Ask HN: How to deal with AI "true believer" leadership at work

Interested to know what has worked and what hasn’t. How can you stay sane and not burned out by all the “gentle encouragements” to use AI?

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spacedcowboy 21 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Well, you could try using AI. Seriously.

I’m pretty sure that the alternatives are ostracisation or leaving the company. Leaders set company policy, you’re not going to have a good time fighting something this fundamental. Just my 2p.

Plus, maybe if you try it, you won’t be so scared of it, it’s not in a state yet where it doesn’t need a lot of guidance from real engineers

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microflash 20 hours ago | parent [-]

I’m not necessarily confrontational about AI adoption. I’m more interested in situations where leadership basically sets you to fail: unrealistic velocity expectation, too much context switching, code sprawl, PR floods, and so on.

	▲	pluc 3 hours ago \| parent \| next [-]
		If they set you up to fail, just fail. A moderately good leader will pick up on constant failures as bad expectations.
	▲	AnimalMuppet 12 hours ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		Leadership that sets you up to fail is bad leadership. If they weren't true believers in AI, they'd be true believers in the management fad du jour, and would be setting you up to fail by shoving that down your throat. My approach was usually to start looking - not frantically, but with some sustained effort. If they persist, then it's increasingly going to be a bad place to work, and I can usually find a better place.

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thiago_fm 8 minutes ago | parent | prev [-]

Just go with the flow, leadership doesn't know the limitations and by using it and and causing incidents or pushing lots of slop, they will find out.

They are the leaders, you are the employee and the follower.

And honestly, AI is so fucking good, for me it's surprising the fact that you are so behind in adoption and questioning it.

Nobody is writing code anymore.

Companies now need to figure out how to actually structure work and teams based on the fact they can build anything very quickly.

As harsh as it sounds, I loved writing code and configuring my VIM editor, but our old way of working is absolutely over. You have to adapt to it or they have no reason to keep you.