It’s a bit like returning to the office. If it’s such an obvious no-brainer performance booster with improved communication and collaboration, they wouldn’t have to force people to do it. Teams would chomp at the bit to do it to boost their own performance.
If the AI tools actually worked how they are marketed I’d use them because that’s less work for me to have to do. But they don’t.
I agree with the second paragraph. I seek out ways to be more productive, whether you call that work ethic or laziness. I wish AI or heck any tool could 100x me. But somehow AI is the first tool that's ever been forced on me by an MBA
Similarly, many people don't like learning new tools, and don't like changing their behavior. Especially if it's something they enjoy vs something good for the business. It's 2025 and people will have adamantly used vim for 25 years; some people aren't likely to change what they're comfortable with. Regardless of what is good for productivity (which vim may or may not be), developers are picky about their tools, and its hard to convince people to try new things.
I think the assumption that people will choose to boost their own productivity is questionable, especially in the face of their own comfort or enjoyment, and if "the business" must wait for them to explore and discover it on their own time, they risk forgoing profits associated with that employee's work.
Your argument also hinges on "business" knowing what is good for productivity, which they generally don't. Admittedly, neither do many programmers, else we'd have a lot less k8s.
I think it could have been left to individual small teams or smaller units. After some time it would have been obvious that teams who went to the office delivered better results. If the benefits are really that obvious as they are usually touted, it shouldn't take long (a year or two).
> It's 2025 and people will have adamantly used vim for 25 years
But if they are productive and delivers results they can still use vim. I can see controlling the APIs used, the programming languages allowed etc. But if they are productive with vim, let them use vim.
> I think the assumption that people will choose to boost their own productivity is questionable, especially in the face of their own comfort or enjoyment,
That's fair. I guess it depends on the types of people. I had in mind motivated people who would be glad to be more productive and deliver results quicker. Yeah, if people are not like that and are trying to do the least amount of work and just coast then it's a bigger issue. Office or not office, AI or no AI probably won't shift the needle by much.
With LLMs, I'm not so sure. Seems more like an individual activity to me. Are some people resistant to new tools, sure. But a good tool does tend to diffuse naturally. I think LLMs are diffusing naturally too, but maybe not as fast as the AI-boosters would like.
The mistake these managers are making is assuming it's a good tool for work that they're not qualified to assess.
Fair point! It was just the first recent example of "it's obviously better but we'll force you to do it" I could think of.
In case of RTO I think it should have been left to individual small team. If one is so clearly it would have been clear in a few years time which teams work better and which didn't and how it depended on them being in the same office.
And even if it was, that's also assuming this benefit would be superior to the benefit of remote work for the individual.
This assumes teams care more about performance than comfort and convenience. Many teams care about both. And which one wins out can vary. It can even change over time.
The question is how to incentivize what, and what methods are the most effective at doing that for a particular team at a given point in time.
Well good reason to let each team pick. Teams that care about performance will eventually do a lot better. The claim with these mandate is that the benefits are "obvious". So if it's very obvious they should be visible fairly quickly.