50 AI CEO Jokes Every Engineer Has Heard at All-Hands

The CEO opened the all-hands with: "AI changes everything." Nothing else was discussed.

"We're going to be an AI-first company." The company: Sells dental insurance.

The CEO saw one demo on Tuesday. By Friday the entire roadmap was different.

"We need to move at AI speed." Procurement still takes six weeks.

The CEO posted on LinkedIn about AI. The stock went up 4%. The product did not change.

"I want every team to integrate AI." The legal team: "Please define integrate."

The CEO mentioned AGI in a board meeting. The board sent flowers.

"We have to disrupt ourselves before someone else does." The disruption: Moving the all-hands to Mondays.

The CEO read a Substack post. The company now has a Chief AI Officer.

"This is a Code Red moment." The code was fine. The meeting was the red.

The CEO asked for a 10x productivity gain. The engineering team asked for a 10x clarity gain.

"We're going to deprecate seven products." The seven products: The ones nobody told the CEO about.

The CEO's keynote slide said "AI-native." The codebase predates the iPhone.

"We're rewriting the org chart for AI." The new org chart: The old org chart, recolored.

The CEO bought every employee a ChatGPT subscription. Productivity rose for two weeks. The subscriptions are unused now.

"What's our AI strategy?" "To have one."

The CEO wants a demo for the board on Thursday. The product team is hearing about it on Wednesday at 6 p.m.

"Every product needs a copilot." The dental insurance product: "Even us?"

The CEO returned from a conference. A reorg followed within 72 hours.

"We're partnering with Anthropic." The partnership: A Claude API key.

The CEO described the new strategy as "agentic." Nobody on the call asked a follow-up question.

"What's our differentiator?" "We were the first to say AI on our website."

The CEO scheduled a 90-day AI transformation. Quarter three is now also quarter four.

"I want bold thinking." The bold thinking: Also the safest thinking.

The CEO read about a competitor's AI product in The Information. The morning all-hands was rescheduled for an emergency all-hands.

"We're hiring a Head of AI." Reports to: The CEO. Responsibilities: Make the CEO sound right.

The CEO promised AI savings of $40 million. Finance noted the AI tools cost $42 million.

"We need to ship faster." The shipping process: The CEO approves the shipment.

The CEO opened the earnings call with the word AI. The analysts opened their notebooks.

"Innovation is in our DNA." The DNA: Four press releases from 2019.

The CEO wants AI to write the company values. The AI wrote five values. Three of them were the same value.

"This is the most exciting time in our company's history." It was also the most exciting time last quarter.

CEO at the all-hands: "We need to think differently." The seating arrangement: Identical to every other all-hands.

"Our new mission statement." It is the old mission statement with the word AI in it twice.

The CEO asked the team to think 10x bigger. The team is now exhausted by the 1x version.

"We owe it to our customers to be aggressive on AI." The customers: Never asked.

The CEO mentioned a competitor by name on a Tuesday. A 47-slide war room was scheduled for Wednesday.

"This is non-negotiable." It was negotiated by Friday.

The CEO said we are entering an "intelligence era." Finance still cannot get a straight answer on the AI budget.

"I expect everyone to use AI daily." The CEO has used it once. For a tweet.

The CEO ran the town-hall AI demo live on stage. The loading spinner ran for the entire town hall.

A countdown timer appeared in the lobby for "AI Transformation Day 1." Day 1 arrived. The timer was reset.

The CEO acquired an AI startup over the weekend. The due diligence: A podcast episode the CEO listened to on Saturday.

The CEO went on a podcast about AI strategy. The CEO learned what RAG meant on minute 38. The episode is still pinned to the company homepage.

The CEO published the company's AI ethics statement. The statement: Written by AI. Reviewed by no one.

The CEO is doing 1:1s in the cafeteria. The 1:1 is about AI urgency. The other person was trying to get a sandwich.

The CEO toured a data center for the GPU photo. The photo: The CEO standing in front of a rack the company does not rent.

The CEO renamed the company vision to one word. The word: Intelligence. The slide: Still takes 14 minutes to explain.

The CEO did an AMA on Slack. The answers arrived in paragraphs of exactly the same length. Engineering noticed first.

On the earnings call the CEO said the word intelligence 47 times. The analysts counted. The stock went up 6%.