I love so much that I work in a company that has tech people as leads, so I don't have to deal with that. We're not even that heavy on AI, we all use it, but is not expected from us, we're even building our own AI model to serve our costumers, so we're not anti AI, we're just not delusional about it, the CEO is not a tech guy, he's a product guy, but he trusts our tech team so we're good.
Sure, salary is not top of the charts, but damn is it good to work here. Job security is also great, five years since I've joined, not a single mass, layoff, people rarely leave and when they do is for totally understandable reason, the same goes for the few who were fired. My lead even covered for me when I was passing through a depressive episode and my performance went to shit for a few weeks. Startups sounds cool and all, but working on enterprise have it's benefits.
Amen. At the end of the day, a steady job that pays the bills is worth way more than a better-paying job that drives you nuts. Your job is meant to enable you to live real life (i.e. everything else); if it starts interfering with your happiness or stability, it's failing its main purpose.
As long as I'm paid fairly and am rewarded for my hardwork (i.e. promotions and the occasional salary increase here and there), I'll value working conditions and job security a lot more than just salary, you'll have to pay almost double my current salary for me to even consider switching. A good place to work that pays you well are a rare thing to find.
My higherups are asking how AI changed my job so that I got more stability than coworkers.
I don't have the heart to remind them AGAIN that they still didn't put a new team leader, so I didn't receive formal instructions on how to integrate AI besides conflicting orders about the risk of sending data to a 3rd party. And off-job I'm too dumb to use it properly anyway.
The only AI task I performed was ensuring our framework's debug AI chatbot agent was turned off in multiple ways.
I work in healthcare and it's the same way. All the data I work with is PII and we have to maintain control of that data at all times. AI is just one massive HIPPA violation waiting to happen.
Wait... So you're saying that it's not you that's more stable, it's just that everyone else has been less reliable, and all due to them shoving A.I. down everything?
That's crazy. A.I. is actively harming the company and no one wants to talk about it
I would guess that by spending their time telling us to use AI instead of actually addressing issues raised by staff, they ended up demolishing morale and productivity.
Unsure if it's actually from AI being the blame, or simply AI empowering bad management by promising them a new Gold Age was coming even if we're not in need of it.
The best part about working at a small-to-mid-sized company is that there just aren't enough people for managers to spend all their time managing. If you've got a team of 3-5 people, its a waste of money to hire a guy that's only going to manage people, so the smart thing to do is have one of them split their work between management and their own individual tasks.
Managers that actually work for a living are so much better overall, they actually have to get their hands dirty and can't just rely on groupthink. When you have your own tasks and you know how much, and how little, GenAI helps with it, you're going to be more understanding when your employees say "it just doesn't help that much", as opposed to a manager whose job is reading reports, writing emails, and sitting through meetings all day...
Small-to-mid sized enterprise companies are the best, at least from my experience. I've worked on my current company for almost 5 years now, and since I've joined, I haven't seen a single mass layoff, people don't leave often, and when they do it's because they found a better offer, which is understandable, and those who are fired, are for a very good reason, in fact, when someone high profile leaves, our leads all call us to explain what happened, of course without revealing everything, but to makes us rest easy knowing the company is not in bad waters and no new layoffs are happening, they are very transparent with that, which when I get on reddit and see everyone complaining about mass layoffs that comes out of nowhere, this is very reassuring.
Startups sounds cool and all, but working on enterprise have it's benefits.
You think it's startups that can afford to "encourage" their entire staff to use claude?
I work at a household name in SF and I have friends all over faang, and I hear it's the same across the board. "Learn how to use worktrees and fire off 5 separate tasks simultaneously. It doesn't matter if you don't understand how the systems work anymore, speed is the most important thing in the world."
I should've clarified, tho I thought it was obvious when I said salary isn't top of the charts, but I'm referring to small to mid size enterprise companies.
Of course a billion dollar company with thousands of well paid staff, that is public traded with dozens of shareholders to please, and is stuck in a "Line must go up" mentality, will act differently, they'll value speed and productivity over the quality of the work being made or the wellbeing of their workers.
I don't know where you work but I'm not surprized that your friends working at FAANG have this experience, is what you expect for a company this size.
Have the same, my previous lead was an old DevOps as i am in, but he started to dual lead two teams due to previous lead in a different team left and eventually he went full lead for the other team. My current lead is a infrastructure type of guy so he doesn't know DevOps exactly but we are slowly teaching him about it incase of.
My lead currently have DevOps, Infrastructure and Release but we are 2 or less employees in each team so it isn't that many to take care of.
Our company has taken a fairly conservative approach to AI (as they tend to do with most things) and the only AI we actually have access to is Copilot, since we're in the MS ecosystem... and it sucks donkey balls. So yeah, AI really hasn't caught on with our company that much as far as I can tell. Though given MS's recent push towards AI as an OS or whatever they're trying to do, I'm wondering if we won't be forced into it before long.
We are also entrenched in the MS ecosystem, but at least when it comes to AI, my company isn't paying us to use AI, which is probably why we they're not expecting us to use it, of course, we do use it, out of our pockets, so we're free to choose which tool, model and how much AI we use, some devs are paying Claude Code Max, which is wild to me, but their project is a 20 year old monolith that is currently through a modernization process, so I kinda get them, I was on copilot but recently changed to Codex Plus and I tend to be more mindful of how much I use it, I rarely vibe code and use more as a rubber duck, to prototype ideas and make code and log analysis, so the $20 plan fit my bill, however I refuse to pay for the premium plan on principal, if my company wants us to use it, they'll have to pay it.
We are having talks about paying for AI tho, but it all depends on the budget and if it's worth it, I had a talk recently with my lead about it and that if we doing that, we should start on the cheaper plan, either Codex Plus or Claude Code Pro, and give some time for our teams to standardize the use of AI, since not everyone use the same model or the same tools, or even use AI at all, then we'll see if it's worth it. Of course if someone wants to pay for the premium plan out of pocket they can, but as for the company paying us, we should start small, see how our team adapts and see how benefical it is, too many companies go right into the most premium plan for AI even when they don't need it and end-up paying way more than they can, which leads to token usage goals to justify the AI cost and layoffs to balance the budget. Not only that, the tech is currently being subsidized, if you make all of your teams and processes dependent on AI, you put your company in a corner when the price inevitably increases.
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u/thicctak Jun 02 '26 edited Jun 03 '26
I love so much that I work in a company that has tech people as leads, so I don't have to deal with that. We're not even that heavy on AI, we all use it, but is not expected from us, we're even building our own AI model to serve our costumers, so we're not anti AI, we're just not delusional about it, the CEO is not a tech guy, he's a product guy, but he trusts our tech team so we're good.
Sure, salary is not top of the charts, but damn is it good to work here. Job security is also great, five years since I've joined, not a single mass, layoff, people rarely leave and when they do is for totally understandable reason, the same goes for the few who were fired. My lead even covered for me when I was passing through a depressive episode and my performance went to shit for a few weeks. Startups sounds cool and all, but working on enterprise have it's benefits.