YHK - yet another hacker news clone

“Learn to code” but for white-collar workers. It was callous to say this to blue-collar workers and it’s callous to say it here too.

Or if the codebase becomes too broken, messy, and bloated to run or manage, people might realize that the crazy Anti-AI people weren't so crazy.

Are you insinuating that anti-AI people are merely experiencing a skill issue?

I won't wonder for a second. I perfectly know why I'm avoiding this fascistic tech and participating in this environmental disaster.

Stop insinuating rejecting GenAI is necessarily irrational.

(Maybe my analysis will be different in the future but I will still know why I was avoiding it)

Letting A.I. write the code will eventually sink the entire company.

Hopefully sooner than later, so microkernel operating systems can...move right in.

Management will get a Golden Parachute but the white collar workers will be left holding the bag.

I don’t really support pushing out people who don’t vibe code, but I do think buy-outs are a good way to get rid of people who don’t really want to be at an org but hang around for the wrong reasons. I’ve seen this personally at much smaller companies where for whatever reason you accumulate a bunch of checked out people - giving them something fair but not so generous that actually engaged people take it makes it better for everyone, especially if the alternative is eventually doing layoffs.

> think it's just something we have to go through and a lot of people will who were negatively affected will look back on wondering why they pushed so hard against AI rather than up skilling.

Given what is happening, it seems more likely they will wonder why they didn't push hard enough.

Whether you like AI or not, its hard to miss that its lead to hundreds of thousands of layoffs.

> up skilling

Must you cultists always speak in this way?

With regards, someone "left behind" as the "singularity train" is leaving the platform. Or something.

That is terrible.

I’m interested in how that’s calculated.

No, it was roughly 30% earlier this year.

I seriously doubt that, no company in their right mind would want to publicize a quarter of their entire workforce or 60,000 people getting “laid off” as a headline

Nothing lasts forever. Dinosaurs will die eventually.

> make up the gap with AI

If this doesn’t go well, we’ll see it in the form of more GitHub and Azure outages/breaches, and competitors filling the gap themselves.

The talented people that built and maintained those systems for the executives have to work somewhere.

Also, if they are wrong still, they can rehire. It's not a burn the boats thing.

I'm a Microsoft employee who historically would have probably taken this offer. For now I agree with your take: why bother taking this when I can just instead take the inevitable layoff in the next 3-9 months.

i think they most likely will choose to stay yes, i'm just saying from the perspective of an outsider looking in, many of the jobs at microsoft were not needed.

what about the kind of bureaucracy where it takes 10 people to do what 2 could get done in 30-40 hours of week? the kind where one engineer is digging the hole while the scrum master, project manager, program manager, swe manager, director, HR, business analyst look on?

I can imagine it's difficult. It's a company unlike very many others. A few in size and scope that deal with technology, probably none quite in its position. Additionally, if you only work at one place its very hard to start elsewhere in your career.

Took a buyout at a different Big Tech company earlier this year. It was offered to everyone under a given SVP (this other company tends to divide things up by business units).

In my experience, there were 3 main groups of people for whom these are attractive:

1) People who are close to retirement.

2) People who are leaving to become stay-at-home parents. So, basically retirement with more work.

3) People who are independently wealthy because they've been with the company forever and rocked the stock price appreciation. So, basically retirement with more money.

The amount of the buyout isn't really enough to move the needle for most other people because it usually doesn't include equity vesting. You're better off phoning it in and waiting for the layoff, because you get the same severance anyway but can continue to vest in peace until the axeman actually hits.

Folks who take the buyout do tend to skew heavily toward people with institutional knowledge, but it's also oftentimes folks who aren't really hungry and engaged with the company's current strategy. Basically folks who know a lot but don't work particularly hard. Particularly in times of big change, it likely does make sense for the company to get rid of these folks and rebuild the company in the image that they want it to be today.

Here's a Japanese case study from 2007: https://econ--review-ier-hit--u-ac-jp.translate.goog/all-iss...

> To conclude, the company was able to specify who was dismissed but was unable to specify who took buyouts despite efforts to ensure retention of value employees, including careful setting of incentive schemes. The case presented in this paper demonstrates that employment adjustment using a buyout framework invites "adverse selection" despite careful employer precautions.

Here's the full PDF: https://econ-review.ier.hit-u.ac.jp/wp-content/uploads/files... (not sure how to translate that)

Copilot is as it is (definitely it improved) and is simply useful as part of thr MS Office bundle.

most office workers seem to want at least the 20 usd per month plan

This can mean nothing who uses AI for programming, but is useful for day to day office work - and I belive it can sell very well

Seriously? People still trot out that "over hired during the pandemic" line six years later?