I don't touch LLMs for any purpose (when I can help it, they are frequently shoved in your face regardless); and up until recently was doing just fine. I was fired for this stance, not for performance reasons (officially stated that there was no concern with my output), only for political reasons (insubordination, refusing to use LLMs to do my work for me).
I have been seeing fewer and fewer job ads that ask for/require LLM use over the last couple of months, so I feel like the tide may be turning in our direction; but I am starting to feel the stress. This is the first time I have considered that I might have been "wrong" taking an absolutist stance against LLMs, though I think that's just the unemployment wearing me down.
As a fellow contrarian, I applaud your resolve. I was constructively dismissed for refusing the COVID vax a few years ago. But I think in this case where there was no concern about output, it would be better for you to just pretend to use it. Then you would soon become the most/only knowledgeable dev, be able to leverage that into promotions or new jobs, etc. I know it's distasteful to pretend to believe what you don't believe, but this might be a serious enough matter to justify it.
I went through interviews recently; I told everyone what I think they wanted to hear about my AI usage based on their demeanor; I got a new job; I pretend to use AI at this new job. Either we're right and AI mandates get walked back, so we're in a good spot, or we're wrong and we need to hold onto our jobs for dear life.
Being unwilling to change or changing too much are both equally going to get you fired. I’m the later so I feel your pain. At companies you have to turn your brain off and bahhh with the sheep.
“When you're in Hollywood and you're a comedian, everybody wants you to do other things. All right, you're a stand-up comedian, can you write us a script? That's not fair. That's like if I worked hard to become a cook, and I'm a really good cook, they'd say, ‘OK, you're a cook. Can you farm?’” —Mitch Hedberg
LLM-assisted coding is basically an entirely different career from software engineering, and not everyone wants to do that. (Ditto here; fortunately, I’m self-employed.)
I believe that "have to" is a little strong, no? I think my case was made just as well by remaining one of the only people in my team able to critically analyse changes and plan complex work after three years of the rest of my company diving headlong into the vibe-pit.
Yeah, you don't HAVE TO do anything your employer tells you to do. And they don't HAVE TO keep you employed. That's the deal.
by remaining one of the only people in my team able to critically analyse changes and plan complex work
Your employer doesn't actually care about this. They care about whether or not you make them more money than you cost them. Obviously that's hard to accurately measure, but it's not hard for an employer to recognize that an employee being unwilling to do what they're being directed to do is probably not the best bet for someone to keep around.
> Yeah, you don't HAVE TO do anything your employer tells you to do. And they don't HAVE TO keep you employed.
Depends where you are. In the UK at least they can't force a material change of role on you or sake you for refusing. They can make you redundant, of course, which amounts to the same thing if you are relatively new to the industry.
> Your employer doesn't actually care about this.
That is true.
> They care about whether or not you make them more money than you cost them.
Unless there is a miraculous improvement in efficiency very soon, that balance is going to change a bit at least temporarily as all the investment capital that the industry is currently haemorrhaging starts to get called in (or it turns out that half the money being passed around in circles no longer really exists as soon as things turn as the value is being propped up by people believing in the value).
If that doesn't happen and the hype continues then dev work is set to be commoditised as much as hospitality work, and we'll end up screwed whether we've played the game or not. It is some way into happening for designers and writers, the bottom has fallen out of employment in accountancy and other areas already too, dev work in various forms is very much next if things continue on the current path.
> what they're being directed to do
I'm not being directed to go AI, yet. That is definitely something that is blocking the light from the other end of the tunnel, but how long that tunnel is has yet to be determined.
> probably not the best bet for someone to keep around
If being kept around means a future sitting in a room alone with nothing for company but Claude/similar, I'd much rather not thanks.
