The analogy that recently came to me is like internet itself. Your advice seems to say just do everything locally on my computer without access to the internet, because internet might suffer service disruptions or price hikes in the future.
Luckily, ISPs tend to be quite reliable and don't have outrageous price hikes, but maybe that's because of regulation or focused competition, I'm not sure.
I just want a little predictable insight into how much I get. For example, at a buffet, I know I can only eat so much food and can plan around it. This is like going to a buffet and not knowing how many plates I can take or how big the plates are, and it changes each week, and yet I have to keep paying the same price. Except it's not about eating, it's about my work and deadlines and promises and all that.
That's what these providers want as well, but from the other side. They want to know that a customer won't be able to eat more than certain number of servings, as they need to pay for each of those servings.
It works out even if some customers are able to eat a lot, because people on average have a certain limit. The limits of computers are much higher.
Fair, and I think openclaw and all the orchestrators are having agents maxing out the plans. So maybe they figure out a new tier that is agent-run vs human-run. Agents are much more insatiable, whereas humans have a limit. Not sure if it'd be possible to split between those two different modes, but I think that might address the appetite issue better.
I think it would be impossible to find the price point for a monthly subscribtion that would both be profitable to a provider, as well as attractive to the customer. If anything, as the customers would now be paying necessarily even a higher amount for agentic use, they'd make certain they'd be using the agent as effectively as they can, meaning it would be even more costly for the provider.
Pay-per-token is really the only way it can work. If some kind of fixed monthly price is desirable, then there should be a quota the user can assign, and then the agent could e.g. slow itself down by 50% when 50% of the quota is spent, another 50% at 75%, etc, to make it last longer..
As a side thought, I wonder how it could affect an agent's behavior if the information of this token usage/limit was brought to it..
Ironically in chatting with Gemini, helped me realize that telecoms have often solved this problem of unlimited usage with rate/speed limiting. If one goes over 10GB or whatnot of data, then the speed drops from 5G to 3G, and data remains unlimited.
I wonder if there could be something like that, maybe even a progressive rate limiting, where after a certain number of tokens or another metric of use, then the speed slows down a LOT.
Not saying that I would love that as a consumer, as I'd prefer this all-you-can eat, unlimited data plan, but I wonder if that would be a compromise that could work, as it seems to have worked OK with the telecom space.
edit: the nerd in me loves the irony of me making the above comment and then later seeing your username as flux :-)
When you hire a person, you don't know what you are going to get out of them today.
If an hour of an excellent developer's time is worth $X, isn't that the upper bound of what the AI companies can charge? If hiring a person is better value than paying for an AI, then do that.
Fair on not knowing what you'll get out of someone. But if that varies wildly, I may not want to hire that person. Even with employment, predictability matters a lot. If they underperform too much, I might feel annoyed. If they overperform, I might feel guilty.
They can charge whatever they want, I think many people like to make business decisions based on relative predictability or at least be more aware that there's a risk. If they want it to be "some weeks you have lots of usage, some weeks less, and it depends on X factors, or even random factors" then people could make a more informed choice. I think now it's basically incredibly vague and that works while it's relatively predictable, and starts to fail when it's not, for those that wanted the implied predictability.
If you need the tokens for real work, that’s what the API and the other providers like Bedrock are for. The subscription product is merely to whet your appetite.
Well then I would just not use their service. I used extra usage once and just for what I'd consider a low amount of tests and coding, racked up like $300 in an hour or more. For some, that's not a lot of money, for me, I'd just code it manually, especially without knowing almost any way to gauge how much I'll need and how fast it goes.
I'm not sure how businesses budget for llm APIs, as they seem wildly unpredictable to me and super expensive, but maybe I'm missing something about it.
I looked at my cc usage and I was at 90% of my weekly allowance after 3 days of use...BUT, if I looked at the usage stats with the chart, it showed, on a scale of 1-4 intensity of usage (4 being most intense), the three days as such:
Day 1: 2
Day 2: 3
Day 3: 1
Not sure how I can hit such limits so quickly with such low scores on its own chart.
