AI specialist making my life miserable

Posted by madroots2@reddit | sysadmin | View on Reddit | 59 comments

So owner's son came into a firm, clearly discovered Lovable or something similar, packet with ideas.

"Hundreds of projects in work, hundreds more to come."

Immediately went on creating internal platform for everybody and forcing us to use it. Platform where we are supposed to log work, manage projects and who knows what.

Anyway, got job assigned already - to migrate from his personal accounts and prepare "stack" for this monstrosity. Stack consists of 4 different AI API subscriptions, supabase, vercel, email automation service Brevo, Ayrshare, Cognism, Google workspace for some reason, Firecrawl and several more vibe coding standards I guess.

Completely ignoring the fact that domain is already integrated and used for milions of things, ignoring our existing hybrid infrastructure consisting of proxmox servers and hetzner servers, our own hosting solutions, network, mail servers and so on.

Wish me a good luck. I think I am too old for this shit (and I am not really old).

I just want to go peel oranges for a limonate stand.

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CEO-Frank@reddit

Endure. Document everything. Touch nothing without written approval. The oranges will wait.

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Training_Yak_4655@reddit

I've worked in a company before with a 'baronial' site manager. At the start of summer in rolled his 19 year old son (nice daddy funded car) who immediately started bossing people around. Terrible effect on morale. But no-one would say a word to the boss about it.

This sounds a bit similar and the son looks set to wreck the current IT setup. Could a group of senior staff not get together and deliver a group message to the boss that they're not having it? Get some sort of Magna Carta written up.

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TechnologyMatch@reddit

when the boss’s kid strolls in and starts swinging authority around, morale tanks fast because nobody wants to challenge the family dynamic

getting senior staff together to deliver a unified message is probably the only way it lands. one voice can be dismissed, but a group “magna carta” makes it harder to ignore!

otherwise you end up with a summer intern turned mini‑baron wrecking systems while everyone pretends it’s fine. collective pushback is the only real counter to nepotism power plays

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ConstructionSafe2814@reddit

Or goat farming? That's also great!

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FutureGoatGuy@reddit

Seconded.

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xendr0me@reddit

Does goat farming have a G.R. position (Goat Resources) yet, where they do nothing all day, cause friction for the other goat departments and hold up everything with zero responses to communication?

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KimJongEeeeeew@reddit

By the time marketing and management have had their way, goat farming is gonna be such a crowded industry

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scandii@reddit

I mean, the issue isn't even AI here. it is completely uprooting existing processes and structures at the whim of someone's son.

this is a company you don't want to work for even if AI didn't exist.

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Nik_Tesla@reddit

No company has even gotten good results from the CEO/owners inexperienced son coming in to "try something new"

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plump-lamp@reddit

Find me a c suite that doesn't completely ignore it's staff for nepo influence or close friends

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Parlett316@reddit

Al Davis was pretty nasty to his kid in the workplace

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plump-lamp@reddit

Yeah? Where's his son now.... Oh right

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mantichoral@reddit

I've head of AI ChatGPT, AI Claude, AI Copilot... but AI Davis?

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Parlett316@reddit

Just Prompt Baby

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Parlett316@reddit

This is a tale as old as time but with the fancy AI wrapper

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Cruxwright@reddit

Seeing as big firms' projected token consumptions were used up in one quarter, estimate 4x the cost of those AI subs annually then go ask finance how they want that billed.

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1nspectorMamba@reddit

we’ve completely been block by finance. I’m perfectly fine with it.

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skeetgw2@reddit

We have a partner at our firm who’s exact words when asked what he intends to build “I don’t know until I have full access and the credentials to link things into agents from the firm.”

I may as well have written a manifesto to my boss demanding a signed letter by him, his boss and the president that if this goes through I’m not going to be the martyr when data leaks immediately.

My cya letter won’t mean shit but this is the first real professional hill I’m dying on. Fuck this idiot.

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AppointmentIll9358@reddit

Keep it in the email so that it all points back to him and people approving the accesss.

“As per our conversation, I am giving you global rights to X,Y,Z as approved by Manager at your request”

Just shut like that then create a tag in your emails so that you compile a folder for all the exchanges that involve him or managers wanting to change things and or grant access”

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Afraid_Baseball_3962@reddit

Go ahead and get that letter, but instead of trying to fight a lost cause to the bitter end, polish up your resume and get out while the getting is good. Just a thought.

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music2myear@reddit

Or "...get out before the getting gets any worse."

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RevLoveJoy@reddit

It's quite a thing to call oneself a "specialist" in a field that is in its infancy. Says A LOT.

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JudgementallySecret@reddit

That stack is a complete mess and the fact that he's ignoring your entire existing infrastructure makes this so much worse, like you've got working systems that handle millions of things and instead of integrating with that he's just bolting on a bunch of third party services that probably don't talk to each other and now you're stuck managing API keys and subscriptions for stuff that duplicates what you already have. The orange stand comment hit different because honestly that sounds more appealing than untangling whatever mess gets created when this thing inevitably breaks and nobody knows which service is actually responsible for what.

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madroots2@reddit (OP)

thanks for your comment. its just horrible. anyway, good news is that he thought of the API keys management. He is working on a Service Management Center already where we can track what api keys are created and what accounts we use, so I will never have to worry! No joke

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JudgementallySecret@reddit

Okay but who's managing the Service Management Center itself and keeping those credentials secure, and what happens when he moves on to the next shiny thing and nobody's actually maintaining it or updating the passwords.