My “coherent case” is that they'll take away the few bits of the job that I still like. Remote working has an undesirable effect on my mental health, and I have no choice about that, I'm not using tools I have principals against on top of that, and I've avoided managing for many years so the “it is like having your own team” thing people bang on about is the exact opposite of appealing to me. I'd rather leave the industry completely if push comes to shove, which I'm pretty sure it eventually will. I'm financially more lucky than many (mortgage paid, no partner or offspring, some savings) so I can survive on the pay cut that this will very likely involve¹. They can't sack me - it is a material change of role³ and under UK law you can't be forced in to a materially different role nor sacked for refusing⁵. I'm going to keep doing the job I signed up for until I can't (either I get sick of it, or they get sick of me!), then I'll move on. Of course when it comes time to pay the piper because all that investment capital (ref https://isaiprofitable.com/) can't just be written off forever, maybe there will still be room for a few of us Luddites⁶ :)
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[1] Though if things go the way of the hype, there will either be many fewer dev jobs, or most of them will become lower paid, or both - so long term that might not be as big a deal if you aren't one of the top people²
[2] Which I know I aren't!
[3] if it isn't, then the claims that it is revolutionary are false
[5] I could be made redundant by the same distinction, by being given the choice of redundancy or moving to an AI-based role, but I can live with that
[6] Especially those of use who have been around long enough to have a pile of experience/knowledge, generally or for a specific industry.
I'm in a similar position. Our CEO who went full AI psychosis right when OpenClaw first came out. Directive from the top was to "use AI for everything" with no real regard for if it helped productivity, service delivery, or quality of output. That was very quickly reigned back in when they saw the bill. Multiple people using tens of thousands of dollars of tokens in a week, with no demonstrable value.
I'm in two minds on how best to handle these kind of, "but you have to use an LLM" issues. In my heart I'm like you; they hired me to do a job. If I'm doing the job at the rate and quality expected, why should they care if I use an LLM, my brain, or randomly throw mud at the keyboard until something magically works? The practical side of me says, "I like a roof over my head" so if they mandate I have to use an LLM then I'll do it as long as they take responsibility for any negative impact from that decision.
I mean, even outside the context, you ought to be fired for not doing what your employer is telling you to do. Being fired for insubordination is not really "political"; it's the epitome of a performance reason. You're literally refusing to do your job. Your performance in this regard is as bad as it can get.
A political reason would be something like, your manager was threatened by your capabilities and set you up for unfair evaluations, etc. But you just straight up told the people paying you that you won't do what they're paying you to do lol. DEFINITELY make sure you work on your spin on this for future interviews, because knowing you were confidentially disobeying direct instructions is an immediate "pass" for me and anyone with any sense who may be interviewing you.
This is the first time I have considered that I might have been "wrong" taking an absolutist stance against LLMs, though I think that's just the unemployment wearing me down.
If you think LLMs are a fad that will just go away if you wait long enough, then you need to just remove yourself from this industry. They're not going away, for better or worse, and this kind of work is fundamentally changing. To be direct: you ARE wrong in taking this absolutist stance. It's profoundly naive to have done what you've done, and I hope, for your own sake, that you plan for your future accordingly.
If you have some moral issue with LLMs, then you probably need to just plan on pivoting your career. But if you're just stuck on some weird sense of pride for your "craft," then you need to take a step back and really try to appreciate what the reality of your career means to the people willing to pay you for work.
What a company considers to be "performance" or "insubordination" can certainly still be about office politics. Not that I'm saying this is necessarily the case here, but they're not a hard either/or.
For instance: 996 is a form of office politics. Return to office in general a form of office politics. Pay secrecy is a form of office politics. Some of those things become performance metrics, or evaluations of your "attitude."
"Performance" can mean "the quality of your work." It also can mean "theater." Like when you're measuring performance by token usage, or lines of code, or office attendance... or, in a case I once encountered, manual adherence to a style guide, that required two human beings to check every line of code against a set of conventions, instead of just configuring a formatting tool and being done with it.
