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I work for my company as a lone coder in a coworking space, an ocean away from the rest of the company. What gives, you my ask. I sit in one corner of a 6 desk
by ericol 8y ago
I work for my company as a lone coder in a coworking space, an ocean away from the rest of the company.
What gives, you my ask.
I sit in one corner of a 6 desks arrangement and the rest of these desks plus another arrangement of 6 desks are occupied by a company in the RPA bussiness.
The CEO of the company sits right next to me (When I started working in this space almost a year ago all these desks were empty, so obviously I took the best position) so we have a good couple of chats the days he shows up (They have a "formal" office in the city).
They have a couple of whiteboards in the wall next to my right, where they use actual, physical pseudo kanban boards with postits and shit that get reorganized probably weekly, because they can't cope with the amount of new work they are getting.
They have doubled the number of programmers since May, in a country (Argentina) where things are not looking that bright for nobody.
From my desk, I can _feel_ the pain of all the jobs they are killing.
I can't tell you _exactly_ what "large group" of jobs they have killed because the chats are not that intimate, but I see the list of companies they are working with, and all the big ones from the country are there. all of them.
They _are_ killing jobs, a plenty, without discrimination. And this is barely starting.
- scottlocklin 8y agoAnd... which jobs exactly have they have killed? All you have documented here is some company doubling the number of programmers since May, which sure as heck sounds like creating jobs to me. Some VC funded startup allegedly working with companies does not equal killing jobs with "AI." If this were really happening it would be real easy to document! The X industry is gone now. Like buggy whips. But it's not; it's science fiction. I know, I know, people _really_believe_ -that doesn't make it real. Numbers, people: name names, no anecdotes about the stories from people next to you in the WeWork or whatever the journalistic dipshits are releasing from a PR agency.
- planktons 8y agoYou and your grandparent essentially say “it hasn’t happened yet.” Nobody said it’s happened. It’s going to happen.
- scottlocklin 8y agoYeah, and "nanotech" is going to be a trillion dollar industry by 2015. Sorry "citations needed." Many people can assert things.
- planktons 8y agoSo you can’t reason about something that hasn’t happened yet. That’s your stance. You could throw any argument out the window this way.
- scottlocklin 8y agoIt's a really effective and accurate argument with good Brier score when it's deployed against marketing woo, which is all that "AI" is. I'm happy to place a long bet at whatever odds you like for whatever specific prediction you care to make if you want to put your money where your mouth is. Auger, "long now" whatever -I'm good for it.
- dang 8y agoWould you please stop posting trollish comments to HN so we don't have to keep banning you?
- planktons 8y agoSo I’m banned? For what? How is anything I’ve said trollish? This is a joke right? Which part is trolling? AI is a threat to jobs? People respond to AI “alarmists” with character attacks and sarcasm? I genuinely do not get it. If banning me is such a horrible burden for you, you are free to email me so that we can discuss a solution.
- dang 8y agoWe haven't banned this account, but we've banned previous accounts that I believe you've used. If you keep breaking the site guidelines, we're going to have to ban you again. I'd much rather you'd take the spirit of this site to heart. We're trying for something, as you know, that's a little bit better than internet default. That means posting civilly and substantively, with respect for others no matter how wrong they may be. When a comment is both low-information and personally negative, it becomes trollish almost regardless of topic. I think I read "So you can’t reason", etc., as personal, though looking at it now I see that you meant "you" in the sense of "one". Sorry! Nonetheless, you've posted such comments in the past, including recently (e.g. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19099603 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19099603, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19110921 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19110921), so the main request stands.
- rboyd 8y agoif RPA means robotic process automation then presumably these are lost manufacturing jobs?
- ericol 8y ago> And... which jobs exactly have they have killed? Unfortunately, I can't answer that question, because that's not that the people from the other company would discuss openly. I had a couple of chats with the CEO about this, and he mentioned briefly that this affected jobs with a high level of repetitive tasks (E.g., invoice processing and stuff). There was one process we kind of discussed at length enough as to answer this: In my country, it's normal for supermarkets to have 3rd party employees to take care of certain aisles that have only products from the 3rd party. The thing is, putting products in order there is a time consuming process, and obviously prone to error. The change would be, the employee would take a picture of the aisle once finished, send the picture to a service that would process it automatically and alert the employee before she left the supermarket if there was a problem or anything (Like, a product needing replacement or similar). > All you have documented here is some company doubling the number of programmers since May Yep, that's right. the downside of this, is that there are a lot of companies looking to automate processes that are time consuming, and that affects jobs directly. hat the company decides to do in the end regarding the people in those jobs is up to the complany obviously. Sorry about the late reply, thought.