I've had a little bit of that in a previous startup. It's easy to explain: there's so much content around "AI is going to increase productivity", and "if your company doesn't use AI it won't be competitive". AI evangelists are everywhere, from the internet to their direct network, reinforcing the idea. Investors are also influenced the same way, and put direct pressure on the leaders.

So it results in the CEO telling everyone that they should be using copilot (amongst other tools) because it'll improve their productivity, without knowing for a fact whether that's true or not.

I assume in some (poorly-run) companies, the person whose Big Idea (TM) it was to introduce this stuff may push people to use it, so that it seems like their thing was successful.

I have many friends telling me their job is actively pushing for them to use AI, asking them to be creative about the use of AI, and in some cases pivoting the business to AI products which have no profit margin for the business.

I have worked at many places, and often as soon as there's enough profit and momentum based on the back of some core product the fad chasing begins in earnest.

Suits get to then do talks about how awesome they are for their AI transition and the synergies it brought to their OKRS.

Or some bs like that.

Work at one or two shops where an expensive product makes the org's life a living hell but two directors or similar get to do a talk about how it has 'transformed' IT. It will all make sense then.

I've experienced this, it mostly comes with eye-wateringly expensive yearly contracts the company has signed where whoever made the decision needs to show that even low single digit percentages of company staff are using the thing they received a license for.

Not OP or at Microsoft, but also get the same pressure. Our business is financially invested in the hype, so it makes sense.

Less about being able to truly say a lot of people use the thing/find benefit. The first part is fine

It's pretty common in large orgs, I think. Someone gets sold on or just excited about the features claimed by a particular product and becomes the czar for that thing. They want to make the transition to that product successful for their own career reasons. If people aren't using it, then the purchase was a bad move, so people start getting pressured to use the product regardless of how useful it is.

Year ago, my company switched from Skype for Business to MS Teams, and we just used Teams the same way we did Skype for Business (PMing each other directly) and the guy who made the transition was always lecturing us about having conversations in public threads instead.

I'm in a large org where Copilot is pushed. What I've heard from upper management is that even a very small average productivity gain, multiplied by the number of developers we have, means that we have "saved" x number of man-hours per year. Man-hours can be translated into "number of employees", so if the Copilot license comes in under that employee salary total, it is a win.

I get it more for communication tools. I'm surprised to hear Copilot being pushed as it really is just a DX tool. My product is my code, maybe Copilot helps me but the boss should only care about the work getting done.

Execs are simply following the manufactured consensus about AI's impact on productivity and innovation. Go with a name brand like Microsoft and get that promotion for digital transformation or whatever. Nobody ever got fired for buying IBM.

Makes complete sense - some higher-up is betting on LLMs to make a big change to the org. If they're right, then leadership looks amazing (we got in early on a transformative new technology/tool that has resulted in major productivity wins!)

If they're wrong - they also look good (we tried the latest fad, pushed everyone to really give it a go, and decided it wasn't worth it).

No trial period for CoPilot means everyone wants to get their team to jump in and make the most of it quickly so they can evaluate whether to renew it next year.