Comment by kombookcha
8 days ago
The other day I had to read a C-suite guy share how he had an epiphany that spending more tokens did not linearly align with more useful features being output by the teams. He was describing it as this breakthrough moment for him, as if it wasn't glaringly obvious that making the KPI "spend more tokens" would result in inefficient token spending, not massive value for the customer.
It's baffling how these people have entirely shut their ears to all the obvious warnings about this, and are now congratulating themselves for their slightly less psychotic outlook and pivoting to blaming the workers for inefficient usage, after specifically forcing them to tokenmaxx.
>It's baffling how these people have entirely shut their ears to all the obvious warnings about this, and are now congratulating themselves for their slightly less psychotic outlook and pivoting to blaming the workers for inefficient usage, after specifically forcing them to tokenmaxx.
It's not baffling. They are a caste, wholly insulated from the consequences of their own actions.
Almost every company is run in a basic dictatorial way. We almost never discuss it, when there is a wide corpus of political Science analysing the pros and cons of governance models that certainly puts it at the bottom.
>They are a caste
Sometimes literally.
(Meaning that it's not just business school indoctrination, but a dynamic they've been raised to expect and uphold. Fixing it isn't simply about convincing them of the folly of their approach, because you're attacking their personal sense of self in doing so. Which, I'm to understand, is a no-no, professionally.)
If it was so clearly ineffective, why does it get challenged more often and replaced? Existing corporations aren't likely to change, but new startups and work owned coops exist, so why don't they compete?
Maybe ranking it on a scale of best to worse is too simplistic a view, and there are reasons this develops. Maybe it is the best option when there is a good leader, thus such structures dominate, much as a government ran by philosopher kings are better. But this only lasts as long as a wise rule is in charge, and it reverts back to a norm, and eventually, due to pure time and chance, enough bad leaders come on board that slowly dismantle the giants, but this happens at a time scale we don't particularly notice due to how much inertia large corporations can have (before we even get into the less pleasant issues like regulatory capture).
>If it was so clearly ineffective, why does it get challenged more often and replaced?
I supposed you meant "why doesn't it get challenged"?
Well, look at how long it took for a democratic/Republican system to appear and survive. The French 1st Republic was immediately at war with all of Europe (I am not talking of Napoleon at all here, it was before that, when the French King was executed).
Nowadays, good luck getting any kind of financing with an "alternative" governance model. The banks and investors will either refuse or edge by pushing higher return rates on you. The whole system is conservative.
The adage "democracy is the worst system, apart from all others" only becomes true long-term. There are plenty of short-lived democracies back to antiquity, in the middle of the middle ages, during the Renaissance, the XIXth century... All stamped down by "more efficient" dictatorial empires... That aren't here anymore. You can expect the same in the even more cutthroat corporate environment, where fitting the system buys you leverage.
And don't get me stated on startups: most of them seek only an exist strategy. Very few challenge any existing behemoth. They are basically externalized R&D.
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Dictatorial systems are most assuredly good at one thing: consolidating wealth and power.
I should have perhaps said "galling" instead.
After ejecting anyone who spoke out or were even publicly hesistant against the hard swerve into "just do maximal amounts of AI stuff above all else", they're now surprised to find that everyone that remains is dutifully excited about the emperor's new clothes, and yet he remains mysteriously exposed to the breeze.
> Almost every company is run in a basic dictatorial way. We almost never discuss it, when there is a wide corpus of political Science analysing the pros and cons of governance models that certainly puts it at the bottom.
Is it not wild that in the Freedom Loving West, we all spend the vast majority of our time as adults living inside tiny totalitarian states?
I think this persists largely because the people atop those tiny states are also the ones behind most of our media apparatus, so they can make it look and feel pretty normal. But that may be a little tinfoil hat of me.
Is it too late to scratch your final sentence?
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This entire narrative is just made up. Managers know not to reward spending. At best you had some tracking to see who was using it and encouragement for those that aren't to start.
The person I am referring to is the CEO of Uber. He called this realization that higher token usage did not proportionally increase useful consumer features a "head-exploding moment". That's in his own words.
If you're thinking "that's bad management" then we are in complete agreement. He should have been able to predict this in advance, but evidently he either did not, or is pretending he did not.
The interview is linked in this article: https://www.businessinsider.com/uber-coo-andrew-macdonald-ai...
I think this is the part that kills me. This is what many grunts, including myself said from the start. More PRs and more code does not equal value for the customer.
You get what you measure.
Yes, I think in that way it is dumb. But in another way I think it could be justified as a way to try and blaze some new trails and see what's possible by having users not worry about cost in the beginning.
Sure most token burning ends up being a waste but some ideas pan out?
Not disagreeing but it's another way of looking at it IMO