There's a subtlety about using AI that can make folks less efficient if they aren't careful.
Since LLMs spit out LOTS of text, a person may waste lots of valuable time simply meandering through responses, and trying to keep it all in their head.
Contrast this to talking to a person who might just say "umm.. no no that's not how it works - because blah".
I find it funny how businesses can induce fear in people who think they are losing their jobs to ai. Then they lay people off anyway and make the remaining ones do the work of multiple roles. It is a kind of deadlock coming from stagnation, like how can you be motivated to use AI and make up for its mistakes by working overtime?
Everyone who could be considered a role model in my life has been “laid off” (fired) at least once. These are successful people. They’re all millionaires (not just the retired ones). We need to get over the fear and stigma of getting fired. It means nothing except your boss didn’t like you.
I never said anything about a role model, I said people having to do multiple roles in one. But I kind of agree with you, if your boss doesn't like you, you can literally build rockets to the moon and get laid off :^)
These days it is much harsher, if you are not socially accepted or liked, you are out of luck, your skill doesn't matter in their eyes, until... it does again
> We need to get over the fear [..] of getting fired.
You're speaking from a position of privilege.
Sure, a considerable number of people (If not a majority) here on Hacker News are decent earners and likely have enough savings to ride out a job loss for at least a few months.
But I recall my days while I was working a fast food job. If I lost my job, unless I found a new one within two weeks, I'd be homeless. When your paychecks are just barely covering the cost of living and saving is impossible, then getting fired is a genuine fear. It means losing the roof over your head and the food from the table.
Stigma meaning others judging you for being fired. High level “no one” wants to hire someone who was fired from their last job. I’m just saying in my experience everyone gets fired sooner or later, regardless of their abilities, job performance, social skills, et. Al.
This is just a random pet peeve of mine, but I simply don’t believe knowledge workers who claim to work 90 hour work weeks; this includes bankers and lawyers. I say this because I spend a lot of energy and time thinking about how to increase my effective hours worked, and I time myself. When I’m not severely depressed I’m able to do two four hours blocks separated by a break in a day, and maybe squeeze out an extra hour or two on a fantastic day. (But this only includes real work hours, not just being present at the office or sitting unproductively in a meeting.) And this is extremely tiring, and certainly not doable 7 days a week. So when people tell me they’re doing 90 hour work weeks what that tells me is they’re just harming themselves to be in an office for an unhealthy length of time, hoping it translates into something productive. There’s a perverse incentive here to make the hours and pain go up, without tracking productive output.
Now I’m aware that there are exceptionally energetic people who can probably do Einstein level deep thinking for 80 hours some weeks. I just think the average highly qualified and talented knowledge worker probably maxes out around 30-40, and the rest is fumes and cope really.
I've worked on secondment in remote locations and easily passed 80 hours per a week. Four weeks of straight 12-hour shifts + up to 2-hour overtime daily. Probably averaged 70 hours of effective work and genuinely approaching 100 hours in some 7 day stretches. No meals to cook, no chores, no commuting. It was actually far easier to stay motivated and focused, I felt 20 again. I would be lucky to average more than 4-6 hours productivity in my day job though. Don't underestimate the influence of environment and incentives (amortized it was only about 50-60 hours - bankers/lawyers are probably working in bursts too though).
A lot of it is just fake work. There was already a bunch of fake work before AI. Now there's even more fake work. Organizations tend to produce more and more of it.
The general impression I get is that the real bottleneck isn't needing to write code faster, it's understanding what the technical problems are and having the freedom to do what is needed (which is sometimes risky I guess).
It doesn't seem like we're headed in this direction (from my n=1 perspective on the ground). It seems like we've just dialed up the fake work and fear culture. People are too busy and afraid to actually look around and figure out what the fuck is going on. There's just more bullshit fake work and it just keeps coming. And it's getting done faster, sure, but it was never tied to any specific economic outcome anyway and solely exists to waste people's time and empire build.
And there's not really an incentive to fix the problem either. In corporate cultures which try to be "lean" and are firing people all the time, management is incentivized to intentionally overstaff teams and keep people pushed away from critical initiatives so that they have sacrificial lambs for the next layoff. In cultures which have more fat, there's no real downward pressure anyway.
You can't force organizations to be efficient without cutting out the middlemen and taking the time to figure out what the fuck is actually happening. At large companies, this is already unsustainable anyway. Maybe this is what McKinsey used to do (and what AI is now going to help with): getting an omniscient view of what's happening organizationally. This would require leadership to do stuff that actually makes sense, which is why it won't happen
I have a much more ai enabled job compared to earlier - and I enjoy it more and spend more time on it
I think AI has to an extent taken away the worst drudgery so the impact of "working another hour" or whatever has gotten a lot higher while the reluctance has decreased.
