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A colleague who is non-tech but does light ETL work (this relates to the subject: only in the UK could they fail to hire someone to actually do this work proper

A colleague who is non-tech but does light ETL work (this relates to the subject: only in the UK could they fail to hire someone to actually do this work properly) was propounding to me about the benefits of ChatGPT. He could ask it for Python or SQL, and he could just paste it in and it would do all his tasks. His conclusion was: programmers are getting replaced, and he will replace them. In reality, he will get replaced because all he is doing copy-pasting snippets. To actually build a full system that will slough away staff requires domain knowledge that a chatbot doesn't have. ChatGPT will come first for the people using it most now. I often think about starting a business-process outsourcing company in the UK. I know there are companies in Japan (also a country known for overhiring). But then you talk to managers about their processes, and you realise they genuinely do not understand anything about technology...it is just pointless, like trying to teach German to a chimp. The stuff you see in local govt/healthcare would bring people on here to tears. The local govt was trying to hire people to improve processes...their listed tech contained no programming languages and just included managed services. You see tech roles, and it is all the same: just managed services, no actual coding...it is incredible.

cosmodisk 4y ago
I'm currently in some surreal world because of a large government contract our company had won. Multiple companies are involved. Lack of any meaningful systems, people who have no technical understanding about anything making decisions, data requests have timelines as we could simply magic them up on demand. People don't understand data, statistics, not to mention systems. Some are paid handsomely for, frankly speaking ,not doing much. I often have an imposter syndrome,but it looks like the bar is really really low.
- skippyboxedhero 4y ago
  I think this is the issue everywhere with govt (if you are not based in the UK). But yes, it isn't the lack of use of tech in management, they aren't even aware of what modern tech is. From what I have seen, the managers are "experts" in managed services deployments, there is no capacity for actual tech hires (and then they hire consultants who fuck it up, and they complain about how hard tech is...when a core part of their job should be to hire and run the project). Complaining about govt is eternal though. My local council offers unskilled, internal-only jobs at pay levels similar to dev jobs in the private sector at the same level of seniority...and the council has twenty people to the job of one person...what can you say?
_dain_ 4y ago
>The stuff you see in local govt/healthcare would bring people on here to tears. The local govt was trying to hire people to improve processes...their listed tech contained no programming languages and just included managed services. You see tech roles, and it is all the same: just managed services, no actual coding...it is incredible. you talk about hiring under-qualified people, but they also hire over-qualified people and don't know what to do with them. I got hired out of university as a "data scientist" in the govt; but it turned out they actually didn't have any data science to give me. they just slotted me into the same excel clusterfuck workflows they always had. the inefficiency was unimaginable, it was like the spreadsheet dark ages. i tried to clean things up on my own initiative, automate them, have proper version control and data pipelines in code rather than manual steps described in piles of word documents; but I was the only person in my section of the org chart who had the skills or even cared about the problems. I could make things better in my tiny corner, but everyone I had to work with was clueless, so there was only so much I could do. so I just quit out of boredom and frustration. then I got a SWE job for more than twice the pay.
- incone123 4y ago
  My friend told me about a government department that got an outside firm to run an online survey. The responses were delivered as one PDF per response. The department had a bunch of junior staff copy pasting these into Excel.
  - lordnacho 4y ago
    I was a junior guy on a trading desk at a hedge fund once, and I got sent out to our fund administrator to help them produce a NAV for the fund. All our trading was done by computers, with everything written to a database. I show up at the fund admin's office, and what do I see? There's two young guys my age sitting there with the printed trades, thousands of them... typing them into a computer. One typing, one double checking. They had been at it for days when I arrived.
    - skippyboxedhero 4y ago
incone123 4y ago
Managed services? Luxury! I've seen people using table grids in MS Word to do tasks that belong in Excel.
- MonaroVXR 4y ago
  Glad that I'm not the only one.
InCityDreams 4y ago
>they genuinely do not understand anything about technology...it is just pointless, like trying to teach German to a chimp. My monkey, just told you to "vaffanculo", but s/he genuinely does not understand anything about spiecies. Which is where i dodged a bullet...
Nextgrid 4y ago
Processes are a way to give a job, purpose and career prospects to various people in the organization. Despite everyone talking about "digital transformation" and other BS buzzwords, nobody would truly want automation that actually works, because doing so would either obsolete their position outright or force them to actually work hard to keep up with the machine (instead of merely attending endless meetings about "digital transformation" that will at best introduce more busywork rather than actually achieve its stated goal).
precompute 4y ago
Great comment. The economy exists to create jobs. Doesn't matter of what kind, because there's supposed to be X percentage of the population in a certain tax bracket to make everything work.
MonaroVXR 4y ago
Completely agree with this comment als other comments.

