Steve Yegge: Google's Internal AI Adoption Comparable to John Deere — 20% Agentic Power Users, 20% Refusers, 60% in Chat Mode

Simon Willison's Blog·high signal

Steve Yegge shared a conversation with a Google tech director of 20 years revealing that Google engineering has roughly the same AI adoption curve as a tractor company: 20% agentic power users, 20% outright refusers, and 60% still using basic chat/Cursor-level tools. Yegge notes Google is 'not only unable to do anything about it, but doesn't seem to be aware of the problem' — and an industry-wide 18+ month hiring freeze means no external hires arriving to flag how far behind they are. Simon Willison surfaced the thread, reinforcing his status as the pipeline's #1 source.