I’m amazed that we live in a world where we consider it lucky that we can attend our kids’ weddings, family gatherings, etc., without a work interruption instead of a world where work wouldn’t dream of expecting you to do anything but attend those events fully.
More importantly, I want credit for the work I do. If using AI is seen as cheating or cutting corners, I’m not likely to want anyone to know about it. In my opinion, this is on employers. They must set the cultural expectations that using AI is intelligent and efficient, not lazy. They also need to provide training on how to use AI effectively so that it is transparent and available to everyone.
I thought about these headlines yesterday. Maybe we shouldn’t consider X-Twitter’s market-value collapse a horrendous business decision. Perhaps this was always a $44 billion donation in kind to the Trump campaign in exchange for an oversized level of power and influence. Musk turned Twitter into X – a right-wing propaganda machine.
I’ve heard a few folks in the legal industry talking about how much more expensive renewals are becoming because every tech tool is adding AI, and as we know, AI isn’t cheap. Someone has to pay for it, and it looks like that’ll be all of us, in the form of higher prices for the tools we use to get our work done just fine the way they are now.
Not because we need it. They need it to show growth and satisfy investors. The fact they are likely creating a bubble that will burst and end dozens of perfectly profitable companies will be chalked up to bad luck.
Now, before you start with “they work in IT so that they don’t have to do public speaking,” I am going to argue that even if you’ve never wanted to present to a large conference audience or be asked to present webinars, etc., you would do well to learn how to do it anyway. You will need to tell a compelling story about what you do at some point in your career. Whether it be to defend your budget, ask for headcount, or explain your role on the team, being able to present your ideas well will go a long way. But, it’s not something we train for with many of our technical employees.
Well-being programs place the responsibility for managing employee mental health in the hands of the employees, who have no power to change the things causing the problem.