Arelor wrote to Dr. What <=-

Which is why I think AI as it is today is a bit overhyped. It feels
like a faster Stackoverflow.

That's about where I am with it. But it's a faster Stack Overflow, with less accuracy.

One of the problems that I've seen with the AIs I've dealt with is what I call the "Yes, we have no bananas" problem. The AIs don't want to say "I don't know", and really, I don't think that they can. So they often make up something that's plausable, but completely wrong.

Lately we had a discussion with the person in our company pushing for AIs for developers (who is not a real developer - go fig). He said that AIs can write our unit tests for us from the code we wrote.

We had to point out:
1. We usually don't write out unit tests that way (sort of a test-driven-design-lite process).
2. Unit tests are supposed to test how the code is SUPPOSED to work. If an AI writes unit tests from code, it will write unit tests on how the code actually works. I don't know about others, but I don't write 100% correct code on the first rev.


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Arelor wrote to Dart <=-

Unpopular opinion here: IT as a sector is bound to enter a crisis
because so much IT personal is producing no value at all.

But that happens cyclically. The Y2K cleanout, the .COM bubble, etc.

I am talking about startups working on products everybody but the
owners know are not viable, things like that. I think there is a shift going on because the people owning the enterprises are starting to
realize they are pouring money in vaporware and that is leading to
cuts.

Yup, that's how it starts.

AI is being used as an escapegoat for these sort of adjustments but
half the time what I see is departments who were working on vaporware
are getting canned or reassigned to productive work.

From my point of view, what's happening is this:
Some managers (i.e. morons) are reading articles in their manager magazines (also written by morons) that are claiming that they can reduce IT staff by using AI. So they are jumping on the bandwagon to just have AI make all their software.

I've been in IT for more than 30 years, so I've seen this many times. CASE tools, offshore contractors, etc. Companies that try this out the right way come away with licking their wounds and vowing never to do this again - but in another 10 years they'll get another moron manager...

Companies that do this the wrong way will end up with a decimated IT dept that can't get anything done - and they can't get any people but the lowest performers to come work for them. (If any of you saw what happened to KMart's IT dept, you'd know.)

things without which you would have no internet in half America. The
vibes I get when talking to them is that IT companies are way oversized because they have so many useless activity going on. It is no wonder people gets sacked eventually. At some point, bubbles burst.

This happens to every company, in every dept. over time. What happens is that you get some managers that like to play the "I have more people than you do" game with the other managers. Then they hire in team leaders who are idiots but don't want anyone under them smarter than them. So instead of having 3 people do the work, they have to hire 30 poor performers.

At some point, it's unsustainable and they clean house. Out go the poor performers and the problem (but competent) ones. If they do it right, all the good people stay with a leaner and less political IT dept. If they do it wrong, shortly after they get rid of all the bad ones, all the good ones will leave for better jobs.

I've been through at least 4 of these "house cleanings". In every case, the end result was a better IT dept. since we didn't have to deal with the politics/drama and abusive people. And in every case, about 10 years later, we were right back to the same environment that caused the "cleanings".

Why? Because the "house cleanings" didn't include the managers that caused the problems in the first place.


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Arelor wrote to Dart <=-

Unpopular opinion here: IT as a sector is bound to enter a crisis
because so much IT personal is producing no value at all.

I am talking about startups working on products everybody but the
owners know are not viable, things like that. I think there is a shift going on because the people owning the enterprises are starting to
realize they are pouring money in vaporware and that is leading to
cuts.

When you say IT, I'm thinking of the people supporting the tech, the
devops people, the corporate IT people, infosec, and so forth. We have
our own problems, primarily when organizations get larger and entire departments need to justify their existence.

I think of an environment where we inherited a wonderful server room
with 4-post racks and a monster UPS supporting the room. The server room architect recommended enclosed racks with decentralized UPSes running 90 degrees from the current layout.

The building architect laying out 3 floors decided in his plans to
delete the stacked closets that were already in place with riser cabling
and HVAC then made a stink about having to add closets back in. I ended
up with roughly half the space and had to add in new HVAC.

We could have moved in under budget and on time, instead ran into issues
with floor loading that required the building to get involved and file approvals, needing to run cabling to new closets, and the new UPSes were
late. But, the architects got paid.


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Arelor wrote to Mindsurfer <=-

Marketing is a sector which is crashing in slow motion, with or without AI. If you are considering a career in marketing, snap it out.

My son just graduated with a marketing/comms degree. I've urged him to
work with LLMs, but he doesn't think that way. Luckily, he was the guy
in his group assignments who ended up doing the video work and is now
working a job where he's creating marketing videos and getting some on
the job experience.

He originally thought he'd have a job writing copy, I tried to impress
that there won't be entry level jobs for original copywriting, but
someone who can massage LLM prompts to write copy will be in demand.

We'll see if the bubble bursts. Most of these LLMs aren't making money,
and seem to have ChatGPT as a basis. NVidia is making money, that's
about it. Wonder when the investors will realize this?



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Re: Re: market change due to
By: poindexter FORTRAN to Arelor on Sun Sep 14 2025 09:10 am

We'll see if the bubble bursts. Most of these LLMs aren't making money,
and seem to have ChatGPT as a basis. NVidia is making money, that's
about it. Wonder when the investors will realize this?

