> Yeah, "Engineers don't try" is a frustrating statement. We've all tried generative AI, and there's not that much to it — you put text in, you get text back out.
"Engineers don't try" doesn’t refer to trying out AI in the article. It refers to trying to do something constructive and useful outside the usual corporate churn, but having given up on that because management is single-mindedly focused on AI.
One way to summarize the article is: The AI engineers are doing hype-driven AI stuff, and the other engineers have lost all ambition for anything else, because AI is the only thing that gets attention and helps the career; and they hate it.
ZIRP is gone, and so are the Good Times when any idiot could get money with nothing but a PowerPoint slide deck and some charisma.
That doesn't mean investors have gotten smarter, they've just become more risk averse. Now, unless there's already a bandwagon in motion, it's hard as hell to get funded (compared to before at least).
“Lost all ambition for anything else” is a funny way for the article to frame “hate being forced to run on the hampster wheel on ai, because an exec with the power to fire everyone is foaming at the mouth about ai and seemingly needs everyone to use it”
To add another layer to it, the reason execs are foaming at the mouth is because they are hoping to fire the as many people as possible. Including those who implemented whatever AI solution in the first place.
"Engineers don't try" doesn’t refer to trying out AI in the article. It refers to trying to do something constructive and useful outside the usual corporate churn, but having given up on that because management is single-mindedly focused on AI.
One way to summarize the article is: The AI engineers are doing hype-driven AI stuff, and the other engineers have lost all ambition for anything else, because AI is the only thing that gets attention and helps the career; and they hate it.