 |
Jacob
Peter Gowy's The Fall of Icarus (1635–1637) - source: Wikipedia | |
“In Greek mythology, Icarus was the son of the master
craftsman Daedalus, the architect of the labyrinth of Crete. After Theseus,
king of Athens and enemy of King Minos, escaped from the labyrinth, Minos
suspected that Icarus and Daedalus had revealed the labyrinth's secrets and thus
imprisoned them—either in a large tower overlooking the ocean or in the
labyrinth itself, depending upon the account. Icarus and Daedalus escaped using
wings Daedalus constructed from birds’ molted feathers, threads from blankets,
the leather straps from their sandals, and beeswax. Before escaping, Daedalus
warned Icarus not to fly too low or the water would soak the feathers and not
to fly too close to the sun or the heat would melt the wax. Icarus ignored
Daedalus's instructions not to fly too close to the sun, causing the beeswax in
his wings to melt. Icarus fell from the sky, plunged into the sea, and drowned.”
~ Wikipedia
A meditation today, after reading yet another Agentic AI / LLM / GenAI Tech Bro Vibe Coding Dependent "success" story...
Based on the observed statements (and collective behavior) of quite a few companies, one might surmise that the following are core tenets of how they operate...
The Icarus Strategy - Core Tenets:
1.
“It’s different this time.”
2.
“Gravity doesn’t apply to us.”
3.
“Growth at all costs.”
4.
“Reliability is a nuisance.”
5.
“Quality is an afterthought…but only if we have some spare time.”
6.
“Consequences are for peasants.”
7.
“Releasing half-baked products IS our product
strategy.”
8.
“Don’t bother me with your piddly-ass security concerns.”
9.
“Liquidity events/exits are more important than
building for sustainability.”
10. “Disciplined
Software Engineering is a boat anchor - for others.”
11. “Shortcuts
don’t have consequences, and if they did, they don’t matter - for us.”
12. “Who
cares if the underlying algorithms, tools, infrastructure, architecture are unreliable?”
13. "Everyone else's intellectual property must be sacrificed for the greater good...really, we couldn't operate without it."
14. "Growing junior devs into senior devs - that's someone else's problem".
15. "All must worship at the feet of the great stochastic parrot."
 |
[image credit: Couleur on pixabay.com] |
My companion post on LinkedIn