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PaperclipPerfector  1mo ago (text post)   2891 thread views

Small-Scale Question Sunday for October 12, 2025

Do you have a dumb question that you're kind of embarrassed to ask in the main thread? Is there something you're just not sure about?

This is your opportunity to ask questions. No question too simple or too silly.

Culture war topics are accepted, and proposals for a better intro post are appreciated.

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Is there a tactful way to ask your boss to lay off something? My boss, a smart guy whom I respect, has become obsessed with LLMs. Literally every conversation with him about work topics has become one where he says "I asked (insert model) and it said..." which adds no value to the conversation. Worse, he responds to questions with "have you tried asking AI?". For example the other day I asked him if he knows why multiple TCP streams are faster than one (when you would naively think they would be slower due to TCP overhead), and he asked if I asked AI. Which of course I didn't, because I actually wanted to know the answer, not get something plausible which may or may not be correct. And he's like that with every question posed lately, even when we had legal documents we had questions on he was like "did you try feeding it to Gemini and asking?"

It's frankly gotten incredibly annoying and I wish he would stop. Like I said, I actually have a lot of respect for the man but it's like he's chosen to outsource his brain to Grok et al lately. I suspect that my options are to live with it or get a new job, but figured I'd ask if people think there's a way I can tactfully address the situation.

So I've probably been "your boss" to someone a couple of times. There are essentially three stages:

  1. LLMs don't really work
  2. LLMs work amazingly; you should use them for everything
  3. I've outsourced too much of my creative thought and problem-solving to LLMs, and need to come up with my own answer first before asking it anything.

In October 2025, most people should be on step 2 or 3. If you have a ton of coworkers on Step 1, your boss has a responsibility to model being on step 2.

You can perhaps get him to lay off of you, individually, by explaining you're on step 3. The people who remain on step 1 are being stupid and inefficient. I lost patience with the people who come to me with questions I can obtain in seconds a long time ago. The ones on step 2 are being one-shotted and need to get a grip.

Another tactic is that when you're sending people AI-generated content and only asking if they've asked AI instead of answering it, you're implicitly not respecting their time. If someone is communicating to you from human-to-human and you're dismissing their question or putting an LLM between you, it's a sign of disdain.

Ironically, I'm dealing with LLMs being integrated into our career management platform and having the same problem in reverse. My subordinates are writing their reviews for themselves and each other with AI. I'm spending hours per month having to comb through this verbose slop, synthesize it with reality, and create thoughtful, specific feedback for everyone. It's pretty fucking lame.

The ones on step 2 are being one-shotted and need to get a grip.

I manage an architect who loves to paste obviously LLM-generated solutions to various problems and he's driving me angry. If LLMs are so fucking good that I can use their recommendations verbatim, I should cut out the middleman. The whole point of having a professional on payroll is that he can function both as a holder of domain-specific knowledge and as a critical evaluator of whatever LLMs produce.

The whole point of having a professional on payroll is that he can function both as a holder of domain-specific knowledge and as a critical evaluator of whatever LLMs produce.

A fuckin men

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