This is likely why there is a lot of push from the top. They have already committed the money now having to justify it.
As someone who has been in senior engineering management, it's helpful to understand the real reason, and this is definitely not it.
First, these AI subscriptions are usually month-to-month, and these days with the AI landscape changing so quickly, most companies would be reluctant to lock in a longer term even if there were a discount. So it's probably not hard to quickly cancel AI spend for SaaS products.
Second, the vast majority of companies understand sunk cost fallacy. If they truly believed AI wouldn't be a net benefit, they wouldn't force people to use it just because they already paid for it. Salaries for engineers are a hell of a lot more than their AI costs.
The main reason for the push from the top is probably because they believe companies that don't adopt AI strategies now and ensure their programmers are familiar with AI toolsets will be at a competitive disadvantage. Note they may even believe that today's AI systems may not be much of a net benefit, but they probably see the state of the art advancing quickly so that companies who take a wait-and-see approach will be late to the game when AI is a substantial productivity enhancer.
I'm not at all saying you have to buy into this "FOMO rationale", but just saying "they already paid the money so that's why they want us to use it" feels like a bad excuse and just broadcasts a lack of understanding of how the vast majority of businesses work.
I’m assuming you meant “sunk” not “suck”. Not familiar with the suck fallacy.
There was no need to post this.
> is probably because
I don't mean to be contrary, but these statements stand in opposition, so I'm not sure why you are so confidently weighing in on this.
Also, while I'm sure you've "been in senior engineering management", it doesn't seem like you've been in an organization that doesn't do engineering as it's product offering. I think this article is addressing the 99% of companies that have some amount of engineers, but does not do engineering. That is to say: "My company does shoes. My senior leadership knows how to do shoes. I don't care about my engineering prowess, we do shoes. If someone says I can spend less on the thing that isn't my business (engineering) then yes, I want to do that."
>> is probably because
> I don't mean to be contrary, but these statements stand in opposition
No, they don't. It's perfectly consistent to say one reason is certainly wrong without saying another much more likely reason is definitely right.
Yes, this is the correct answer.
> ensure their programmers are familiar with AI toolsets will be at a competitive disadvantage
But more importantly, this is completely inconsistent with how banks approach any other programming tool or how they approach lifelong learning. They are 100% comfortable with people not learning on the job in just about any other situation.
Both when the money has been actually committed and when it’s usage based.
I have found that companies are rarely rational and will not “leave money on the table”
This makes no sense for coding subscriptions. Just how far behind can you be in skills by taking a wait and see position?
After all, it's not like this specific product needs more than a single day for the user to get up to speed.
And I say this as someone who didn't make the transition after 25 years as a software engineer. While I get a lot of value out of AI, I felt it largely changed my job from "mostly author" to "mostly editor", and I just didn't enjoy it nearly as much, so I got out of software altogether and went to violin making school.
This doesn't make a huge amount of sense, because the stuff is changing so quickly anyway. It's far from clear that, in the hypothetical future where this stuff is net-useful in five years, experience with _today's_ tools will be of any real use at all.