Snowflake lays off documentation staff after they train AI replacement(threadreaderapp.com)
21 pointsby cedporter5 hours ago4 comments
  • conartist64 hours ago
    Sounds like a company digging its own grave by forcing its employees to dig their own graves
    • add-sub-mul-div3 hours ago
      It sounds like a company that will profit more by saving money and giving their customers a worse product, and they don't have to worry about the consequences of that because every other company is doing it too.
      • conartist63 hours ago
        Yes, but what if some companies don't do it and instead make better products. Do we think that's impossible? Because with so many companies focused on making worse products more cheaply, it seems like it should be easier than ever to win the game by making good products...
        • AndrewKemendoan hour ago
          Consumers have voted over and over and over and they are very clear: The vast majority will choose cheap vs good

          Commodity products win in the long term and “better” products that are more expensive will go out of business

          • disgruntledphd2an hour ago
            > Consumers have voted over and over and over and they are very clear: The vast majority will choose cheap vs good

            Snowflake customers have definitely not made this choice, as Snowflake is good but very, very expensive. They're basically the Oracle of cloud.

            • AndrewKemendoan hour ago
              Isn’t Oracle the oracle of cloud?

              And this still fits, if snowflake is feeling pressure from lower cost entrants or demand from investors for more profit then it would track

              I don’t necessarily disagree that it’s a risk but people assume that companies optimize for product stickiness but in fact they don’t, most companies optimize for investor relationships

  • ivraatiems4 hours ago
    I'm sure this will work out well and in no way impact the quality of their product.
  • AndrewKemendoan hour ago
    The brutal part: they made the senior writers spend their final 6 weeks "knowledge transferring" to the AI system

    I’ve said this for decades: The future is transfer learning from humans to machines until the point where bootstrapping new behaviors doesn’t need a human

    • bombashellan hour ago
      Interesting perspective, I honestly had not thought about it this way. I work on problems around knowledge transfer but always from the angle of people leaving or transitioning roles where the goal is to preserve knowledge so it does not get lost. Framing it as people effectively training the system that might replace them feels pretty brutal.
  • swingboy4 hours ago
    More disenfranchised employees to be soldiers in the Butlerian Jihad.