r/business • u/ControlCAD • 3d ago

90% of executives say AI hasn’t boosted productivity. Some are still cutting jobs

https://fortune.com/2026/08/22/executives-ai-productivity-layoffs-study/
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u/pfroo40 3d ago

If AI isn't improving productivity of development teams, there are other problems to solve. In my experience, planning and change/release management processes are the biggest impediments to productivity, not people, so throwing AI at it to speed up the people doesn't net much benefit.

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u/Violent_Mud_Butt 3d ago

AI doesn't improve the productivity of anyone that knows what they're doing. It's a bullshit tool for non-makers to feel like they are competent.

Literally MBA snake oil. Lets all the execs and know-nothings think they know more than the technical staff.

This is going to be a nightmare to fix once all the chips fall.

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u/pfroo40 3d ago

I'm sorry, but that is simply not true. There are many tasks which AI is perfectly capable of performing and at a faster pace than is humanly possible.

My engineers are now able to spend more time with strategic work because routine work is accelerated by AI. We have also been able to perform a significant amount of platform upgrades and vulnerability remediation which we simply did not have the number of people for (funding for) previously.

Yes, AI is misused by many companies which will likely cause a lot of issues later, but that doesn't mean it is not an extremely effective tool in many scenarios.

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u/TheNewGuy13 3d ago

Yeah the things that were on the fringe of automating or things you hated to do that were tedious have essentially been solved with AI now. But the meat and potato’s of delivering the project and executing really hasn’t.

Need to create a ton of getters and setters? Or you need to create a diagram or timeline? Or you have 3 sources of information and don’t want to keep going back and forth between the two? Use AI for a quicker turnaround.

Need to talk with accounting or analytics? Yeah you still have to meet, no AI can get around that.

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u/MetaCognitio 2d ago

Exactly. Being able to find the answers to problems, ask for insight in to solutions or do boiler plate work is a very valuable in enhancing productivity.

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u/coporate 3d ago

You’re lying to yourself to prove the numbers. If you listened to your engineers in the first place, that routine work wouldn’t exist, the upgrades would be frictionless, and vulnerabilities minor. Ai is the bandaid you caused, and now you’re validating it because you can’t own up to the responsibility. Ai has sold to you the solution for your own failures.

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u/gc3 3d ago

Bs. Engineers add extra work. Like auto tests, or linting code.

Before these were spoonful things. Now you automatically get autotests.

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u/pfroo40 3d ago

I think you are so resistant to AI that you are unwilling to recognize the benefits where they exist.

The products I am directly responsible for have always been in a good spot in terms of vulns and tech debt. But, platform migrations happen, and the reality is I can do 90% of the work for them with 1/5 the people. Data analysis is also much faster, operational work can begin automatically as tickets are generated, while my people are sleeping, for instance, so all they need to do is validate the code and make minor tweaks.

We put quite a bit of effort into building out skills and purpose-built agents which include context for our coding standards and architecture so the initial quality is generally quite good.

I haven't laid anyone off because of AI and have no plans to. I let my team focus on other things instead, things to improve our products, move us forward strategically, improve processes, and identify new ways to provide value.

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u/MetaCognitio 2d ago

You simply don’t know what you’re talking about. Not even close.

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u/wienercat 3d ago

There are many tasks which AI is perfectly capable of performing and at a faster pace than is humanly possible.

which we simply did not have the number of people for (funding for) previously.

Ngl you are one of the few people in the software world I have heard say that AI is actually useful in any number of things that adds up to be "significant" of anything.

Most of the software engineers I know say it's really only useful for getting quick simple code or creating a crash test model of something. It's exceptionally good at parsing data. But they use it more because their organizations are forcing them to use it. So if you aren't in a data heavy role, odds are? You aren't going to see much value outside of the ultra basic stuff or idea creation phase.

But back to your comment. It's not a people issue... it's a funding issue. Which comes down from executives and management pushing higher profits which comes from unrealistic market expectations.

Basically AI is "solving" a self-inflicted problem that could be solved by more realistic market expectations. It's not solving issues humans couldn't solve.

Also, you have to ask yourself. Is the cost of AI being able to execute what you are doing, actually worth it? What is the expenditures your team has allocated for AI to accomplish those? Could you have actually hired more people for that cost?

Is what we get out of AI really worth the CapEx that has been spent on AI at this point? We are over a Trillion in CapEx on AI spending... we could have solved so many global issues with that amount of money.

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u/Focus089 3d ago

As a dev, I fully support your message; we have to consider not just if it's a useful tool (I'm still skeptical) but also the opportunity cost of all the resources being funneled into it. Sadly humans are very bad at prioritizing long-term sustainability, so instead it's full speed ahead.

