u/El_Spanberger

I got kicked off Meta about 2 1/2 years ago by its rogue AI, and consequently decided that life's better without meta. As this bed in, I retreated from all social media - and it was glorious.

However, about 6 months ago, I was made redundant. Given the state of the job market, I figured why not just start a business.

I'm a writer who's made the jump into leading AI adoption. Was in full AI vampire mode for all of 2025, so had no idea just how bad things had got in social media land re: AI writing. That said, seemed like a pretty great opportunity - one eyed man//land of the blind thing. Actually been working pretty great too - loads of leads etc just from writing stuff and whacking it on LinkedIn.

Then these anti-AI slop measures came in. Now, AI content seems to have gone through the fucking roof while anything I post which is entirely human-authored gets sod all impressions.

The fucking zenith though. Today, I start a new job - fractional, but enough to keep the wolves from the door. Stupidly, I thought 'oh yeah, LinkedIn will love this'.

One hour posting, and I've got 8 impressions.

EIGHT.

FOR A NEW FUCKING JOB POST ON FUCKING LINKEDIN.

I HAVE 10,000+ CONNECTIONS.

WTAF

We had the CPN kick off yesterday - which is great - but came away from the session decidedly underwhelmed.

First up, considering what Anthropic pays, I was expecting a little more... I dunno... oomph? The presenters came across as incredibly flat and kind of condescending (one told us to lean in 5-6 times in under a minute, seemed dismissive of 'the little guy' as they put it). Incredibly corporate too.

Was also puzzled by the dev-centric approach - Anthropic seem to be trading under the assumption that all companies are software development companies. Don't get me wrong, I understand the value of targeting SWE, but cowork/knowledge workers playing second fiddle seems like a misstep.

The rule of 10 they brought in seems arbitrary and plenty of people are just gathering up randos to clear the requirement. Anthropic addressed this and said changes were coming - when? I've spent a huge chunk of time hustling to get a crew together, now unsure if there was any point to that, and what the plan is.

The steer to prioritise adoption is welcome - it's what I've done for 2 years despite the snake oilers flogging vibed API wrappers as enablement. But Anthropic seems oblivious to how hard that bit is.

Training in the tech is useful, but really partners need adoption training. IMO this is hands on, in person, boots on the ground type of affair - and the majority of the work requires people skills, not tech skills. Its absence to me says Anthropic is either unaware of or unable to address the real barriers here.

Since leaving my FTE role to setup an agency doing this stuff, the vast majority of folks I've interacted with are solo practitioners. It seems to me like there's a few factions in adoption:

- IT bros parachuted in from Bangladesh by Accenture

- McKinsey goons skimming C-suites

- SWEs who've never interacted with a department that doesn't speak python

- The 'Toms' - ie. Folks who grabbed the gauntlet in their org, ran with it, and likely burned out on those people barriers

Only one group here - the Toms - have the relevant skillsets and expertise to actually do this stuff. These are the guys now flying solo trying to partner Anthropic. Typically, these guys are also not 'engineers' - they come from HR, comms, IT, commercial, middle management, BD etc. Generalists not code monkeys.

I'm still excited to see where this all goes, but this all felt like a misstep than a bold first foot forward.