A4) All of the above, and (assuming!) a portion of every dollar saved needs to go into training budgets. Re-/up-skilling, yes, but also leadership, mentorship, and everything else that lies beyond the current grasp of #AI. Reach back to Deming's 14 points... #ciochat
A3) For everyone, #AI use has to be careful, thought out, and used properly to avoid the negative side-effects. In #IT infrastructure spaces, I may be seeing both less AI and more provider-centric tool use. As usual, vendor lock-in could become a problem. #ciochat
A2.2) If you're interviewing a junior person and you can only keep a straight face when they ask about "opportunities for growth" because you equally want to laugh and cry ... well, maybe move on yourself. #ciochat
A2.1) Yes, but it's worse than that in many shops. Flattening and leaning out technical orgs mean fewer mid and senior positions and in some cases fewer advancement opportunities (do -> design -> strategy -> lead) in the first place. #ciochat
A1) The pressures there have been building for a decade or more. Between #cloud and other forms of out-sourcing, junior roles were already squeezed. Not really a surprise that the top dogs think out-sourcing to #AI will continue their squeeze -> OpEx trend lines. #ciochat
A4) That is the big Q! Even if we invented a time machine, our prior selves from only a few years ago might not believe what we told them about 2026. Worse yet, short-term pressures might still not let old-us prepare to be new-us. #ciochat
A3.2) Having to solve fewer problems and answer fewer questions in the moment is the key to velocity. #ciochat
A3.1) The orgs that doubled down on platform plays, frameworks, and standardized building blocks may be in better shape. If they listened to [Isaac Sacolick] and emphasized Agile, Dev[Sec]Ops, IaC, and public cloud at the right time, so much the better. #ciochat
A2) Ideally, building trust and relationships up, down, and across the org so decisions get made in the right time by the right people. Balancing left-of-boom and right-of-boom thinking. Without burning out? I wouldn't know. 😇😈 #ciochat
A1.2) Issues of leadership vs. management at every level add to the leadership imperatives at the #CIO level. They need sub-leaders and need to grow leaders under them. Management alone won't do, especially in the age of AI-driven velocity. #ciochat
A1.1) For some, all the problems of prioritization are compounded by years of CapEx transition, pressure to flatten the org structure, and the usual pressure to contain every cost that doesn't map specifically to revenue. #ciochat
A4) Double down on relationship building for sure. Show up for #ciochat and other learning experiences. 😇 Depends on whether there's a CTO, CAIO, or some other role that already has more outward-facing vision. Art of the possible and building reusable platforms for speed.
A3) Depends on the org and market, but there may be opportunities for #IT to co-create new business models, services, platform plays, etc. to compliment and extend "the business" (like digital twins for jet engines). #ciochat
A2) Just wrote about that on LinkedIn the other day. $ in, $ out, risk up, risk down, opportunities enabled, and threats defended are our value props. Give the business our best estimates and confidence ranges, but they get to own "their" projects in the end. #ciochat
A1) The business / #IT divide has to end. Not just so IT can be seen as an engine of growth, but not as a set of sticking brakes and "no" everywhere (also true of the CISO's org). We play as a cohesive team or we lose every game. #ciochat
A4) As [Ali] said, the experience gained with public #cloud's variable costs has been valuable when accounting for token burn. So far, tracking closely ane optimizing at strategy / design time where we can. #ciochat
A3) So far, working that into project and product budgets and forecasts. As [Isaac] said, those forecasts have to stay pretty darn loose since estimation is rough at best. Model churn doesn't help. #ciochat
A2) Prompt discipline / design and model choice more than in-line model routing. Maybe a path to fewer surprises, maybe not. #ciochat
A1) Not ramping anything new right now, so [token burn is] flat-ish with existing people and services. Definitely not in the "track employee token burn as a proxy metric for their value creation" camp. #ciochat
A4) All of the new capabilities you mentioned earlier, but I am fatalistic about the risk. We have to have (and maybe steer) open, honest, clear-eyed talks at high levels to manage the speed / risk trade-off and ensure alignment with share- / stakeholder risk appetite. #ciochat
A3) Decentralized ownership on top of reusable architectures to enable the business folks to own the things that might normally turn into #ShadowAI. Sadly, an #AI center of excellence scales even worse now than relying on one to keep #cloud in check. #ciochat
A2) Whenever possible, making a "plaform play" and defining reusable components, infrastructures, and architectures that we can use to speed up the rest (and accelerate the cycle). Complexity and super-sprawl (much like microservices) are two of the enemies. #ciochat
A1) Stakeholder alignment, but that's partly because I insist on security, audit, privacy, and risk folks being first-class stakeholders and brought in from day zero whenever possible. #ciochat
A4) If the #CIO doesn't bring more value than that, they'll be replaced by the CIObot (w/ maybe a fractional/virtual human in the loop) in no time. I'm not going to do the McKinsey thing and count bots as "digital employees". #ciochat
A3) That is the big Q! One question I ask everyone is "are you building the simolest solution that fills the need?" Sprawl (of every kind) and complexity are the enemies of predictability going in and transparency / explainability coming out. #ciochat
A2) 😆😢😆😢😆😢 Without making the teams feel threatened? That is, sadly, not the story of anywhere I've been lately. Whether it's the algorithms, the out-sourcing, the downsizing, or the M&A; the pressure is building. #ciochat
A1) Nothing too sexy here. The usual kinds of ticket routing, workflow, and #SLA management were the start. #FinOps brought a lot of data requirements and algorithms in as well. #ciochat
A4) Sounds like a good recipe. Aligning w/ business goals and keeping one eye outside the company on customers competitors, potential disruptors, and opportunities is becoming a #CIO necessity (almost) w/o regard to the make-up of the C-suite. #ciochat
A3.2) Literally *everything* is connected, and pretending otherwise just gets us in trouble. Holistic approaches are harder and sometimes costlier up front, but finding and debugging the issues between services (at every level) reduces risk across the board. #ciochat