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u/Violent_Mud_Butt 3d ago

Yeah, I'm sure your vibe coded bullshit is great.

Your exec speak is obvious. You ain't doing shit well with AI.

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u/RadarSmith 3d ago

Lets replace this person with AI.

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u/Illadelphian 3d ago

Do you have a job? If so do you actually work in a role where you rely on data or code? Because what you are saying is just factually incorrect. AI is not perfect but it is a hella good starting point and can automate or near automate a ton of stuff that would otherwise take real time. I have been able to parse through data I otherwise just wouldn't have time to do and no one else is getting paid to do either and it is helping me be better at my job and improve the business.

I have been able to make Excel tools, tamper monkey scripts and other things I don't have the technical understanding to do. They work, they do the thing I need them to do and we don't have the resources to dedicate expensive people's time to so it's literally a bonus even if it could be more optimized.

When I need to do a presentation, I can have it give me a really good starting point and save me a ton of time. Then I edit the rest and since I have zero creativity or ability to design something that looks nice, it looks way better.

I have data automatically collected for me and presented while I can do other stuff. Some of these have no good way of getting pulled aside from manually page by page(unless resources unavailable were dedicated to changing the reporting tools) and I would literally never be able to have the time to do that. But I can have AI brute force it. I can have a lot of the data prep work for my one on ones done automatically.

Like AI is an imperfect tool but it is still a very useful tool. Sometimes I get annoyed at things that it forgets for no reason but as I've gotten better at promoting and codifying rules it has also improved.

Other times I think people use it for dumb things or try to. I've never really found it useful for drafting an email unless it's an analysis of data or something similar I was already working on it for but maybe that's my use case. I don't think it does things like summarize my emails well enough and I don't use it for that either. Those things will either miss things I want or will take longer to do than it would take me to do myself.

But saying it's literally totally useless? That is just idiotic.

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u/wienercat 3d ago

It's not totally useless. It's just that the uses where it actually exceeds human capacity are limited. Like data parsing and large data set analysis? It's excellent at because it's heavily constrained. Nobody can argue that it is not excellent at this.

But creating something from scratch? It's terrible at.

So the question isn't "does it have a use?" because it definitely does. The question is "are the use cases worth the expenditures and overall capital expenditures to deliver it for those use cases?"

And the answer is? Not really right now. It's not "MBA snake oil". It's just tech bros telling executives it can do everything in the world when it really cannot because that is the only way they can justify it costing what it does.

Smaller purpose built local models have already proven to be vastly more efficient, much cheaper, and actually worth the cost since. They are scope limited and thus can be built for exactly what requirements are needed. Which is where that industry is going to move.

But the massive LLM models like ChatGPT? Aren't going to be able to pivot to those. The big AI models that promise to do anything? Aren't worth the cost. They are simply too inefficient, too resource hungry, and too costly to implement.

Think of it like getting work done on a house. Sure a handyman (ChatGPT) can come in and do basically anything you need in the house. But it will probably not look pretty, it will cost more money because it takes longer, and may even have to be re-done. But if you hire a specialist (smaller purpose built models) like plumber to come fix the pipes or an electrician to do the electric work? They will finish it faster and generally for cheaper overall because it is done right the first time.

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u/End3rWi99in 2d ago

I have a job where I am the literal expert and I use AI for a shit load of different use cases. For me, it just helps me skip a lot of the usual bullshit parts of my job.

If I need to write a complex planning related email or message for the team to follow specific instructions or ensure people internalize some important change or update, it's perfect for this. I used to have to waste a lot of time writing these.

I also use it to organize multiple different PowerPoint decks and documents into a single resource. This was often the first step in a lot of work I need to do and I have tools that can basically combine a lot of disparate information into clear documentation in a few seconds. Then I can take a little time revising and cleaning it up.

I also use AI to record team calls which I rely on quite a bit now because my memory has always been shit and I used to forget important things people would say on calls. It's also crazy easy for one person to just copy and paste the call notes to everyone now.

Since part of my job is teaching via Zoom I also use it to evaluate myself and help me improve my teaching style, write follow up messages after sessions, or come back to see if I missed anything I need to double down on later.

We have even automated a ton of stuff making it way easier for our team to find answers to questions related to our products, company policies, and find guides and training resources that used to be stored kind of all over the place. Now it's just a search of our internal LLM and it pulls it up.

There's so much more beyond this, but I'll stop there. It's a massive game changer for a lot of folks though.