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madroots2@reddit (OP)

I don't know, maybe he will vibe code some kind of Management Service Portal that will manage our Service Management Center!

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Unexpected_Cranberry@reddit

I'm going to subscribe to this and am hoping for weekly or monthly updates.

Reminds me of chatting with someone in R&D a few months back. She was saying that one of the guys in her department who is obviously very smart since he studied computer science at university had set up an AI to help them with their work.

When she spoke about it, it sounded like he'd spun up his own LLM and that's what they were using. I wasn't super invested though, I prefer staying in my Citrix-lane.

Fast forward a few months, turns out "building an AI" was him pasting company R&D data into a private ChatGPT account...

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TheLordB@reddit

For a useful R&D AI that is a decent/reasonable first step/pass. Minimal effort for a fairly big chunk of the possible benefit.

More customized/specialized things to fill in the gaps or specific pain points come later.

It is hard to say whether she was exaggerating or if the person setting it up was. I have had people call me a genius for what I considered extremely basic work despite me doing my best to explain to the end users that this was a fairly simple thing for me to do. On the other hand I have also seen people who massively exaggerated the complexity of what they were doing.

That said a big part of it is just knowing what is possible and will give the best benefit for amount of effort. The usual saying/meme for a bill with ‘1 minute to tighten bolt $5. Knowing which bolt needed tightening $500’. Don’t underestimate the value of that or you will massively undervalue yourself. Just because it is easy/basic for you doesn’t mean it being easy didn’t come from years of education/experience that have their own value.

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higherbrow@reddit

For a useful R&D AI that is a decent/reasonable first step/pass. Minimal effort for a fairly big chunk of the possible benefit.

Here's where you're going to get a lot of disagreement in this sub.

Copy/pasting proprietary company data into any AI is going to make that data part of the AI, and (under T&C for standard private accounts) will make anything the AI does with that data owned by OpenAI.

If an employee was hiring an Indian company to do their job for them, and had signed a contract that the company in question had full rights to use any data they encountered as they worked, you would fire the employee.

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TheLordB@reddit

I was interpreting private chatgpt account as the offerings they have for companies that include data privacy. But yeah, I realize now I was probably wrong and they did mean the standard accounts that do not have that feature.

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mcmatt93117@reddit

Yea - I know Claude supposedly doesn't train off it, and chatgpt business you can turn it 'off' but fuck if I trust that for even a second.

Blocked at the firewall, blocked via CrowdStrike DLP policies, all the BS AI being integrated into Edge/Chrome/Firefox/Copilot disabled via GPOs as fast as we can with how often they seem to add new shit.

Nope nope nope, fuck all that. (healthcare - 0% chance we're letting someone use it to write their emails or whatever BS excuse and then patient medical records end up in there on accident.

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Master-IT-All@reddit

Ya, pretty sure dumping to GPT is going to kill any patent ability.

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Top-Perspective-4069@reddit

So...he was a standard AI startup founder. When's the IPO?

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Ron-Swanson-Mustache@reddit

You didn't see it every 100 feet on the billboards when driving from SFO?

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dionebigode@reddit

Brush up that resume brother

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LinuxJeb@reddit

Document everything. Don't let them put this on you.

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boli99@reddit

AI Specialist

aka "Sloperator"

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Joe-Cool@reddit

Prompt engineer
aka microwave button physicist or Prompt-Artist (move the hyphen in your head)

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music2myear@reddit

"Promp-Tartist"? I moved the hyphen as suggested.

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madroots2@reddit (OP)

he call himself AI Specialist in his email signature so.. I gotta respect that xD

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kerosene31@reddit

I genuinely give you credit for not running for the door like the building is on fire. AI + nepotism? What could possibly go wrong?

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plumbumplumbumbum@reddit

Hope you have working backups.

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nemor3@reddit

The lemonade stand is looking better every day. At least there you know exactly what's in production.

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graph_worlok@reddit

Got any…. Grapes?

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baslisks@reddit

Got any nails?

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metalxslug@reddit

You are looking at it the wrong way. Why aren't you using AI with as little effort and though as the son to take over the entire business?

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Trooper27@reddit

Only a Sith deals in absolutes lol.

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SchizoidRainbow@reddit

Push the button, watch it all burn.

Make sure you’ve documented everything he’s told you, when and where, and sent it to yourself off site. When he fires you for doing exactly what he told you, then you can speak to a lawyer.

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Cley_Faye@reddit

I'd ask for written confirmation from someone that wouldn't like losing money in this about "are you sure you want to rip off everything, induce weeks of unnecessary extra work that will stall everything else, and make it impossible to operate nominaly for the time being?"

Maybe they'll be a-ok with it, who knows.

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xendr0me@reddit

As I'm reading this, all I can picture is:

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fadingcross@reddit

Bobby might be the movie character that's pissed me off the most ever, purely because how true to life it was written.

Excellent work by Colin Farrell too

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dynalisia2@reddit

Your issue is a panicking owner feeling like he is missing the wave of a century.

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jasieknms@reddit

Well, since you asked for it... Good luck warrior.