Ever since the recent AI fad, more and more of these types of people have come out of the woodwork.
Every random unknown business now truly believes that they have built something novel and revolutionary. They have the audacity to see difficult things being invented by geniuses and think "wow, I can do it too". They think that they must succeed at all costs; their employees must work unlimited hours and they must use unlimited resources because nothing is more important.
It's kind of sad to watch, knowing that in a couple years nobody will care and their company will have produced nothing of value, while the negative consequences of their "progress at all costs" will still be felt by individuals and the world.
To borrow from the old saying, he may not believe in work-life balance, but work-life balance believes in him. He isn't building a "performance culture", he's gambling (whether he realizes it or not) on a liquidity event or reaching some sort of competitive moat before employee burnout, turnover, and technical debt overwhelms the company.
this is such a shortsighted and myopic view. And wrong, it's also wrong. We should stop giving people like this a voice because they are the dumbest people to be listening to. Maybe this makes sense in cultures were 80 hour work weeks is a norm, but it's not the way things are done in the west and with good history.
>So, I ask, why, exactly, is Cognition worth $10 billion? And why did it have to raise $300 million after raising “hundreds of millions” according to Bloomberg in March? Where is the money going? It doesn’t seem to have great revenue, Carl Brown of the Internet of Bugs revealed it faked the demo of “Devin the AI powered software developer” last year, and Devin doesn’t even rank on SWE-benchmark, the industry standard for model efficacy at coding tasks.
I will not forget Argo AI trying to convince me that if I stayed with the company for four years, by then my equity would be worth an estimated $700,000. I made it just over a year in stressful, high-pressure environment, with a toxic manager; I knew it was time for my weekly one-on-one because my heart rate monitor would start giving me warnings. He loved to humiliate individual employees in our scrum team meetings; at one point I called him out on it and demanded that he apologize for his unprofessional bullying. He actually did, but our working relationship was never good after that.
Anyway, my enormous efforts and long hours got me a "meets expectations" review. The company imploded just after I completed that first year, and so my equity was worth nothing. Good times!
Oh ffs, these guys again?! See "Devin demo". It's very disappointing this person continues to be given a platform to spout heinous bullshit.
FWIW, I don't believe in work/life balance over short intervals as I feel intensity beats consistency, BUT work/life balance over long (months) intervals is absolutely critical to being a healthy decent human.
One also must consider timing wrt perceived opportunity costs. It's fine for folks with real skin in the game to make these sorts of decisions for themselves, but it's amoral to force them upon others who are playing the same game for vastly different stakes.
17 comments
[ 2.5 ms ] story [ 30.4 ms ] threadCan he be replaced with AI, and hire 2x the number of people with his salary?
Both the buyout and the 80 hour weeks are stupid.
Every random unknown business now truly believes that they have built something novel and revolutionary. They have the audacity to see difficult things being invented by geniuses and think "wow, I can do it too". They think that they must succeed at all costs; their employees must work unlimited hours and they must use unlimited resources because nothing is more important.
It's kind of sad to watch, knowing that in a couple years nobody will care and their company will have produced nothing of value, while the negative consequences of their "progress at all costs" will still be felt by individuals and the world.
Obiously it won't happen :)
This type of work is only if you own the business yourself since you're the one who profits.
>So, I ask, why, exactly, is Cognition worth $10 billion? And why did it have to raise $300 million after raising “hundreds of millions” according to Bloomberg in March? Where is the money going? It doesn’t seem to have great revenue, Carl Brown of the Internet of Bugs revealed it faked the demo of “Devin the AI powered software developer” last year, and Devin doesn’t even rank on SWE-benchmark, the industry standard for model efficacy at coding tasks.
[1] https://www.wheresyoured.at/ai-is-a-money-trap/
Anyway, my enormous efforts and long hours got me a "meets expectations" review. The company imploded just after I completed that first year, and so my equity was worth nothing. Good times!
FWIW, I don't believe in work/life balance over short intervals as I feel intensity beats consistency, BUT work/life balance over long (months) intervals is absolutely critical to being a healthy decent human.
One also must consider timing wrt perceived opportunity costs. It's fine for folks with real skin in the game to make these sorts of decisions for themselves, but it's amoral to force them upon others who are playing the same game for vastly different stakes.