be as mediocre as possible and still make a profit. So, there.