Why Companies Use AI to Cut Costs Instead of Building Ambitious Projects | Hacker News

You need to be a founder to meaningfully benefit from this attitude. Everyone else is accountable on a short-term timeframe to someone who can pull the plug at any time and who determines their level of compensation, all the way down to potentially zero. The risk aversion isn't driven by business needs, but by the needs of the employees and unless you are a founder with a majority of voting shares, you are an employee. Some of the more risk tolerant people might do it for their sliver of equity, but many will not. For example, one of my jobs (I am overemployed) is as a dev for a small startup that first tried to outsource development and then had to hire devs in house as that was a disaster. We have a certain amount of runway. Project is pretty chaotic. Customers are bailing as we cannot meet our commitments. I would argue rational management would push hard to fix things quickly and spend the money to do so even if it meant raising money sooner, as key customers are fleeing, our reputation is mediocre, and stability is nowhere close. As an employee, I am fighting hard for a controlled flight into the ground to drag out how long the paychecks for this mess keep flowing. Why? As an employee, I have no meaningful upside unless my options suddenly get valuable and I long ago learned that you can be laid off with limited recourse, so I value equity at zero. My interests are entirely in prolonging my employment so the cash keeps flowing. I will take the 100% certain death of my employer over 3 years rather than a 50/50 chance of success as a business. Same thing with managers and AI. Better to take the certain win as if you are an employee, it isn't as though you definitely gain from the company gaining.