Then why not update their chart to at least say that? The numbers (shading, actually) on the chart are not absolute numbers, they're relative, so just make it look as if I spent a lot of time on it. If they're gonna change their limits without being clear about it, at least go all the way. Right now, I can go, "See, you're actually saying I didn't use that much compared to the limits."
I'm not sure if companies understand the emotional impact on the laid off and the layoff survivors. It almost seems like a terror campaign, whether intended or not.
One of my past employers tried to give laid off employees a dignified send offs including not immediately revoking their access.
The number of people who snap and make rash decisions to try to exfiltrate data, plant backdoor logins for themselves, or sabotage company work in those hours was a much larger number than I would have guessed prior to seeing it.
Maybe the solution is to not do mass layoffs. Not sure there's a dignified way to let go of many humans at the same time with almost no reason for why they're being let go except maybe a vague profitability scorecard.
And also to expect and manage people snapping and giving them an off-ramp, financially but emotionally as well and maybe professionally, too. Why not try to help them find other jobs?
Companies don't just provide money, they provide people with meaning, routine, social circle, and so much, and layoffs cut all of those immediately.
> Maybe the solution is to not do mass layoffs. Not sure there's a dignified way to let go of many humans at the same time
The number of people included in a single layoff wasn't a factor.
The people who snapped treated it as a personal affront and wanted revenge on the company. If anything, being laid off in a large group made it feel less personal to people. The people who felt unfairly singled out were the angriest. If an entire satellite office was closed or a department was laid off together they didn't take it as personally.
Yeah that makes sense to me and I appreciate you saying it. If the whole team gets laid off, it's we all go down with the ship. But if one person gets laid off on a team, I think it can create intense dynamics. Like why them specifically? It wasn't about the department, it was about them. I can see why they'd take it personally and why the survivor guilt might be stronger on that team as well.
> Companies don't just provide money, they provide people with meaning, routine, social circle, and so much, and layoffs cut all of those immediately.
I think that in a way, to really learn why you shouldn't depend on your company for your social circle, it sort of requires being laid off (not really, but kind of; some sudden permanent intervention in your work-life). I consider it a blessing in disguise that I realized this early, even if it meant a job loss. People who get comfy in marriages or long-term jobs or buy a house early on tend to spend their resources in the obvious optimal efficient ways, which is to make their friends at work or through their partner or literally right next door to their house. But those are not generally or reliably resilient to significant change. Proximity will always be important, but if your friends need to be literally where you work every day or over the fence, you are isolated and socially vulnerable. If you leave the job or move, it's now dramatically more expensive for both parties to encounter each other, and it's best to incur that expense intentionally before you end up needing to.
I have seen that too. People on the way out trying to get access to production systems. Layoffs suck, but the business needs to protect itself from those who are departing. The company used to have more lax separation procedures but after that incident everything got locked down.
I've been through two restructures and both times I'd full access to everything for a month until my position was being decided. There thousand plus employees affected and not a single one did anything like what you've described. I'm Australian if that helps.
They understand, but they are more concerned about you exfiltrating data and suing them.
But you're right, the survivors don't even get a list. They have to find out when something they're waiting for never shows up because that person doesn't work there anymore.
Eh, that's brutal, wondering why someone isn't replying to your email only to find out they get let go. Almost like finding out a friend died, in a professional way.
I think we often just don't understand the full dimensionality of layoffs.
When i was first laid off during the dot com bust I was working on a sales floor. All open no cubes. We didn't know layoffs were coming. Manager walks in and taps this one guy on the shoulder, says grab your personal things and come with me. Manager came back in did the same to a few others. Then it was me. Talk about embarrassing! Also, was 2 weeks before quarter ended. If you were not working for the company at the end of the Q, no bonus. 2 weeks! I'll never forget that. That was my first taste of how nasty a company can be. Not the layoffs, hey things happen. But the timing. Feels diabolical.
