From Newsgroup: comp.misc

Last quarter I rolled out Microsoft Copilot to 4,000 employees.
$30 per seat per month.
$1.4 million annually.
I called it "digital transformation."
The board loved that phrase.
They approved it in eleven minutes.
No one asked what it would actually do.
Including me.
I told everyone it would "10x productivity."
That's not a real number.
But it sounds like one.
HR asked how we'd measure the 10x.
I said we'd "leverage analytics dashboards."
They stopped asking.
Three months later I checked the usage reports.
47 people had opened it.
12 had used it more than once.
One of them was me.
I used it to summarize an email I could have read in 30 seconds.
It took 45 seconds.
Plus the time it took to fix the hallucinations.
But I called it a "pilot success."
Success means the pilot didn't visibly fail.
The CFO asked about ROI.
I showed him a graph.
The graph went up and to the right.
It measured "AI enablement."
I made that metric up.
He nodded approvingly.
We're "AI-enabled" now.
I don't know what that means.
But it's in our investor deck.
A senior developer asked why we didn't use Claude or ChatGPT.
I said we needed "enterprise-grade security."
He asked what that meant.
I said "compliance."
He asked which compliance.
I said "all of them."
He looked skeptical.
I scheduled him for a "career development conversation."
He stopped asking questions.
Microsoft sent a case study team.
They wanted to feature us as a success story.
I told them we "saved 40,000 hours."
I calculated that number by multiplying employees by a number I made up.
They didn't verify it.
They never do.
Now we're on Microsoft's website.
"Global enterprise achieves 40,000 hours of productivity gains with
Copilot."
The CEO shared it on LinkedIn.
He got 3,000 likes.
He's never used Copilot.
None of the executives have.
We have an exemption.
"Strategic focus requires minimal digital distraction."
I wrote that policy.
The licenses renew next month.
I'm requesting an expansion.
5,000 more seats.
We haven't used the first 4,000.
But this time we'll "drive adoption."
Adoption means mandatory training.
Training means a 45-minute webinar no one watches.
But completion will be tracked.
Completion is a metric.
Metrics go in dashboards.
Dashboards go in board presentations.
Board presentations get me promoted.
I'll be SVP by Q3.
I still don't know what Copilot does.
But I know what it's for.
It's for showing we're "investing in AI."
Investment means spending.
Spending means commitment.
Commitment means we're serious about the future.
The future is whatever I say it is.
As long as the graph goes up and to the right.

Credit Peter Girnus

From: <https://www.linkedin.com/posts/herman-singh-b669357_ last-quarter-i-rolled-out-microsoft-copilot-activity-
7405206064289255424-iBNC>
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From Newsgroup: comp.misc

On Sun, 14 Dec 2025 16:12:38 -0000 (UTC), Ben Collver wrote:

Completion is a metric.
Metrics go in dashboards.
Dashboards go in board presentations.
Board presentations get me promoted.
I'll be SVP by Q3.
I still don't know what Copilot does.
But I know what it's for.
It's for showing we're "investing in AI."
Investment means spending.
Spending means commitment.
Commitment means we're serious about the future.
The future is whatever I say it is.
As long as the graph goes up and to the right.

Credit Peter Girnus

But Darwin will be inexorably in action, won’t it. Anything that adds to your overheads and compromises the quality of your product will hurt your competitiveness. There will always be some more savvy player who will leap into the market and take advantage of your cluelessness.
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From Newsgroup: comp.misc

Lawrence =?iso-8859-13?q?D=FFOliveiro?= <ldo@nz.invalid> wrote:

But Darwin will be inexorably in action, won’t it. Anything that adds to >your overheads and compromises the quality of your product will hurt your >competitiveness. There will always be some more savvy player who will leap >into the market and take advantage of your cluelessness.

Unfortunately the people on the board don't care when the company collapses. They just take their huge payouts and go off to ruin some other company. --scott
--
"C'est un Nagra. C'est suisse, et tres, tres precis."
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From Newsgroup: comp.misc

On Mon, 15 Dec 2025 19:31:35 -0500 (EST), Scott Dorsey wrote:

On Mon, 15 Dec 2025 00:20:11 -0000 (UTC), Lawrence D’Oliveiro wrote:

But Darwin will be inexorably in action, won’t it. Anything that
adds to your overheads and compromises the quality of your product
will hurt your competitiveness. There will always be some more
savvy player who will leap into the market and take advantage of
your cluelessness.