Regarding LLMs in particular, I don't necessarily think the absolutist stance is it here, but it is a technology worker's job to know when you can and should automate things, as well as to know when it's not an effective use of resources to throw technology at something just because. I don't know parent's company or use case. I don't know if they were doing something with it that actually enhanced productivity, or just tracking tokens. I don't know if it enhanced their product, or just shoehorned AI into it for investor-driven buzzword utilization. So I'm also not an absolutist on what you're saying.
It could be that parent is too rigid, but (as much as I'm not asking for all this context either) I don't think there's enough information here to be certain about that.
If you think LLMs are a fad that will just go away if you wait long enough, then you need to just remove yourself from this industry. They're not going away, for better or worse, and this kind of work is fundamentally changing.
They don't have to "go away"; managers just have to stop requiring their usage. In a sane business they will care about output, not tokens. If OP cannot keep up his output because he refuses to use it, sure, fire him. But in my experience the good devs can still keep up. Your post is only true if AIs improve enough that no developer can possibly keep up without them. That is not today, and maybe not tomorrow.
The job is to make widgets, not to use specific tools to make widgets. When has that ever been the case before? None of my bosses ever gave a shit what editors I used, for example. Certainly not the CEOs.
You sound weirdly angry and aggressive — like in a “back away slowly” kind of way. Relax, and stop gatekeeping the industry. As strange as it may sound to you, I expect that there will always be segments of it that don’t rely on LLMs.
that's a bit harsh. the job is to solve a problem, implement a solution. as a developer i should have some leeway on how i accomplish that. be able to choose the tools that i believe are the best for the given task. there may be constraints, but using an LLM as a constraint does not make sense because the LLM affects the process but not the outcome.
I would argue the same in most situations, but let’s be honest: what matters most to most employers is their employees falling in line. There is some sense to this: it is easier to manage a bunch of people doing things more-or-less the same way, but I do ultimately agree that professionals should be treated more like professionals.
Seeing as how LLMs objectively increase performance when used correctly, I'd support the company's decision to let you go for specifically performance reasons. I'm not saying you should be all in on LLMs end to end, but there are individual processes in every workflow that can be enhanced by the tool. If you find those, you will perform better than you could without LLMs, no question.
Comments
I don't touch LLMs for any purpose (when I can help it, they are frequently shoved in your face regardless); and up until recently was doing just fine. I was fired for this stance, not for performance reasons (officially stated that there was no concern with my output), only for political reasons (insubordination, refusing to use LLMs to do my work for me).
I have been seeing fewer and fewer job ads that ask for/require LLM use over the last couple of months, so I feel like the tide may be turning in our direction; but I am starting to feel the stress. This is the first time I have considered that I might have been "wrong" taking an absolutist stance against LLMs, though I think that's just the unemployment wearing me down.
As a fellow contrarian, I applaud your resolve. I was constructively dismissed for refusing the COVID vax a few years ago. But I think in this case where there was no concern about output, it would be better for you to just pretend to use it. Then you would soon become the most/only knowledgeable dev, be able to leverage that into promotions or new jobs, etc. I know it's distasteful to pretend to believe what you don't believe, but this might be a serious enough matter to justify it.
I went through interviews recently; I told everyone what I think they wanted to hear about my AI usage based on their demeanor; I got a new job; I pretend to use AI at this new job. Either we're right and AI mandates get walked back, so we're in a good spot, or we're wrong and we need to hold onto our jobs for dear life.
Being unwilling to change or changing too much are both equally going to get you fired. I’m the later so I feel your pain. At companies you have to turn your brain off and bahhh with the sheep.
Regardless of if a new tool is useful or not, if it’s being pushed internally then embrace it.
If it’s not useful now you have authority on why. And if it’s not is useful then you are better at your job.
Not OP, but…
“When you're in Hollywood and you're a comedian, everybody wants you to do other things. All right, you're a stand-up comedian, can you write us a script? That's not fair. That's like if I worked hard to become a cook, and I'm a really good cook, they'd say, ‘OK, you're a cook. Can you farm?’” —Mitch Hedberg
LLM-assisted coding is basically an entirely different career from software engineering, and not everyone wants to do that. (Ditto here; fortunately, I’m self-employed.)
