I’m glad you highlighted that little snippet because ironically, this entire story sounded like it was written by AI. Is it even a real person lamenting their former coworkers, or is this just an AI false flag trying to normalize it and fluff it up, or maybe just someone farming karma?
Lots and lots of em-dashes. The rule of threes. A semicolon even. “And that’s the floor.” is a very Claude kind of thing to say and I have no idea what that particularly emphatic sentence is even trying to accomplish in that paragraph. What does it mean the floor? What floor?
Also is anyone actually getting offered voluntary retirement packages? That seems like a complete anachronism these days. This is the software industry. It’s not unionized. Why would they give you anything other than minimum severance (or exactly the amount less than it would cost you to fight it?) I’ve been laid off from this industry before, and I know how it works, I’ve never even heard of anyone being offered a voluntary retirement package.
I strongly believe this is AI slop. Me highly sus.
Just from the language up top and the reference to multiple orgs I assume this was in reference to the massive federal layoff last year that was presented as a voluntary retirement, but with the implicit threat that you’ll probably be laid off in 6 months if you don’t take it. One of the justifications from DOGE was that we were all more productive now.
I mentioned to a coworker the other day that a spreadsheet of “requirements” were sent over by someone, filled with em-dashes. He had no idea why I was so critical of the requirements, because on the surface they sounded legitimate. I pointed out that the guy who submitted them probably had no idea what half of them were, and just went with the plan submitted by AI.
“But how do you know”… my brother, it’s the em-dashes. Nobody fucking used those in emails, spreadsheets, or whatever prior to AI.
It’s such an annoying thing. I never used them in English, but in English they are mostly intonational. In Russian em-dashes are grammatical, you have to use them, in most cases ommiting them is a mistake, in some cases it changes the meaning of the sentence.
People were already telling me that using proper grammar is weird long before slop machines came to be. Now they have an actual reason to be suspicious, I, myself, wouldn’t want to speak with someone who uses LLMs when casually exchanging messages.
Never would I ever think that investing time into learning how to write properly would backfire like this.
Microsoft Word also used to autoreplace them in if I remember correctly, but that’s also a red herring because nobody used Microsoft Word by choice either, and nobody sane is copy-pasting shit out of Microsoft Word into the real internet.
That’s the floor, meaning the very bottom of the number (200, is those he personally knew), because he knows there’s way more knowledge leaving than those he knew.
I work with many people like this. They’re not wrong. AI and agentic AI in particular has vastly lowered the barrier for entry. It’s a reality I think many of you are not willing to admit.
The difference, and what scares me, is an older person like me using Agentic AI because it’s quicker to QA code than write it from scratch because I can is vastly different than a younger person using Agentic AI because it’s easier and they don’t understand the fundamentals of what they’re doing.
typical attitude of the still employed, nonproductive caste
I’m glad you highlighted that little snippet because ironically, this entire story sounded like it was written by AI. Is it even a real person lamenting their former coworkers, or is this just an AI false flag trying to normalize it and fluff it up, or maybe just someone farming karma?
Lots and lots of em-dashes. The rule of threes. A semicolon even. “And that’s the floor.” is a very Claude kind of thing to say and I have no idea what that particularly emphatic sentence is even trying to accomplish in that paragraph. What does it mean the floor? What floor?
Also is anyone actually getting offered voluntary retirement packages? That seems like a complete anachronism these days. This is the software industry. It’s not unionized. Why would they give you anything other than minimum severance (or exactly the amount less than it would cost you to fight it?) I’ve been laid off from this industry before, and I know how it works, I’ve never even heard of anyone being offered a voluntary retirement package.
I strongly believe this is AI slop. Me highly sus.
Just from the language up top and the reference to multiple orgs I assume this was in reference to the massive federal layoff last year that was presented as a voluntary retirement, but with the implicit threat that you’ll probably be laid off in 6 months if you don’t take it. One of the justifications from DOGE was that we were all more productive now.
I mentioned to a coworker the other day that a spreadsheet of “requirements” were sent over by someone, filled with em-dashes. He had no idea why I was so critical of the requirements, because on the surface they sounded legitimate. I pointed out that the guy who submitted them probably had no idea what half of them were, and just went with the plan submitted by AI.
“But how do you know”… my brother, it’s the em-dashes. Nobody fucking used those in emails, spreadsheets, or whatever prior to AI.
I did.
I don’t anymore, but I used to. Some of us read books.
It’s such an annoying thing. I never used them in English, but in English they are mostly intonational. In Russian em-dashes are grammatical, you have to use them, in most cases ommiting them is a mistake, in some cases it changes the meaning of the sentence.
People were already telling me that using proper grammar is weird long before slop machines came to be. Now they have an actual reason to be suspicious, I, myself, wouldn’t want to speak with someone who uses LLMs when casually exchanging messages.
Never would I ever think that investing time into learning how to write properly would backfire like this.
Microsoft Word also used to autoreplace them in if I remember correctly, but that’s also a red herring because nobody used Microsoft Word by choice either, and nobody sane is copy-pasting shit out of Microsoft Word into the real internet.
As for the “And that’s the floor.” I assume it means “and that’s just the ground level people, not counting higher ups and management”
That’s the floor, meaning the very bottom of the number (200, is those he personally knew), because he knows there’s way more knowledge leaving than those he knew.
humie-slop, ai-slop, slop is slop. Either you get that this non-productive bullshit is a complete dead end, or you remain open to the scam.
Also, yeah, severance packages are still a thing. My buddy just got 6 weeks when he got laid off.
It’s got to be AI. I can barely parse it.
I work with many people like this. They’re not wrong. AI and agentic AI in particular has vastly lowered the barrier for entry. It’s a reality I think many of you are not willing to admit.
The difference, and what scares me, is an older person like me using Agentic AI because it’s quicker to QA code than write it from scratch because I can is vastly different than a younger person using Agentic AI because it’s easier and they don’t understand the fundamentals of what they’re doing.
The future is scary yo.
Cit CTO etc are suffering with AI psychosis. They will probably self isolate and we will have to build a parallèle society or something