The Hottest New Tech Job. No Coding Needed.

Happy Friday. This is LGTM, the newsletter that gets right to the point…

Here’s what we have for this week:

• Is AI really coming for your job?

• Salesforce doesn't really mean Ohana

• Airbnb knows more about you than you know

Is AI really coming for your job?

It’s been 4 months since ChatGPT and yet miraculously you still have a job. Executives can’t quite figure out what to do with you. ChatGPT codes faster, costs less and doesn’t wear those open-back headphones that let so much sound escape that everyone in the office is forced to listen to your Huberman Lab podcast.

Genius stuff Hubie, might have to sign up for your premium pod

Unfortunately, as much as the execs would love to have you off their payroll, the truth is generative AI’s like ChatGPT or Github Copilot just aren’t ready to replace the average developer.

Sure AI can solve competitive programming problems but it can’t handle the complexities of a developers job like coordinating with a product manager, iterating on ideas or complaining that “tech debt” was the reason why the one page form you coded freezes the page for 10 seconds every time you type a character.

But the AI just keeps getting better while you are trending in the opposite direction. There’s no Huberman style biohack in the world that can undo the damage of your yearly trips to Coachella, Electric Daisy Carnival and Fyre Festival. Huang's law says that GPU’s, the hardware that most AI algorithms train and run on, are progressing even faster than CPU’s. What will Copilot look like with 100x more processing power and trained parameters? What will you look after 100x more “candyflips”? One will be a programming virtuoso, the other will be stealing Robitussin from their boss’s desk.

Enter Prompt Engineering

If your brain is too fried to code from the years of Burning Man's, you're in luck because "Prompt engineering" is the hottest new field in tech. These so called engineers are experts at crafting clever prompts to get AI's like ChatGPT to do exactly what they want. This might be a glimpse into the future of programming. Code itself is too low-level and inflexible compared to the business requirements it is used to implement. Prompt engineering, once AI technology matures, could be the next phase in programming's march up the abstraction ladder from Assembly to C to Java to Python.

After laying off 8000, Salesforce CEO goes on vacation and pays Matthew McConaughey $10 Million

Yes, we know this headline sounds made-up, but we assure you it’s real. There has been some wacky stuff going on as a result of recent layoffs shaking up the tech industry, but Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff really takes things to the next level.

Despite implementing significant cost-cutting measures like layoffs and office closures, Salesforce is paying Matthew McConaughey $10 Million a year for creative help with their #TeamEarth activist campaign. Never heard of #TeamEarth, but we aren’t a business newsletter though, so if Mr. Benioff feels he needs some McConaughey magic, far be it from us to say otherwise.

Benioff also took a 10 day digital detox trip right after announcing layoffs. Yup, after 7,000 people got layoff messages over Slack at 3:00AM, he jetted off to French Polynesia to chill for a little bit. We thought he would have gone to Hawaii based on how often the guy says “Ohana."

Salesforce has been quite profitable recently, so investors are happy. While we can’t say much about how this will affect the business, the outlook for Salesforce employees is getting worse and worse, as with most other large tech companies, because management is clearly showing that they only care about you when the market is doing well.

Airbnb and other tech companies know more about you than you think

Recently, news surfaced that Airbnb has been banning users preemptively because of their association with people the app considers troublesome. The idea is that if they find you’re close with someone who is banned on the app, then that person is likely to travel with you.

It seems like Airbnb is encouraging you to cut the toxic people out of your life. Are your friends ill-tempered people who make messes that they never clean up? Well looks like you can’t rent Airbnbs anymore until you start ghosting those friends.

Airbnb has several ways of knowing what kind of people you hang out with. The app runs a quick background check on you and decides whether you should be allowed to rent based on things like criminal record or your association with people who are already banned on the app, though the exact details of what information they are using remain unclear.

For some people, this definitely sucks. Imagine not being able to rent a place because of something on your record from a while ago, not only that but your friends can’t rent either because of it.

This feels like another sign that tech companies are limiting who can use their service, whether it be for profit motivated reasons or just plain PR. Recent examples include Netflix announcing their intent to crack down on password sharing and of course Twitter banning anyone who might resemble a bot. Tech companies are really trying to wrestle control away from the user. A positive side effect, though, is that at least they still need employees to build and maintain all these restrictive features, for now.

Other Noteworthy Stories 🔍

📣 Google's Gotten Cheap: In an effort to cut costs, Googlers in the "Cloud" division will now have to share desks with coworkers in a hybrid, alternating day model in offices in the biggest US cities. Google Cloud makes up about a quarter of the company's full-time workforce, so this is quite the cut.

📣 Amazon's Actually Helping Employees?: In an agreement with Better.com, current and former Amazon employees can now use their vested equity as collateral for a down payment when buying a home. Selling the shares isn't necessary, only pledging the vested equity is required to participate in the program called "Equity Unlocker." Though this is definitely just PR for Better.com (and Amazon), it's a win for workers in high-cost-of-living areas. And Amazon employees could use any win they can get these days.

📣 Tired of AI Yet? Get Ready For More!: OpenAI just released APIs for the latest ChatGPT model at 1/10th the pricing of their previous ChatGPT API. This could be a game changer, and means you'll likely be seeing AI even more. Early adopters of ChatGPT APIs were Snapchat, Instacart, and Quizlet, but expect to see AI popping up where you least expect it.

Well, that's all we have for you this week. Until next week 👋 LGTM

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