Seems to me you at least have to try using them, so you can make a coherent case why you work just as well or better without them.
I believe that "have to" is a little strong, no? I think my case was made just as well by remaining one of the only people in my team able to critically analyse changes and plan complex work after three years of the rest of my company diving headlong into the vibe-pit.
Yeah, you don't HAVE TO do anything your employer tells you to do. And they don't HAVE TO keep you employed. That's the deal.
Your employer doesn't actually care about this. They care about whether or not you make them more money than you cost them. Obviously that's hard to accurately measure, but it's not hard for an employer to recognize that an employee being unwilling to do what they're being directed to do is probably not the best bet for someone to keep around.
> Yeah, you don't HAVE TO do anything your employer tells you to do. And they don't HAVE TO keep you employed.
Depends where you are. In the UK at least they can't force a material change of role on you or sake you for refusing. They can make you redundant, of course, which amounts to the same thing if you are relatively new to the industry.
> Your employer doesn't actually care about this.
That is true.
> They care about whether or not you make them more money than you cost them.
Unless there is a miraculous improvement in efficiency very soon, that balance is going to change a bit at least temporarily as all the investment capital that the industry is currently haemorrhaging starts to get called in (or it turns out that half the money being passed around in circles no longer really exists as soon as things turn as the value is being propped up by people believing in the value).
If that doesn't happen and the hype continues then dev work is set to be commoditised as much as hospitality work, and we'll end up screwed whether we've played the game or not. It is some way into happening for designers and writers, the bottom has fallen out of employment in accountancy and other areas already too, dev work in various forms is very much next if things continue on the current path.
> what they're being directed to do
I'm not being directed to go AI, yet. That is definitely something that is blocking the light from the other end of the tunnel, but how long that tunnel is has yet to be determined.
> probably not the best bet for someone to keep around
If being kept around means a future sitting in a room alone with nothing for company but Claude/similar, I'd much rather not thanks.
My “coherent case” is that they'll take away the few bits of the job that I still like. Remote working has an undesirable effect on my mental health, and I have no choice about that, I'm not using tools I have principals against on top of that, and I've avoided managing for many years so the “it is like having your own team” thing people bang on about is the exact opposite of appealing to me. I'd rather leave the industry completely if push comes to shove, which I'm pretty sure it eventually will. I'm financially more lucky than many (mortgage paid, no partner or offspring, some savings) so I can survive on the pay cut that this will very likely involve¹. They can't sack me - it is a material change of role³ and under UK law you can't be forced in to a materially different role nor sacked for refusing⁵. I'm going to keep doing the job I signed up for until I can't (either I get sick of it, or they get sick of me!), then I'll move on. Of course when it comes time to pay the piper because all that investment capital (ref https://isaiprofitable.com/) can't just be written off forever, maybe there will still be room for a few of us Luddites⁶ :)
--------
[1] Though if things go the way of the hype, there will either be many fewer dev jobs, or most of them will become lower paid, or both - so long term that might not be as big a deal if you aren't one of the top people²
[2] Which I know I aren't!
[3] if it isn't, then the claims that it is revolutionary are false
[5] I could be made redundant by the same distinction, by being given the choice of redundancy or moving to an AI-based role, but I can live with that
[6] Especially those of use who have been around long enough to have a pile of experience/knowledge, generally or for a specific industry.
I don't think the tide has turned, it's just being assumed that you use them now.
I'm in a similar position. Our CEO who went full AI psychosis right when OpenClaw first came out. Directive from the top was to "use AI for everything" with no real regard for if it helped productivity, service delivery, or quality of output. That was very quickly reigned back in when they saw the bill. Multiple people using tens of thousands of dollars of tokens in a week, with no demonstrable value.
I'm in two minds on how best to handle these kind of, "but you have to use an LLM" issues. In my heart I'm like you; they hired me to do a job. If I'm doing the job at the rate and quality expected, why should they care if I use an LLM, my brain, or randomly throw mud at the keyboard until something magically works? The practical side of me says, "I like a roof over my head" so if they mandate I have to use an LLM then I'll do it as long as they take responsibility for any negative impact from that decision.