Unfortunately the people on the board don't care when the company
collapses. They just take their huge payouts and go off to ruin some
other company.

Not sure how that would look on their CV, that the last company they
had a senior leadership role in collapsed due to management
incompetence.
--- Synchronet 3.21a-Linux NewsLink 1.2

From Newsgroup: comp.misc

On 2025-12-16, Lawrence D’Oliveiro <ldo@nz.invalid> wrote:

On Mon, 15 Dec 2025 19:31:35 -0500 (EST), Scott Dorsey wrote:

Unfortunately the people on the board don't care when the company
collapses. They just take their huge payouts and go off to ruin some
other company.

Not sure how that would look on their CV, that the last company they
had a senior leadership role in collapsed due to management
incompetence.

It's easy to find articles about CEOs failing upwardly.

<https://bytespaceai.medium.com/ why-top-execs-always-seem-to-fail-upwards-ccf5d019ff48>

And then there are bad faith actors who are out to plunder:

<https://tertulia.com/book/plunder-private-equity-s-plan-to-pillage- america-brendan-ballou/9781541702103>
--- Synchronet 3.21a-Linux NewsLink 1.2

From Newsgroup: comp.misc

On Tue, 16 Dec 2025 15:20:20 -0000 (UTC), Ben Collver wrote:

On 2025-12-16, Lawrence D’Oliveiro <ldo@nz.invalid> wrote:

On Mon, 15 Dec 2025 19:31:35 -0500 (EST), Scott Dorsey wrote:

Unfortunately the people on the board don't care when the company
collapses. They just take their huge payouts and go off to ruin
some other company.

Not sure how that would look on their CV, that the last company
they had a senior leadership role in collapsed due to management
incompetence.

It's easy to find articles about CEOs failing upwardly.

At some point they’ll run out of incompetent companies to destroy.
Only successful ones will be left.
--- Synchronet 3.21a-Linux NewsLink 1.2

From Newsgroup: comp.misc

Lawrence =?iso-8859-13?q?D=FFOliveiro?= <ldo@nz.invalid> wrote:

On Mon, 15 Dec 2025 19:31:35 -0500 (EST), Scott Dorsey wrote:

On Mon, 15 Dec 2025 00:20:11 -0000 (UTC), Lawrence D’Oliveiro wrote:

But Darwin will be inexorably in action, won’t it. Anything that
adds to your overheads and compromises the quality of your product
will hurt your competitiveness. There will always be some more
savvy player who will leap into the market and take advantage of
your cluelessness.

Unfortunately the people on the board don't care when the company
collapses. They just take their huge payouts and go off to ruin some
other company.

Not sure how that would look on their CV, that the last company they
had a senior leadership role in collapsed due to management
incompetence.

Didn't hurt Carly Fiorina any. Or Antonio Perez. John Rush even managed
to get indicted twice for his poor management (or possibly thievery) although he was a CFO and not really a CEO. He's out of jail now and will be destroying another company soon I am sure. Oh yeah, and what about that
guy that ran Norvergence?
--scott
--
"C'est un Nagra. C'est suisse, et tres, tres precis."
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From Newsgroup: comp.misc

On Tue, 16 Dec 2025 18:09:08 -0500 (EST), Scott Dorsey wrote:

On Tue, 16 Dec 2025 01:20:02 -0000 (UTC), Lawrence D’Oliveiro wrote:

Not sure how that would look on their CV, that the last company
they had a senior leadership role in collapsed due to management
incompetence.

Didn't hurt Carly Fiorina any.

I suppose it’s worth mentioning she wasn’t the one going for a
short-term boost to HP’s share price by laying off massive numbers of
staff -- that was the idea of her successor, Mark Hurd. Now there was
someone with a whiff of scandal about him ...

As I recall, Fiorina’s notable achievement (or maybe one of them) was breaking up the old organizational model of separation into (possibly-competing) business units. Was that a good or bad thing? You
be the judge.
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