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Comment by xvxvx | Hacker News Reader

The linked Reddit thread is quite hilarious. Earlier this year my company hired a new CEO and his first company address was solely to tell everyone to use AI or they’d lose their job and become unemployable in general.

I knew right there and then that he was a moron. There’s something about American companies where the best and brightest rarely show up in senior management. It seems to be populated by some weird class of golf playing NPCs that figured out how to game the system and bring all their cult members along for the ride.

My own company spent 2+ years enforcing extreme austerity, to the point of firing the very people who built everything, only to run wild with AI spending and seeing little results from it.

Surely, out there in the wilderness, there is a company staffed by intelligent, skilled people. Right?

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Intelligent skilled people had been ghosted for so long that they don't bother applying anymore. Now the economy is just tree shaking, watching who will fall down. Personally I'm still irritated by the blockchain bubble and haven't even noticed when AI made me unemployable. Once in an airplane I overheard two kids from two different countries. One's job was to figure out where AI can be used, other's job was to figure out where AI can be used.

> Surely, out there in the wilderness, there is a company staffed by intelligent, skilled people. Right?

of course there are but you don't hear about them.

For the long time this worked oh right: get to know right people, wipe some asses, lick some other, play some golf and be sociopath. But right now it does not cut it anymore. You have to be either smart, skilled or know your business and IT somewhat to now how and to what extent or if at all you can use so called AI in your company. People like you described are out of their league entirely.

I beg to differ. Look at our overlords today.

Musk. Zuck. Bezos.

All three are buddying up with government officials, all three routinely embarrass themselves when they try to talk shop.

Only difference is they're much more socially awkward and less superficially charming than the stereotype would suggest.

I was talking more about middle management. Some smaller CEOs like the parent comment suggested. Those people, as you said, are not our overloads, because they lack intelligence and technical skills.

If you genuinely refuse to use AI for any part of your job in 2026 you are the moron.

Of course, you can go too far in the other direction but that's not what your comment is describing.

Found one of the cult members.

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