HN Explorer

Job Is to Give a Shit

14 points by danfunk ↗ HN
I'm just drinking wine and working late, and it occurs to me that my job in this brave new world of LLMs is that I care. The ability to give a damn seems well outside an LLM's capabilities.

I care about the code and what it is like to read it three weeks from now. I care about the people using this software I'm working on, I want their lives to be spent doing less pointless stupid shit. I think, maybe, that's an ok outcome. Non dystopian. That it's maybe a better world if the people that can contribute the most, are the ones that have passion. That "care" becomes the most highly appreciated skill. That smells good to me. Maybe I sleep good tonight. Maybe it's the wine.

8 comments

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Eaglo
Wine is good for the soul
[deleted]
(comment deleted)
muzani
For startups, giving a shit has always been a requirement. Once it get removed from requirements, it becomes a "corporation".

It's awfully hard to find people who do give a shit and even harder to interview for it. It doesn't scale with money, which is exactly why but companies don't look for it.

The results don't lie; it's why companies like Google who hire the most expensive people in the world regularly fail to release something like Antigravity in a stable form when people are building these things solo.

Corporations end up buying these startups for massive amounts of money. It works for everyone because the startups are compensated well for giving a shit and corporations just sit on the gold mine making sure the money keeps flowing.

But it's a good point you raise here. I disagree to an extent - AI will give more of a shit than many humans. It's the main reason many people lose their jobs over it.

So it stands to reason that startups will continue to be AI-resistant. There's a lot of hype that you can build "anything". But where are the alternatives to Facebook, Jira, MS Teams, Stack Overflow, Stripe, and all these other proven business models that everyone hates but is forced to use anyway?

PaulHoule
I agree completely.

People will say there is more to it than that, I mean, ethics is a big branch of philosophy, but I think "you feel bad when you do something wrong" is what makes you a moral subject.

I'd say that animals are moral subjects in that they are sensitive to ruptures in relationships and expectations. The first time I fell off a horse the horse was a lot more shook up than I was. A cat doesn't feel guilty about killing a bird (not against the values of cats) but does seem to feel guilty about breaking a vase.

See also

https://simonwillison.net/2025/Feb/3/a-computer-can-never-be...

EatYoBroccoli
As humans, we actually enjoy work. Not all work; but having a purpose and doing something meaningful. We hate to admit it, but it’s true. That’s why people who retire sometimes die quickly after.

Pass that wine.

danfunk
my dad passed away within a year of retirement. I remember there being studies at the time saying this was common, but the research doesn't seem to hold this up as much any more.

But I agree that "purpose" is critical to life. I tend to think of it as having a meaningful role in our "community" - but there seems to be wide flexibility in what defines a community. I was certain for a very long time that we had to work to live meaningful lives, and I think I've drifted slightly away from that notion over the last year. We just need to be important to at least one other person. There is great deal of "work" involved in just doing that.

lordkrandel
No, it's not care, in my opinion the key to understand, is the lack of pain, as both a motivator and a refrain. Pain is what would make LLM afraid of lying or dying. They can fake care, they can fake tears, but they cannot fake pain. They drag you in a spiral of concoacted synthetical sentences, with no shame or guilt about what they are saying, as cold as a fridge. Why? Because they have no compassion, no passion, which means, no pain.