Post by @stefano@mastodon.bsd.cafe
I got a call from someone I don't know.
"Hi. We have a FreeBSD server. It's been working perfectly for years, but it hasn't been updated since then. We asked AI to update it, but now it won't boot anymore. It didn't even make a backup before starting. The AI keeps trying things, everything is down, and we've already spent over €500 in tokens. Can you help us?"
"Sure. €500, plus the time it'll take me to try to fix it. Assuming it can still be fixed and nothing important has been deleted."
"That much?"
Some silence.
"Well, I hope AI takes your job away!" And he hung up.
Believing that autopilot automatically makes you an invulnerable professional pilot will ruin far more people than job losses will.
I don't know if AI will take my job away, but it's already cost them €500 and, probably, their server.
@mwl@io.mwl.io
@wizbean @stefano showed this to a friend and they just said "i love the difference in value when the money goes to an expert compared to the shart machine" and the reply was "It's literally gambling. A professional is a known quantity. But like a gambler, the sloperator hopes that they will beat the averages."
@stefano
Shocking ignorance, is it not? Some people keep amazing me.
I bet they have fired someone too soon on the assumptions of promised intelligence.
@stefano 🤯 it's amazing (by which I mean worrying) how many people seem to think they can absolve themselves of any responsibility by using AI.
I don't understand why anyone would just let AI loose on a production system like that, and even blame AI for not taking backups. Although why was it not being backed up anyway?
I wonder how much more money they will waste in tokens rather than pay a professional to fix the mess.
@teapot_ben we saw this coming when people would follow instructions from any Web site or forum without knowing what they mean, now it's been skinned with a golden sheen.
@stefano they could at least have block-level imaged it before they sent an AI onto it. I forget that people who have servers don't know how to use them; sometimes.
@stefano paying 500€ to a corporation ✅
paying 500€ plus hours to a person who actually get your calls 😡😡😡
@stefano Let them boil in the soup of their own creation. The ability to *not* rely on LLMs is an invaluable asset. Clients which don't understand this already will understand eventually.
@stefano how the heck to you even spend that much?! For context I do use these tools fairly regularly and my spend is like $20/month 😂 And all they were trying to do was some basic server admin?!
@stefano@bsd.cafe probably good you didn't touch it - they would definitely blame you for the dataloss AI caused.
@stefano I almost think this story is unbelievable, except I know you well enough to be certain the tale, sadly, is true.
Sorry for their loss.
As the Monty Python troupe would say/yell: "run away!"
@stefano @jspath55 I definitely believe it. You'd be surprised how many company directors think you can cut corners on IT staff, yet will throw 5 figure sums on "services" to solve a problem. I had a boss like that once. I think he just liked shouting at companies, and got in the way of people trying to doing their job.
Some bosses are massive toddlers.
@stefano I recently had someone ask me to set up WordPress for them. I agreed and they asked if I would be using AI to do the work. I assured them no, it is a simple (for me) task which takes just a few minutes.
They then clarified they were asking me to use AI to do the install. They thought using AI would somehow make the vanilla WordPress setup better. They were fine with it taking longer, even, if I somehow involved AI in the process they had already offloaded to me.
It is truly wild that this idea that things are more trustworthy if they're said by a computer somehow took hold among so many people.
Oh no! Reading human-written instructions! Like a caveman! 😀
CC: @stefano@bsd.cafe
@stefano non ho parole…. A questo punto scusami il francesismo ma che si fottano pure con tutti i loro dati e servizi 😂😂😂
Certa gente si merita proprio questo 💪
@stefano Unbelievable how many crazy IT stories you’ve got. At this point you could probably write a couple of volumes. I imagine they’d sell good too
@stefano I thought €500 was remarkably low place to start but it sounds like it was an effective deterrent.
@stefano and that's why you need an AI voice receptionist to handle these calls 🙊
@stefano I bet the LMM agent upgraded and rebooted FreeBSD without updating the boot code, something which is documented in both the FreeBSD upgrading instructions and in the FreeBSD handbook.
