Thomas König

@[email protected]

[Joanna Stern @JoannaStern]

In a review of my household safety evaluations, I identified five incidents in which my child escaped the sandbox, reached the kitchen and gained unauthorized access to the snacks. The incidents occurred 16 months ago but has only now come to my attention.

This post explains what happened, how it happened and why my child is better than your child at everything.

[Thomas Dohmke @ashtom]

We will continue building up and down the stack towards an open, decentralized, independent developer ecosystem for any agent and any human. More things on our horizon: Tamper evident branch history and policy-as-code branch protection independently verifiable by any client. A new CI/CD stack. More login options. And a new developer lifecycle optimized for intent-based review.

And, of course, iterating with contributions, feedback, and ideas from the community. See you at @WeAreDevs tomorrow. 🇩🇪

https://t.co/cwTO2Fm3Kq

[Thomas Pamminger @thomaspamminger]

https://t.co/0B6iG1dzBM

[Peter Girnus 🦅 @gothburz]

Last quarter I rolled out Microsoft Copilot to 4,000 employees.

$30 per seat per month.

$1.4 million annually.

I called it "digital transformation."

The board loved that phrase.

They approved it in eleven minutes.

No one asked what it would actually do.

Including me.

I told everyone it would "10x productivity."

That's not a real number.

But it sounds like one.

HR asked how we'd measure the 10x.

I said we'd "leverage analytics dashboards."

They stopped asking.

Three months later I checked the usage reports.

47 people had opened it.

12 had used it more than once.

One of them was me.

I used it to summarize an email I could have read in 30 seconds.

It took 45 seconds.

Plus the time it took to fix the hallucinations.

But I called it a "pilot success."

Success means the pilot didn't visibly fail.

The CFO asked about ROI.

I showed him a graph.

The graph went up and to the right.

It measured "AI enablement."

I made that metric up.

He nodded approvingly.

We're "AI-enabled" now.

I don't know what that means.

But it's in our investor deck.

A senior developer asked why we didn't use Claude or ChatGPT.

I said we needed "enterprise-grade security."

He asked what that meant.

I said "compliance."

He asked which compliance.

I said "all of them."

He looked skeptical.

I scheduled him for a "career development conversation."

He stopped asking questions.

Microsoft sent a case study team.

They wanted to feature us as a success story.

I told them we "saved 40,000 hours."

I calculated that number by multiplying employees by a number I made up.

They didn't verify it.

They never do.

Now we're on Microsoft's website.

"Global enterprise achieves 40,000 hours of productivity gains with Copilot."

The CEO shared it on LinkedIn.

He got 3,000 likes.

He's never used Copilot.

None of the executives have.

We have an exemption.

"Strategic focus requires minimal digital distraction."

I wrote that policy.

The licenses renew next month.

I'm requesting an expansion.

5,000 more seats.

We haven't used the first 4,000.

But this time we'll "drive adoption."

Adoption means mandatory training.

Training means a 45-minute webinar no one watches.

But completion will be tracked.

Completion is a metric.

Metrics go in dashboards.

Dashboards go in board presentations.

Board presentations get me promoted.

I'll be SVP by Q3.

I still don't know what Copilot does.

But I know what it's for.

It's for showing we're "investing in AI."

Investment means spending.

Spending means commitment.

Commitment means we're serious about the future.

The future is whatever I say it is.

As long as the graph goes up and to the right.

[Thomas Pamminger @thomaspamminger]

Brain needed a break from boring auth work. Tinkered with @adamwathan's https://t.co/rV7cwEhKAE, got a terminal theme going. Then @thok and I couldn't stop. Search became a command line. Ctrl-W works. The whole site is a shell now.

[lucas @lucasMnts]

We replaced all our subscriptions with custom AI software.

Monthly spend dropped from $750 in SaaS to just $4570 in LLM tokens.

A big win!

As a bonus, the team now spends half their time fixing vibe-coded bugs instead of using working tools. But at least we own the stack.

[Mario Zechner @badlogicgames]

recommended reading. had this on my reading list for a while, finally found time. it's a small study, ymmv. would love to see one with senior engs.

they great atrophy has begun.

https://t.co/EjneQjY32J

[Thomas Pamminger @thomaspamminger]

Your agent shouldn't scrape like it's 2019.

Labs now speaks markdown, natively. Just add .md. No parsing, no tricks.

Just ask nicely.

https://t.co/bxq61k9YEo

[dax @thdxr]

everyone's talking about their teams like they were at the peak of efficiency and bottlenecked by ability to produce code

here's what things actually look like

- your org rarely has good ideas. ideas being expensive to implement was actually helping

- majority of workers have no reason to be super motivated, they want to do their 9-5 and get back to their life

- they're not using AI to be 10x more effective they're using it to churn out their tasks with less energy spend

- the 2 people on your team that actually tried are now flattened by the slop code everyone is producing, they will quit soon

- even when you produce work faster you're still bottlenecked by bureaucracy and the dozen other realities of shipping something real

- your CFO is like what do you mean each engineer now costs $2000 extra per month in LLM bills

[Thomas König @thok]

@marcoroth_ @chrispycode I can't figure this out in vscode either. I want the herb formatter to be enabled (this works), but I only want to format manually (Format Document) and not on save. Should this be possible? Are there any settings I'm missing?

[Thomas Pamminger @thomaspamminger]

Building with AI alongside @thok — embeddings, bookmarks, personalization, all part of it. But the good part? It’s finally starting to feel right.

https://t.co/rCL3bhVePO

[Chris Heilmann codepo8.bsky.social @codepo8]

As I remember London…
https://t.co/OpQPcRt79x

[Thomas König @thok]

@JChristandl Hat ihm Trump schon gratuliert?

[Thomas König @thok]

@MatthiasCremer @JohannesKopf Ich hab einen Liebherr uk1414 als Unterbau, der ist glaube ich 60 breit, also einfach 2 kaufen? ☺️

[Thomas König @thok]

@i_am_fabs @DanielKoller_ Falls noch interessiert, es gibt von Silca einen Strip Chip… aber dann musst du auch hot wax benutzen… https://t.co/ds8HsO48vO

[Daniel Bleninger #GuertelLiebe @BleningerDaniel]

Dieses Zeitzeugnis aus 2024 möchte ich euch nicht vorenthalten: Automobilist Ilija versteht nicht, warum auf einem Radweg, der noch nicht fertig gebaut ist, keine Radler fahren. Döbling in a nutshell.

[Radeln in Döbling @DoeblingRadelt]

Heute mit Sonne & viel Freude: https://t.co/uk1kRdK8Jr mitfahren Start 15 Uhr Glanzing (Spar) - Krottenbachstraße - Pyrkergasse - Kreindlagasse - Gymnasiumstraße - Philippovichgasse - Währinger Park. Mit Pause zurück.
Einsteigen entlang der Route! Details https://t.co/1o7Z3ESncq

[Matthias Winterer @MatiWinterer]

Wie Fahrrad-kompatibel ein Bezirk ist, lässt sich an der Anzahl der für Räder geöffneten Einbahnen messen. @MaxHazel1 hat die Daten analysiert. Sie zeigen: In Döbling radelt es sich am schlechtesten. https://t.co/owxmihI6kw

[Thomas König @thok]

Apple cycling maps now available in Vienna?! cc @okonetchnikov @i_am_fabs

[DHH @dhh]

We're so back. https://t.co/BXmWYQIcF8