I mean, even outside the context, you ought to be fired for not doing what your employer is telling you to do. Being fired for insubordination is not really "political"; it's the epitome of a performance reason. You're literally refusing to do your job. Your performance in this regard is as bad as it can get.
A political reason would be something like, your manager was threatened by your capabilities and set you up for unfair evaluations, etc. But you just straight up told the people paying you that you won't do what they're paying you to do lol. DEFINITELY make sure you work on your spin on this for future interviews, because knowing you were confidentially disobeying direct instructions is an immediate "pass" for me and anyone with any sense who may be interviewing you.
If you think LLMs are a fad that will just go away if you wait long enough, then you need to just remove yourself from this industry. They're not going away, for better or worse, and this kind of work is fundamentally changing. To be direct: you ARE wrong in taking this absolutist stance. It's profoundly naive to have done what you've done, and I hope, for your own sake, that you plan for your future accordingly.
If you have some moral issue with LLMs, then you probably need to just plan on pivoting your career. But if you're just stuck on some weird sense of pride for your "craft," then you need to take a step back and really try to appreciate what the reality of your career means to the people willing to pay you for work.
What a company considers to be "performance" or "insubordination" can certainly still be about office politics. Not that I'm saying this is necessarily the case here, but they're not a hard either/or.
For instance: 996 is a form of office politics. Return to office in general a form of office politics. Pay secrecy is a form of office politics. Some of those things become performance metrics, or evaluations of your "attitude."
"Performance" can mean "the quality of your work." It also can mean "theater." Like when you're measuring performance by token usage, or lines of code, or office attendance... or, in a case I once encountered, manual adherence to a style guide, that required two human beings to check every line of code against a set of conventions, instead of just configuring a formatting tool and being done with it.
Regarding LLMs in particular, I don't necessarily think the absolutist stance is it here, but it is a technology worker's job to know when you can and should automate things, as well as to know when it's not an effective use of resources to throw technology at something just because. I don't know parent's company or use case. I don't know if they were doing something with it that actually enhanced productivity, or just tracking tokens. I don't know if it enhanced their product, or just shoehorned AI into it for investor-driven buzzword utilization. So I'm also not an absolutist on what you're saying.
It could be that parent is too rigid, but (as much as I'm not asking for all this context either) I don't think there's enough information here to be certain about that.
They don't have to "go away"; managers just have to stop requiring their usage. In a sane business they will care about output, not tokens. If OP cannot keep up his output because he refuses to use it, sure, fire him. But in my experience the good devs can still keep up. Your post is only true if AIs improve enough that no developer can possibly keep up without them. That is not today, and maybe not tomorrow.
The job is to make widgets, not to use specific tools to make widgets. When has that ever been the case before? None of my bosses ever gave a shit what editors I used, for example. Certainly not the CEOs.
You sound weirdly angry and aggressive — like in a “back away slowly” kind of way. Relax, and stop gatekeeping the industry. As strange as it may sound to you, I expect that there will always be segments of it that don’t rely on LLMs.
that's a bit harsh. the job is to solve a problem, implement a solution. as a developer i should have some leeway on how i accomplish that. be able to choose the tools that i believe are the best for the given task. there may be constraints, but using an LLM as a constraint does not make sense because the LLM affects the process but not the outcome.
I would argue the same in most situations, but let’s be honest: what matters most to most employers is their employees falling in line. There is some sense to this: it is easier to manage a bunch of people doing things more-or-less the same way, but I do ultimately agree that professionals should be treated more like professionals.
Seeing as how LLMs objectively increase performance when used correctly, I'd support the company's decision to let you go for specifically performance reasons. I'm not saying you should be all in on LLMs end to end, but there are individual processes in every workflow that can be enhanced by the tool. If you find those, you will perform better than you could without LLMs, no question.