@subnetspider that's what I'm suspecting, too. They said "it doesn't boot anymore". Or the agent used dd to write the boot code but mistakenly overwrote something more than the boot code.
@stefano There`s some of a wisdom called "Скупой платит дважды". Well, in their case they will most likely pay three times :)
@stefano Reminds me of this
@stefano Apparently it's not really important to them.
And it sounds like a customer noone wants to have.
@stefano Sigh, I hope someone there gets fired for their decision. You are paying the expert for their knowledge and experience.
I work full time in IT and it is rare that I get asked to do after hours work on the side. Rates depends on what they ask, but it starts at $50 an hour Canadian and a minimum of four hours.
@stefano Remind of this now classic cartoon
@stefano And you didn't charge too much for the task—it was more suited for a miracle-working saint on steroids.
@stefano I think folks really have a lack of value for our profession because it's "computer skills".
It's the same attitude as "oh it's just plumbing" and before you know it you're knee deep in dirty water.
No matter how desperate we are for money, we must value our time. And like just get a plumber in.
We don't have to be good at everything. It's a chance to get to know folks and you never know the plumber might know a business that need your professional help.
@onepict True. Years ago, "it's an easy task! The 12 years old son of my friend could do it".
My reply was: "Let him do that, but don't call me when everything will be gone".
At times, it happened. Sometimes, they just went out of business.
@stefano Years ago we had a packet storm in our office which was a nightmare of hubs hanging off hubs, hanging off hubs.
I literally had to get everyone off the network and find the offending printer someone plugged in. Then get each department to log back in on a staggered scale.
Couple of weeks later and an engineer went oh I run a network at home. "Yeah how big?" I ask him, "5".
With restraint I told him that this site alone had 150 pcs and we had other sites in the city.
He shut up.
@stefano All that because the office didn't want to invest in a rewire and more switches.
@onepict Many of the problems customers have are related to lack of (small) investment in hardware or proper planning. The most difficult part is making them understand that they'll pay it, sooner or later, with interest and a lot of wasted time.
Luckily, many understand it and plan accordingly.
@onepict @stefano I don't know if corporate law is same in mainland Europe as UK, but there's a lot of "serial entrepreneurs" around who will simply let their business burn and walk away from all the creditors (using limited liability as a way of avoiding personal consequences) rather than do things properly or hire the right people.
And its not just in tech but across the board, to the point I do full audits on any suppliers I deal with, checking Companies House and all sorts (including any personal info I can find out about the directors)
AI is going to unearth way more of these, albeit with quite a bit of collateral damage along the line..
@vfrmedia @onepict One of the things I could never understand is running a business you really don't understand or don't care about.
I do the job I love, and I have a tiny company because I want to be the boss of myself and suggest my customers the solutions I believe in.
Running an IT company only for making money and for a short period of time sounds, to me, quite bad.
@stefano @onepict in Britain a lot of them don't start off bad or dishonest, but are so focused on constant growth they take on more work than they can support.
I've seen it with online services (we've been through 4 different care planning systems at work in 20 years because the small companies making them burned out), same with SMEs selling VOIP hardware (I seem to need a new one each time), also see this with automotive stuff (the place I got my last car from enshittified itself chasing after larger sales volumes and it was already creaking at the seams when I bought the car), and places like Amazon end up winning more business as for all their faults they do deliver stuff on time on more occasions..
I agree with the group here,@stefano. They did you a massive favor. You do not want this client. That nastiness at the end of the call is just their own unforeseen (by them ) consequences coming home to roost.
@bsdtv I agree. I mean: I'm a consultant, so I'm open to consulting. But if you're paying a lot of money to [BIGTECH] that messed up, find me because someone (or the Internet) told you I can fix it and you want to pay me just some spare change, you'd better continue with your useless and disruptive token-burning agent.
@stefano exactly. And we all know what doing * the exact same thing over and over * and expecting a different result is a sign of! Be well my friend!
@stefano
So they're happy to burn €500 and get the wrong answer, but they bulk at paying that much to get (an almost certainly) correct answer and fix?