cosmodisk 4y ago

I'm currently in some surreal world because of a large government contract our company had won. Multiple companies are involved. Lack of any meaningful systems, people who have no technical understanding about anything making decisions, data requests have timelines as we could simply magic them up on demand. People don't understand data, statistics, not to mention systems. Some are paid handsomely for, frankly speaking ,not doing much. I often have an imposter syndrome,but it looks like the bar is really really low.

skippyboxedhero 4y ago
I think this is the issue everywhere with govt (if you are not based in the UK). But yes, it isn't the lack of use of tech in management, they aren't even aware of what modern tech is. From what I have seen, the managers are "experts" in managed services deployments, there is no capacity for actual tech hires (and then they hire consultants who fuck it up, and they complain about how hard tech is...when a core part of their job should be to hire and run the project). Complaining about govt is eternal though. My local council offers unskilled, internal-only jobs at pay levels similar to dev jobs in the private sector at the same level of seniority...and the council has twenty people to the job of one person...what can you say?

_dain_ 4y ago

>The stuff you see in local govt/healthcare would bring people on here to tears. The local govt was trying to hire people to improve processes...their listed tech contained no programming languages and just included managed services. You see tech roles, and it is all the same: just managed services, no actual coding...it is incredible. you talk about hiring under-qualified people, but they also hire over-qualified people and don't know what to do with them. I got hired out of university as a "data scientist" in the govt; but it turned out they actually didn't have any data science to give me. they just slotted me into the same excel clusterfuck workflows they always had. the inefficiency was unimaginable, it was like the spreadsheet dark ages. i tried to clean things up on my own initiative, automate them, have proper version control and data pipelines in code rather than manual steps described in piles of word documents; but I was the only person in my section of the org chart who had the skills or even cared about the problems. I could make things better in my tiny corner, but everyone I had to work with was clueless, so there was only so much I could do. so I just quit out of boredom and frustration. then I got a SWE job for more than twice the pay.

incone123 4y ago
My friend told me about a government department that got an outside firm to run an online survey. The responses were delivered as one PDF per response. The department had a bunch of junior staff copy pasting these into Excel.
- lordnacho 4y ago
  I was a junior guy on a trading desk at a hedge fund once, and I got sent out to our fund administrator to help them produce a NAV for the fund. All our trading was done by computers, with everything written to a database. I show up at the fund admin's office, and what do I see? There's two young guys my age sitting there with the printed trades, thousands of them... typing them into a computer. One typing, one double checking. They had been at it for days when I arrived.
  - skippyboxedhero 4y ago

incone123 4y ago

Managed services? Luxury! I've seen people using table grids in MS Word to do tasks that belong in Excel.

MonaroVXR 4y ago
Glad that I'm not the only one.

InCityDreams 4y ago

>they genuinely do not understand anything about technology...it is just pointless, like trying to teach German to a chimp. My monkey, just told you to "vaffanculo", but s/he genuinely does not understand anything about spiecies. Which is where i dodged a bullet...

Nextgrid 4y ago

Processes are a way to give a job, purpose and career prospects to various people in the organization. Despite everyone talking about "digital transformation" and other BS buzzwords, nobody would truly want automation that actually works, because doing so would either obsolete their position outright or force them to actually work hard to keep up with the machine (instead of merely attending endless meetings about "digital transformation" that will at best introduce more busywork rather than actually achieve its stated goal).

precompute 4y ago

Great comment. The economy exists to create jobs. Doesn't matter of what kind, because there's supposed to be X percentage of the population in a certain tax bracket to make everything work.

MonaroVXR 4y ago

Completely agree with this comment als other comments.