Yeah, our litigation culture to me is just an inability for individuals/companies to resolve conflicts and escalate it to the legal system. And unfortunately there are many elements in the system that discourage us from reconciling and push us towards escalating.
I've noticed people are shockingly good at filtering out their empathy through bureaucracies. Instead of feeling bad about their personal decision that they made to lay someone off, they instead can tell themselves it was the only way to do business and then happily absolve themselves of guilt.
One of the most surreal meetings I've ever been to was a company All Hands after a 20% layoff round. The upper management people who decided who was laid off took turns talking about how upset it made them to have to do it. They showed a diagram of the Kubler-Ross stages of grief and went back and forth talking about what stage of grief they were in having to lay all these people off. Was like something out of the UK version of The Office. It was so tone deaf that it was bleakly comedic at a certain point.
The extra kicker was that there were a bunch of UK people in this meeting who knew they'd be laid off, but it takes longer to do the redundancy process over there, so they had to listen to these people complaining about how sad firing them feels.
Contrary to what people may think, the most humane way is a fast clean cut. Drawing it out in anyway doesnt help anyone. This does assume communication is clear about employee next steps for HR related tasks.
This is also why in the other direction a fast clean cut works too. I mean if they want two weeks of “work”, i always consider that severance.
The fast clean cut is true in all industries. Drawing it out only makes it more painful. It is similar to breaking up in a relationship.
It sounds as if you're describing how to humanely kill a living being.
There are alternatives to killing things and I don't think fast clean cut is true in all industries. I think people want it to be true because then it hides away the complexity of the emotions we feel. Just cut it off and pretend that the cutting off won't bother us or them after the event.
I think that strategy may appear helpful but just buries most of the feelings, which don't go away, most likely just to fester underneath and erode trust.
The reality is the layoff decision has been made. There is no undo. It is better to cut cleanly as it allows people to move on faster than drawing it out.
The best thing for the most people is to help them move on to the next gig quickly.
The people u work with bosses included, are what make or break this. In my experience, people help one another. I have seen ceo’s push resumes of people let go to other execs in their network. This is outside company policy or communication for legal reasons but not everyone is dirt bag.
Oh I didn't mean to say that's what you wanted it to mean, just that I've heard clean cut in two main spaces: taking off bandages and slaughtering animals.
If you mean clean cut as in only cleanly cut the contract, but then maintain the relationship in other ways, I think that could make sense, as it doesn't pretend the decision hasn't already been made. I think I was reacting to clean cut the relationship completely, which I don't even think works well. But yeah, I'd appreciate if the individuals or even the company helped the people out.
It'd be like ending a relationship with someone who was financially dependent on you and just letting them fall of the cliff, compared to saying that you know it doesn't work for you two together, but you'll financially help them transition. I dunno, some people should say clean cut the relationship, drop friendships, never talk, cold turkey, I just don't know how well that works for human well being in the long term.
Yes in my (somewhat tinfoil) opinion the point is to have an emotional impact on the workforce overall (or at least, one of the points is). Tech workers had a really good 20 years in the US, and kind of forgot that they were ultimately still wage workers. I think the culture circa 2018 took for granted a basic level of respect and cooperation from upper executives, and were beginning to exercise their power to achieve political goals, which was annoying to the tech ownership class. I think one of the major strategic turns of last 4ish years is the usage of precarity and high turnover to corrode worker solidarity in fields which used to be ironclad and respectable white-collar work. By simultaneously narrowing the hiring window ('junior devs are replaceable with AI') and also expanding the opportunities to be culled ('we are axing this division to cover our moonshot outlays') capital cultivates a desperate and compliant workforce. Bottom-up culture is woke, in the 2020's the folks in power want top-down directives that are followed unquestioningly; similar approach to how the executive branch was brought to heel by DOGE.
Or the current crop of companies has just ossified and are waiting for a disrupter to kill them. You can’t get that big and be around for that long without having the original culture die, it seems. This isn’t the first wave of companies this sort of thing has happened to, is it?
