Amazon has shut down an internal company leaderboard which ranked employees based on how much they used AI tools at work.

  • TheFogan@programming.dev
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    162
    ·
    15 hours ago

    Whole concept of “how much AI you used”, is so flipping stupid of a metric I can’t even wrap my head around. I mean even if we assume it’s their own AI they are using… that’s their power etc… That’s like a leaderboard for most gas used up, or miles driven by your truck drivers.

    • Kissaki@feddit.org
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      7
      ·
      6 hours ago

      It only makes sense if

      • you want to drive up adoption because
        • you’re confident in usefulness already
        • want to find out about usefulness and need the userbase and usage for it
      • you have ulterior motives to push for AI adoption

      I can imagine leadership - disconnected from real work and any practical AI use experience - being misinformed and misguided into believing marketing and hype-cycle about gains. It also doesn’t seem implausible that leadership wants to drive up adoption to quickly gain feedback and results about usefulness and gains/loss.

      In good faith, it requires a certain mindset (no care about the waste or potential loss or risk) and distance from practice. Not implausible, though, in my eyes.

      • iocase@lemmy.zip
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        2
        ·
        3 hours ago

        personally oversaw a 300% increase in lines of code committed. 40% reduction in delays and 60% reduction in feature implementation design cycles. As a result, increased company revenue by 30%

        This is all the explanation you need on why they’re doing this bone headed shit. It’s not their problem in a few quarters when they jump ship after padding their resume on the company’s dime.

    • wiccan2@thelemmy.club
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      81
      ·
      14 hours ago

      It’s the old lines of code metric style of thinking.

      The people in charge only know line go up means better and bigger number is better.

      Its only when things go wrong and someone ELI5 for them that they listen. And even then it’ll wear off in a week and they’ll be on to their next make the number bigger obsession.

      • prime_number_314159@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        3
        ·
        1 hour ago

        I’ve had to explain this to more executives than I wish to remember. Computer code is a recipe, not a cake. When you see a recipe that’s super long, and requires two kitchens worth of bakeware and tools, you probably think it’s a bad recipe. Short, elegant, easy to follow recipes with a little note in the margin from your grandmother about what to do when the dough is too sticky are the best recipes.

        Unfortunately, one learned the exact wrong lesson from this, and started measuring lower lines of code produced as better… Which worked for a while, but lead to a lot of weirdness around new features for no particular reason.

    • jordanlund@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      48
      arrow-down
      2
      ·
      14 hours ago

      Nobody is asking the question “If you have to use AI that much, doesn’t that mean you aren’t very good at your job? 🤔”

    • CosmoNova@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      11
      ·
      13 hours ago

      Right? How do you even cheat on a ruleset this dumb? You don‘t. It was a stupid contest from the start.

      • GalacticSushi@piefed.blahaj.zone
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        5
        ·
        6 hours ago

        If they’re ranking you based on AI usage, they’re going to use that when they make decisions about raises and promotions. It may be a stupid contest but the employees are part of it whether they like it or not.

        You can bet your ass I’d be trying to pad my numbers.

        • CovertOperative@piefed.zip
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          1
          ·
          5 hours ago

          If they’re ranking you based on AI usage, they’re going to use that when they make decisions about raises and promotions.

          By not promoting the people on top of the ranking who can’t do things without AI and waste a lot of resources, right?

          …right?

    • GreenCrunch@piefed.blahaj.zone
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      3
      arrow-down
      9
      ·
      11 hours ago

      I mean miles driven is at least proportional to amount of useful work, more miles is more distance they’ve transported cargo. The AI usage leaderboard is useless.

      • TheFogan@programming.dev
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        13
        ·
        edit-2
        6 hours ago

        Only if you assume that all miles are correctly headed towards the destination. 2 drivers are given the same 3 places to deliver packages to.

        one drives 2000 miles, the other 50.

        Admitted though now that I actually think about it, I guess we already have that level of stupid assumptions. After all the normal system of pay for many jobs is by the hour. Which I suppose has all the same flaws.