Management is forcing us to use AI

How would management know if you're using AI or not, and what you're using it for, other than the cost?

I have found most bosses to be pretty damn dense, mostly interested in making sparkling reports to THEIR boss. In fact, I rated them by how fast they stole my ideas. The ideas weren't so brilliant, so I was glad to let go of them, as long as they got a life somehow.

The sharpest bosses (rare) would steal them with a week. One took about 6 years, and got them wrong. A couple of us were and are real open source junkies and argued that instead of screen-scraping various Learning Management Systems, (LMS) all of which had proprietary databases to lock school systems into their software with no possibility of export, that we give away a database schema for all schools use open source, and sell the software around it in a competitive marketplace.

It's called giving customers choice. Nahhhhhhhhhh.

He later scrawled a big brainstorm map on a board, mentioning the open source LMS, Sakai [0] Showing his deep understanding of open source, he spelled it "Sockeye".

I read tech magazines and one issue of "Fast Company" (2005) was on my desktop. When the boss entered the office for who knows what, he couldn't get his eyes off the magazine cover. It was a picture of Mr. Burns from The Simpsons with a feature article "Is Your Boss a Psychopath?" [1] I would have gotten the magazine without it, but (surprise) he aced the quiz inside.

I'm not making this up. [2] Image hosted at x02.me

Conclusion: Try to outsmart management. It's easy. I did it many times. I'll share some later on.

Cheers.

[0] https://www.sakailms.org

[1] https://web.archive.org/web/20050709032131/http://www.fastco...

[2] https://x02.me/i/sCWcAj.jpg

it is all over not just us

They want AI? Give a model your old computer and have it do your work from A to Z. It’ll free you to do what you want. Salary probably already covers the model’s plan.

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dude can you believe this crap? i’ve been hand-writing manuscripts this whole time and now my boss wants me to… use a printing press?! like what the hell????

me and the other monks aren’t gonna do this crap, we’ve been doing it our way forever and there’s NO WAY those things can do it as good as i can

Well, why wouldn't you use it, not for coding, but for reviews and research?

Just a case of management not knowing the history of tech ROI or current studies on AI project ROI such as the one from MIT. Thinking off the top of my head... I could see AI filling some of the administrative roles of Surgical Team teams mentioned the classic book, "The Mythical Man-Month" by Fred Brooks.

On a positive note: The AIs make great super search and within certain domains are effective. On a negative note: Often when I see AI used by others, I wonder if these people have heard of code libraries. :)

A lot of what is going on is FOMO...

AI Serenity Prayer "God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot use AI on, Courage to use AI on the things I can, And wisdom to know the difference."

They’re correct, albeit likely misinformed in their decision making.

Industry is changing. You either have to adapt to keep with the times or find a job where AI isn’t necessary - which practically speaking will become a rarity over time.

It started at the end of 2025, nothing new to me. Either adapt to it, work more on finding interesting features and use cases, and introduce them. Don't be a coder; be an engineer OR/ leave; It's a hard decision :)!

Modern commercial airline pilots manually fly less than 10 percent of a typical flight, using automated systems for the vast majority of the journey.

I understand and I agree with the side effects of too much AI use but this is inevitable. I think it's better to balance, use AI for work and at the same time, keep learning, maintain habit of writing logic to protect your brain.

lol found the self-proclaimed 10x engineer

lmfao

Lean into it. Automate your code reviews. Automate ticket refinement. Automatically draft PRs with a demo video of every acceptance criteria. Automate status updates to Slack.

Using AI doesn't mean you're making yourself dumber. It comes down to how you use it.

It’s sad, but there’s no getting around it. Besides, I don’t think using AI in itself makes you less intelligent.

This is happening at several (typically big tech) companies. Not all companies and orgs are doing this, however. I'm very firm when I say that any type of "forced AI" usage is a huge mistake and it's also a slap in the face to the employees whom were presumably hired for their skill and talent and should be trusted to make such tool decisions, especially engineering and technical teams, to not trust their judgement on when AI should and should not be used. This is the first time in my career where I've seen leaders who are too high to understand what their folks in the trenches are doing, try to force them to use a tool. The architects and building engineers have a very interesting job, but telling the construction workers which hammer or heavy equipment to use is not and should not be one of them, for a reason. In my experience, engineers will use AI when they need to use AI, but at a handful of companies, AI is being pushed as a solution to problems where it doesn't even make sense, then the companies are backpedaling afterwards because their token costs are through the roof... So they get their employees hooked on using as much AI as possible, then have to come back and say "actually, we need to cap you at $XXX per month." So all of the AI automation that was developed with no limit now can hardly operate effectively and needs to be re-designed... It's completely absurd.

Start looking for a different job, or better yet, build your own business.