> A "sprint" is term for a common period in technology companies in which people work long hours in the weeks leading up to a release of a new feature or product.
Alright, who bullshitted to the BBC? I know its fun to mess with the normies, but that was just mean.
I guess it depends on how you use it and what the expectations are. I'm definitely in the camp of working way more, but it's just because I enjoy using AI to build.
I'd say the worst 80% of the evil in the world comes from the management and the marketing.
E.g. Boeing crashes - from the management.
Private minecraft servers are illegal? - management
No disc selling from Playstation? - Marketing
Why mentioning here? Because the greedy marketing team again told managers the AI is making people 100x more efficient without any proof, anything, just to sell sell sell. And the greedy managers again got fooled, and that's what we're witnessing here.
According to my experience the LLM assistance gives 0.5x-10x boost unevenly. This is really hard to predict, it's really fast on the first phase but getting lost in deep tasks, and looks like being optimised to win at the Turing test, but slack later
The problem is that while I'm more efficient while utilising LLMs, I'm given more work. This is nothing new - it's just more spinning plates at the same time; previously though I'd just say "I have so many things I'm doing, I cannot accept anything more". Now I've more tasks that I'm waiting for response and need to keep track of.
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[ 0.24 ms ] story [ 11.7 ms ] threadSince LLMs spit out LOTS of text, a person may waste lots of valuable time simply meandering through responses, and trying to keep it all in their head.
Contrast this to talking to a person who might just say "umm.. no no that's not how it works - because blah".
These days it is much harsher, if you are not socially accepted or liked, you are out of luck, your skill doesn't matter in their eyes, until... it does again
It also means (in the US) you lose access to your healthcare.
You're speaking from a position of privilege.
Sure, a considerable number of people (If not a majority) here on Hacker News are decent earners and likely have enough savings to ride out a job loss for at least a few months.
But I recall my days while I was working a fast food job. If I lost my job, unless I found a new one within two weeks, I'd be homeless. When your paychecks are just barely covering the cost of living and saving is impossible, then getting fired is a genuine fear. It means losing the roof over your head and the food from the table.
And in some cases, especially in our industry, that the funding ran out.
Now I’m aware that there are exceptionally energetic people who can probably do Einstein level deep thinking for 80 hours some weeks. I just think the average highly qualified and talented knowledge worker probably maxes out around 30-40, and the rest is fumes and cope really.
The general impression I get is that the real bottleneck isn't needing to write code faster, it's understanding what the technical problems are and having the freedom to do what is needed (which is sometimes risky I guess).
It doesn't seem like we're headed in this direction (from my n=1 perspective on the ground). It seems like we've just dialed up the fake work and fear culture. People are too busy and afraid to actually look around and figure out what the fuck is going on. There's just more bullshit fake work and it just keeps coming. And it's getting done faster, sure, but it was never tied to any specific economic outcome anyway and solely exists to waste people's time and empire build.
And there's not really an incentive to fix the problem either. In corporate cultures which try to be "lean" and are firing people all the time, management is incentivized to intentionally overstaff teams and keep people pushed away from critical initiatives so that they have sacrificial lambs for the next layoff. In cultures which have more fat, there's no real downward pressure anyway.
You can't force organizations to be efficient without cutting out the middlemen and taking the time to figure out what the fuck is actually happening. At large companies, this is already unsustainable anyway. Maybe this is what McKinsey used to do (and what AI is now going to help with): getting an omniscient view of what's happening organizationally. This would require leadership to do stuff that actually makes sense, which is why it won't happen
I think AI has to an extent taken away the worst drudgery so the impact of "working another hour" or whatever has gotten a lot higher while the reluctance has decreased.
Alright, who bullshitted to the BBC? I know its fun to mess with the normies, but that was just mean.
E.g. Boeing crashes - from the management.
Private minecraft servers are illegal? - management
No disc selling from Playstation? - Marketing
Why mentioning here? Because the greedy marketing team again told managers the AI is making people 100x more efficient without any proof, anything, just to sell sell sell. And the greedy managers again got fooled, and that's what we're witnessing here.
According to my experience the LLM assistance gives 0.5x-10x boost unevenly. This is really hard to predict, it's really fast on the first phase but getting lost in deep tasks, and looks like being optimised to win at the Turing test, but slack later