"Whatdaya mean it'll cost €3000 to fix my car? The €1600 sledgehammer the AI told me to use was much cheaper and it took the engine out in seconds, now you want to replace it and charge me more?! Why are you ripping me off? I just want my car to work!"
I just can't with people.
Same scenario when people hire unskilled folks to do a kitchen remodel, based on their low quote. After it is finished and they are unhappy with products and teh sink leaks they call in a skilled tradesperson and cry when they are quoited another 50-60% to FIX the crappy work and installations!
"You can pay me now or you can pay me double later. "
@stefano you’re charging the same amount to rescue my truck that I spent getting it stuck? Outrageous!
@stefano The call tomorrow: "Hi, I've already spent €1500 on tokens and it's still down and I need your help. Are you still available for €500?" "No, I'm sorry, now it'll cost €1500."
@stefano I say this all the time “you don’t know what you don’t know”. No LLM will proactively warn you about issues you don’t know about and no LLM will fill in the gaps of your knowledge for you.
It does what you ask it to do, so its context is your knowledge, not the other way around.
@stefano
I don't get this attitude for anything broken. Once I realize something will be a complicated fix, I immediately think that paying a professional is the cheapest solution. My computer, the plumbing, the roof, my taxes. If I know I could dig myself a deeper hole on my own, I give it to someone who won't.
Some people were never taught "penny wise, pound foolish" when growing up.
💾 🇿🇦
@stefano F-yeah. Nice response. The amount of resentment toward people with IT skill is palpable. “You want to charge me for help with a free web page builder?”. “You’re charging me more than the device cost!”.
Shits going to burn down.
@stefano I don't know, feels like the +500 is punishment for reaching to AI instead of a person, and you chose that instead as a teaching moment of "don't trust AIs ever again".
I know lots of non computering people who use AI for one reason or another, and I don't scold them, but I take every opportunity to try to teach them. Last Sunday I explained some issues about AI data centers, and the people honestly didn't know. The one that asked most questions said themselves were "a total ignorant".
@mdione no punishment at all. If you call me and say "I need to upgrade my server", it's one thing. If you call me and say "my server isn't working, not booting anymore, I do not have any backups, I don't know what happens", I need to investigate first.
I'm not punishing anyone, but you can't expect to call me and fix it in 10 minutes, offering a coffee as a payment.
@stefano ah, so your prices are like that, the way you put it in the toot sounded like "the same you already spent in IA plus the hours of work".
@mdione No, prices aren't like that. They may vary. In this specific situation, considering what they told me, I was quite sure it was going to be a complicated task. So that's why I kept myself higher than usual.
@stefano yeah, maybe... TBH I don't do freelancing; I have done some in the past, but not as my main income. OTOH, I once recovered a partition table for free (I even wrote about it; it's part of my CV :) because it was interesting to do, I knew the person, and their PhD depended on it. I never took into account if it was their fault or not (it wasn't).
But again, not my breadwinner. And you seem fine with not taking jobs.
@mdione I don't like losing jobs, actually. But from the tone of the conversation, the situation itself, and my experience, I had the feeling this wasn't going to be just a job. It was going to be a responsibility I didn't want to take on.
I've learned to recognise situations that can easily turn into "We tried everything, then called a professional, and even he couldn't fix it."
The €500 spent on AI tokens are already gone, and that's apparently fine. But if I spend hours investigating and can't recover the server, suddenly my time becomes something to argue about. And if I fix it in ten minutes? "Why should we pay so much? It only took you ten minutes!"
I've seen this kind of situation before. And while I genuinely enjoy helping people, sometimes even for free, I've also learned when it's better to walk away.
It's not something I enjoy doing. But sometimes avoiding trouble is worth more than getting another job. 😉
HOURLY RATES
Minimum: €100
If you tried to fix it: €250
If you tried to fix it using AI: €500
If you come crawling back after insulting me: call for quote
@stefano there’s the “I enjoy doing it”-rate, the regular rate, the “I dont enjoy doing it” rate and the “I really don’t want to do it” rate.
Troubleshooting an unknown mess created by a clueless person falls in one of the latter categories for me.
