Something strange has been happening at my job over the last 90 days, and I am trying to understand what is really going on.
I work in tech as a computer engineer. I do a lot of coding, troubleshooting, and technical work. I am usually the person who knows enough to get pulled into problems, even if I do not always formally own them.
Recently, I was transferred to a different supervisor, and the difference has been dramatic.
This new supervisor is almost always available on Teams. His status is constantly green, and whenever I ask him a question, he usually answers within five minutes. One time I messaged him far outside my normal working hours, and he still responded almost immediately.
He is also in a lot of meetings, and the transcription is almost always turned on. When I ask him questions about a project, he can quickly tell me where to find something, what process to follow, or which template I should use.
What really stands out is when I ask him coding questions. He does not just give general advice. He writes out the entire code, and it works every time.
There have also been personal situations where his responses felt unusual. The other day, my child broke his arm, and my supervisor told me not to worry, that he would take care of things, and to just check in with him when I got back. When I returned and updated him, he said he wished my family well and told me to let him know if I needed anything. It was kind, but the way he said it felt very polished, canned, and almost artificial.
Another example: I asked him for a file, and he did not have it. But instead of saying he would look for it later, he immediately emailed the person responsible for it.
This is a major shift from my previous supervisor. The speed, availability, technical accuracy, and polished communication all feel very different. I am trying to figure out whether he is just extremely organized and responsive, whether he is heavily using AI tools, or whether something else is going on behind the scenes.
The intent of what I am saying is this: I am not accusing him of anything. I am trying to understand why his behavior feels so unusually efficient, responsive, and almost automated compared to what I have experienced before.
No I have never heard him talk. He just puts questions in chat and other attendees answer them.
Our 1:1 is via chat.
Given the info in your original post and that, I'd wager one of three scenarios.
A) Most Likely: Your supervisor is just using an AI chatbot to handle day to day stuff and possibly checking in on you and others every so often to ensure work is being done and things aren't being derailed. Could only speculate why they would do this, either being lazy or having a lot of other tasks so automating where they can lets them spend more time on more important things, to them at least.
B) Less likely: Your supervisor is just a very eccentric and formulaic person who functions on a near identical schedule as your own in terms of sleep and activity, possibly being made supervisor of the team because of their talent and HR/Management wanting them to train up more so they don't everything and thus become irreplaceable should they take a vacation or otherwise unable to work more. Plausible in a tech/developer field though extremely unlikely, as this kind of person is exactly who'd I'd expect to setup an AI client to interact with their team and save them time.
C) Unlikely but possible: Your supervisor is entirely an AI. Financially doesn't make sense to have multiple person team being overseen by a bot that could possibly complete all the work on it's own and would only need someone to monitor it's output for consistency and function. Hiring multiple people to take orders from a chatbot seems a hilarious waste of resources if your field is not entirely testing products someone else created.
Maybe I am getting paranoid, but this does read like it was generated at least with the help of an LLM, if not fully written by one.
PS/Edit: What does it say about us as humans if we associate well structured and thought out responses that are internally consistent and don't contain any obvious errors with "not human"?
Hey if you think I'm an AI, can I interest you in a subscription plan to read barely filtered bullshit for the low low price one 9.95 USD a month?
I just have a background in USAF and had to sanitize a lot of emails to tell an E-7 or O-3 to politely fuck off because their orders and directives clashed with standing orders from an O-7 or above. Always a fun time when the first shirt pulls you into his office unofficially to compliment how well you phrased it but also veil threats about the extra duty I'd be pulling if I indirectly told him to pound sand between the lines again.
As for the whole LLM thing... To be fair reddit was a massive free info source most LLMs used to develop their database to make their bots and communicate like humans and not a command prompt.
CAN you call him?
How is that even possible ? The sheer amount of time spent typing would render the exercise an actual burden. Or maybe everyone is doing speech to text ?
Idk to me text is always so much nicer. We don't spend time mumbling about and we can reference past conversations easily (for the most part). Though I do feel a need to a live meeting every now and then else I go mad lol
You could always call the guy