Every random unknown business now truly believes that they have built something novel and revolutionary. They have the audacity to see difficult things being invented by geniuses and think "wow, I can do it too". They think that they must succeed at all costs; their employees must work unlimited hours and they must use unlimited resources because nothing is more important.
It's kind of sad to watch, knowing that in a couple years nobody will care and their company will have produced nothing of value, while the negative consequences of their "progress at all costs" will still be felt by individuals and the world.
Of course, with the promise of "we're going to improve the world, and oh yeah, you're going to be rich while improving the world" there's a huge amount of incentive to rationalise anything. Mix with plenty of FOMO and you've got a recipe for some pretty crazy stuff.
>So, I ask, why, exactly, is Cognition worth $10 billion? And why did it have to raise $300 million after raising “hundreds of millions” according to Bloomberg in March? Where is the money going? It doesn’t seem to have great revenue, Carl Brown of the Internet of Bugs revealed it faked the demo of “Devin the AI powered software developer” last year, and Devin doesn’t even rank on SWE-benchmark, the industry standard for model efficacy at coding tasks.
Anyway, my enormous efforts and long hours got me a "meets expectations" review. The company imploded just after I completed that first year, and so my equity was worth nothing. Good times!
Can he be replaced with AI, and hire 2x the number of people with his salary?
Obiously it won't happen :)
This type of work is only if you own the business yourself since you're the one who profits.
Both the buyout and the 80 hour weeks are stupid.
FWIW, I don't believe in work/life balance over short intervals as I feel intensity beats consistency, BUT work/life balance over long (months) intervals is absolutely critical to being a healthy decent human.
One also must consider timing wrt perceived opportunity costs. It's fine for folks with real skin in the game to make these sorts of decisions for themselves, but it's amoral to force them upon others who are playing the same game for vastly different stakes.
