Why did OP have to mention AI and just ask for feedback on the solution itself and let anything come up organically?

Big tech workers might be perceiving writing on the wall sooner - there have already been some layoffs.

I also find a lot of technpeollemsurprisinglynhabent spent as much time with AI over the past 3 years compared to other techs.

> like building an AI product made me part of the problem.

I don't see how the author can believe that quitting their job to work on an AI startup is NOT contributing to the problem of "AI products being shoved down everyone's throats."

Except, of course, that their financial bottom line depends on not believing this.

I believe that most headlines with the format "everybody thinks X" would be more honest if rewritten as "I believe X".

Or should I say... Everybody thinks that titles using the format "everybody thinks X" would be more honest if they instead said: "I believe X."

Did he try any control topics?

It’s possible that no matter what he asked, the people of Seattle would respond negatively.

I did some contract work for Microsoft a few years ago (2011-2013). It was striking how much pressure was put on you to dogfood Microsoft stuff at the expense of basically everything. I can only imagine what it must be like at the moment.

Seattle sounds kinda nice now. AI fatigue is real. I just had to swap eye doctors because they changed their medical records to some AI powered bullshit and wanted me to re-enter all my info into the new system in order to check-in for my appointment. A website that when I looked at their EULA page redirected to an empty page, no clear mention of HIPAA anywhere on the website's other pages. The eye doctor seemed confused why I wanted to stop using them after ten years as a patient even after I pointed out the flaws. It's madness.

Maybe change the title to: “Everyone in Seattle (Everywhere?) Hates Microsoft’s AI”

Just rebrand any existing context sensitive features as "AI" so you can work on those. The other day I saw some productivity software that advertised their recently-opened-files as AI powered.

40+ year software developer here (not saying this for ego, just that I've been doing this a long time and I've seen a lot of things). Here's how I've re-framed things in my mind due to AI:

The centralization of 'power' in AI will be the entities that want to run the bigger, more general-purpose models. Fine. So be it. Knock yourself out. Good luck building the data centers and finding power.

After that, AI now becomes a 'field leveler', and I say this with the utmost of sincerity and confidence. Need a supply chain system? Goodbye big boys. Goodbye vendor lock. Now there will be dozens, if not hundreds of small teams that can provide this for you at a fraction of the cost. Accounting you ask? Goodbye Intuit. We'll whip up what you need and you'll be off and running and you can kiss the global monsters goodbye. You get the idea.

This is a defining moment and it's awesome. Sure there will be some initial pain. Mindsets will have to change. Priorities will shift. My fundamental point is, all of the big boy/fat cats rushing in the AI race are literally rushing to completely undermine their own leverage and power. Each and every day I am amazed at what I can do, after a lifetime of staring at screens, with a $25.00/month Claude Code license. I am reaching out and lifting my neighbors, who have no technical experience at all, into a completely new playing field where they compete against entities they had no chance of competing with ever before.

Forgive my optimism, but it's hard not to be as I can now use my experience, with a tight group of trusted friends and colleagues, and a little bit of coding help (which goes a long way) to go wherever we want to go now.

> But you weren't allowed to fix them—that was the AI org's turf. You were supposed to use them, fail to see productivity gains, and keep quiet.

Yep, big orgs doing big org things. Don't miss it a bit.