I don't think the Marketing crash will be due to AI at all.

Plain and simple, so many marketing services cost more than they can generate for the customer. If I buy advertisements for my business today it is less likely those advertisements will pay themselves than it used to be.

I have a friend doing serious marketing plans and that is the core of the issue. At this point the business plan of many marketing studios is to sell plans they know don't work and keep doing it until the customer realizes the marketing plans are not profitable. Then there are marketing studios that are a bit more ethical that outright state "with that budget, we can help you sell all the merchandise you are having trouble selling, so you don't end up losing as much money".

Combine this with the fact the purchasing power of people is in heavy decline. When things go badly, the first expenses firms cut are advertisements.


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Unpopular opinion here: IT as a sector is bound to enter a crisis because so much IT personal is producing no value at all.

But that happens cyclically. The Y2K cleanout, the .COM bubble, etc.

IMHO, there is about to be another event like the ".COM bubble" burst, but
this time it will involve AI... either a bubble that burst, or a lot of
layoffs (before they realize that oh, wait, we needed those people!).


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Re: Re: market change due to
By: Dumas Walker to DR. WHAT on Mon Sep 15 2025 10:44 am

IMHO, there is about to be another event like the ".COM bubble" burst, but this time it will involve AI... either a bubble that burst, or a lot of layoffs (before they realize that oh, wait, we needed those people!).

Although layoffs are somewhat depressing, I also find it a little humorous in a weird way that a lot of tech companies have layoffs fairly often, and then hire people later for other projects. Companies always like to have new & different projects to work on so they can stay in business, but rather than keep employees, they tend to have layoffs and hire different people instead.

Nightfox

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Hello Nightfox!

** On Monday 15.09.25 - 13:28, Nightfox wrote to Dumas Walker:

...but rather than keep employees, they tend to have
layoffs and hire different people instead.

If they get rid of people within a few years, they can then
avoid paying anyone severance. Severance usually requires a
minimum number of years employment at the same company.




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Hello Arelor!

** On Monday 15.09.25 - 08:58, Arelor wrote to poindexter FORTRAN:

...When things go badly, the first expenses firms cut are
advertisements.

Yep.. Been there. Done that. When lockdowns happened, I
practically stopped advertising in the newspaper (usually just
3 times a year during busy seasons) ..but I couldn't justify
the expense for a local paper.

Now, I am revisiting ads, but in community groups like the
local theater that puts out a nice programme magazine that is
available at every show and in a variety of places in town. I
think that reaches out to the tourists and locals that I seek
better than an occassional ad in the paper anyway. https://www.villageplayhouse.ca/
I also sponsor the https://www.bancroftfieldnaturalists.ca/


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Re: market change due to
By: Ogg to Nightfox on Tue Sep 16 2025 03:10 am

...but rather than keep employees, they tend to have layoffs and hire
different people instead.

If they get rid of people within a few years, they can then avoid paying anyone severance. Severance usually requires a minimum number of years employment at the same company.

At one of the companies I used to work at (which was a fairly big company), they've had big layoffs where they've let people go who had been there many years, and paid severences. Sometimes, they'd even offer an extra severance bonus if they chose to leave the company before they did their actual layoffs.

Nightfox

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Re: market change due to
By: Ogg to Arelor on Tue Sep 16 2025 03:32 am

Now, I am revisiting ads, but in community groups like the
local theater that puts out a nice programme magazine that is
available at every show and in a variety of places in town. I
think that reaches out to the tourists and locals that I seek
better than an occassional ad in the paper anyway.

Yeah, there are still some cheap venues that can pay themselves. There used to be a bakery near my workplace in which they wrapped the cakes with paper decorated with advertisements. The advertisement company provided the paper for free to the bakery so campaigns were extremely cheap. I doubt they were extremely effective, but if they were inexpensive enough *maybe* they could be worth it.


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Nightfox wrote to Dumas Walker <=-

Although layoffs are somewhat depressing, I also find it a little
humorous in a weird way that a lot of tech companies have layoffs
fairly often, and then hire people later for other projects. Companies always like to have new & different projects to work on so they can
stay in business, but rather than keep employees, they tend to have layoffs and hire different people instead.

Contractors are cheaper, and aren't laid off, you just don't extend
their contract. I've worked in some environments that were
project-heavy and they people were used to having their contracts end,
go do something else, then come back in 6 months to work on a new
project, same teams, same desk.

My worst layoff story - I worked at Macromedia back in the 90s and left
in 1997. They started a move from full-spectrum multimedia authoring
tools to All Internet, All the Time. I was there when they bought the
company that became Flash, that was the beginning of the change.

When I was there, we had 400 employees and a normal organizational
structure. A new CEO brought in duplicate executives (imagine having a
VP of sales AND a VP of revenues) until the redundant executives left.

The company ballooned to 1800 employees, then when the .com bubble
burst, they began massive layoffs. The company dropped to 800
employees, 80 of which were VP level. One Tenth of the company was a
VP!

Layoffs for thee but not for me, indeed.



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