Shopify CEO says employees' 'slop grenades' are making more work for everyone

April 2025: "Shopify CEO: "AI usage is now a baseline expectation" https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43613079

We invented recompression because that's what society expected. I've gotten in slight trouble for simple emails like "hi xyz, can you please send abc? Thanks, jkl". They wanted a good morning, how are you, wish your family well, blah blah blah.

Likewise you can't just apply to a job with your resume, no no, you must write a letter about how you're a good fit. Does anyone care? I have no clue. I've never seen a cover letter from any interview I've conducted. I never got a job that required one (the ones that did rejected me).

This is very classic: when the bar is defined as effort, people will try to find a pole to vault over it. Whether that's lines of code, cover letters, degrees, whatever. It's when you define success as maintainable lines of code that you can win. But that's not explainable to shareholders. Tech debt always has and always will be the hardest thing to communicate.

Lutke's pigeons eventually come home to roost.

He came to know that after 2 years of going neck deep into AI? and didn’t listen to anyone else, while we engineers knew it all along.

He also infected that omarchy OS guy. Hopefully he sees the cure on the wall :-)

If you pressure employees to use MOAR AI you'll get ... more AI.