Some employees in the company might understand the emotional impact, but companies themselves would only look for certainty in protecting what belongs to them, which will hardly align with fairness or emotions towards employees in a situation like this.
Managers do know. Some of them are better at it than others. But even for the best it never is easy. And they are still humans, don't go to harsh on them with your blame.
And that includes them, the people doing the layoffs, who are employees as well. And what we often don't realize is that causing the pain to others most often causes pain to us as well. Human group output and productivity can rely a lot on trust, and if that trust is damaged, it can hinder all productivity.
The last time my company did layoffs they offered the same generous severance package afterwards to anyone else who wanted it. We had three people take the offer.
As far as actual people? Depends on their personal moral code and is why colleges make people take ethics, even if I don't think that results in anything other than more elaborate ways to justify doing whatever they feel like anyway. Most people would agree that you should minimize suffering in others if you can, but people who make it to upper management and C suites often got there by not being bothered by such scruples.
As far as the company is concerned, obviously there's no reason not to care aside from not wanting to lose any critical employees who value stability. That's why many of the labor protections we take for granted now were fought for many years in the past.
> But it goes both ways, if I want to leave I have to work the mandated period
Do companies actually force people to continue working during that period? I would expect that in tech they'd allow them to leave early because employees who have chosen to leave the company are some times not the most helpful to keep around for months
I was forced to work out a 3 month notice period at my previous company in the UK. I don’t see the point of keeping an already-checked out employee around so long when you have basically no way of getting anything but the bare minimum out of them.
I have never, ever understood this whole mandated period thing. Aside from what you mention -- do you really want to keep these people around against their will -- I don't understand how your (ex-)employer can force you to do anything against your will. All you have to do is say "no".
Yet people keep believing mandated work after a layoff is a thing.
It's not against their will. It's a part of the contract they signed when they started working at the company. The contract stipulates how it can be terminated (in accordance with the local law). If it says each party can terminate a contract with a prior notice of two weeks, the contract is enforced for those two weeks after giving in the notice. There's still an employee-employer relationship at this point, even if the employee gave their notice.
In some countries the notice period can go for months. Usually it gets longer with the tenure. It allows both parties to transition and prepare in advance.
You can get "arbetsbefriad" / "Exempted from work" / in the UK called Garden leave / Gardening leave and you leave early. But employer decides.
>I would expect that in tech they'd allow them to leave early because employees who have chosen to leave the company are some times not the most helpful to keep around for months
It's called work ethics. Have some pride. Also if you bail without garden leave, you have to pay.
I had struggled so much to measure text and number of lines when creating dynamic subtitles for remotion videos, not sure if it was my incompetence or a complexity with the DOM itself. I feel hopeful this will make it much easier :-)
I think when we say that an executive is the only one to put an end to another executive in power, we overlook how the problem might be that the parties have deadlocked Congress and the legislative branch is one to take power back from the executive branch.
I had no idea they actually changed the domain name. Reminds me of Musk wanting it to be X because it sounded tougher. Something about trying to appear tough seems to make me think those people are less tough. I'm sure there's some famous paradox in that.
Yeah, I took that to mean to refresh the game and so I did.... and then lost my progress :(. I really want to play the rest but I don't want to go through the rest of the levels.
Well markets give a huge financial incentive for it. Before you had to get paid a bribe for an intelligence agent. Now you can just "legitimately" bet on a market. It's a LOT easier and more spread out, I imagine.
The existence of banks gives a huge financial incentive to rob them. That doesn't mean we should get rid of banks. It means we should create a huge disincentive to rob them (which we do). Same thing needs to happen to people using national intelligence secrets in prediction markets.
Banks are about saving money and reducing risk. Arguably when they got into high risk investments to make high reward is what contributed to the 2008 recession.
Not sure if banks are the best example of proving the country is not headed towards high risk gambling.
Luckily, ISPs tend to be quite reliable and don't have outrageous price hikes, but maybe that's because of regulation or focused competition, I'm not sure.
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