4 ms·

I won't soon forget how as a tools programmer at a game studio, I noticed a couple of the writers spent a big portion of their day churning text from the design

I won't soon forget how as a tools programmer at a game studio, I noticed a couple of the writers spent a big portion of their day churning text from the design team's word docs through excel macros to generate CSV files consumed by our build system. I looked at that and went "oh, I can just automate this", and replaced all that busywork with a tiny C# program that would just do it correctly all the time automatically so nobody had to do it by hand anymore. Only occurred to me much later that now they didn't have much work to do and were at a higher risk of being laid off! A good lesson to think about all the implications of the software I'm writing. We've seen AI-adjacent tooling getting leveraged to eliminate more of that category of work in games already, like automated generation of NPC "barks".

chii 3y ago
> A good lesson to think about all the implications of the software I'm writing. only in so far as not reaping the rewards for having done more work than the company paid you for. Efficiency improvements are always good for society as a whole, despite it hurting some people who originally was paid due to the inefficiency.
- mschuster91 3y ago
  > Efficiency improvements are always good for society as a whole, despite it hurting some people who originally was paid due to the inefficiency. When the economic/capital/wealth 1% end up hoarding all the profitability gains, society as a whole loses. I have come to loathe the term "disruption" as it has always meant externalizing costs to make a quick buck: either by technology replacing actual, real humans with real families who now have to struggle to survive or by breaking laws and regulations like Uber and AirBnB did, with society paying the costs associated with that - in the case of Uber, society picked up the tab for underinsured drivers or for their pension/social security contributions which don't apply for "freelancers", and in the case of AirBnB all the neighbors affected by the noise and literal other disruptions an AirBnB brings with it.
  - droopyEyelids 3y ago
    This is a criticism of the USA's economic system, where we only give people money through _factor payments_ (exchanging money for labor) or _ownership of capital_. It isn't actually a criticism of technology/automation! In healthier countries, like the Nordics, they've organized their society so that automation, resource extraction, and really all success in business benefits their society as a whole rather than concentrating the wealth into the hands of the elite. Having written that, I feel like I'm picking a nit, because what you said is true in the USA and I don't see it changing in my lifetime.
    - mschuster91 3y ago
      Norway is one of the very few democratic nations having a sizable sovereign wealth fund and a strong tradition of the responsibility of the state to take care of all of its citizens (partially because the natural conditions make survival without cooperation all but impossible). Out of all the top 20 SWFs [1], only four to six belong to healthy democracies, six if you count Turkey and the US as one - the rest are essentially grifting arms for the local rulers. Everyone else barely has a SWF worth the name and almost all Western and Western-allied countries have fallen into the neoliberal/"lean government" trap. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_sovereign_wealth_funds https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_sovereign...
      - droopyEyelids 3y ago
        Thats true but a sovereign wealth fund isn't the only way to link success of the country's businesses to the success of the people. Using tax revenue to fund a social safety net, public works, education, and housing achieves the goal. The sovereign wealth fund is more about what to do with the money between taxation and social works. If the country has a sovereign wealth fund without all the social spending then I'd say the success of the country's business hasn't been linked to the wellbeing of the people.
  - jschveibinz 3y ago
    The 1% do not get wealthy from “hoarding the profitability gains.” This is a common misconception on HN and society in general. Profits of businesses are typically in 10% range for small businesses and even lower on average for large businesses [1]. Wealth is not income. It’s the value of owned assets: money, property, etc. So where does the wealth come from? There are a couple of different answers-and I’m not going to discuss stealing, slavery, exploitation or other illegal and immoral practices-but generally the answer for lots of wealthy, legitimate people is it is CREATED from “deals.” Wherever one person (or group) can sell something to someone else at a multiple of its current value, wealth is created. The expectation that something of value will either generate income or grow in value in future years creates a higher price for that thing right now. That entices the buyer, and creates wealth for the seller. How much wealth? If you have a rock today that you can tell a story about being potentially worth 100x in 10 years, then you can probably sell that rock for 10x of its actual value today. That is wealth creation. This is related to the concept of “time value of money.” Real estate is one example. Selling a business is another. Art is yet another example. Have a great day. Edit: [1] https://www.aei.org/carpe-diem/the-public-thinks-the-average-company-makes-a-36-profit-margin-which-is-about-5x-too-high-part-ii/ https://www.aei.org/carpe-diem/the-public-thinks-the-average...
- droopyEyelids 3y ago
  In countries with no safety net like the USA, people do prefer to work at tedious soul-deadening tasks like manually copy pasting into a CSV than to lose their housing and starve. However, there is a benefit to the person who is no longer employed doing mindless toil! It gives them another chance to find healthier work. Again, in the USA this benefit is outweighed by the possibility of immiseration, but it is at least a small plus in the 'pros' column.
  - jschveibinz 3y ago
    Ok, but one issue with your comment: the U.S. has a huge safety net. Entitlements (social programs including social security, welfare, Medicare/Medicaid), etc.) compose 52% of the federal budget ($2 trillion). This equates to almost $10,000 per American. [1] In fact, the U.S. spends more per capita than the Nordic countries, as discussed in other comments. Norway is around $7,500 per person. [2] So what’s the difference? The U.S. is the “wild, Wild West” and Norway is not, according to [2]. [1] https://federalsafetynet.com/entitlement-programs/entitlement-spending/ https://federalsafetynet.com/entitlement-programs/entitlemen... [2] https://freakonomics.com/2010/05/who-spends-more-on-social-welfare-the-united-states-or-sweden/#:~:text=If%20we%20take%20into%20account,%245%2C800%2C%20and%20Finland%20at%20%244%2C900 https://freakonomics.com/2010/05/who-spends-more-on-social-w....
    - wing-_-nuts 3y ago
      Does any of this make a difference to the unemployed? I assure you, the unemployed in the US and norway have two very different experiences and I'd much rather be unemployed in a scandi country than in the US.
      - chii 3y ago
        So why is it worse in the US, when the spending is ostensibly higher? What is the root cause of this inefficiency?
byyyy 3y ago
Do you see the irony? You wrote code that could have eliminated other people's jobs. Someone else "wrote" chatGPT and it very much looks like the precursor to the thing that could eliminate your job. I can almost imagine the people at openai having the same "Whoops" attitude as you.
welshwelsh 3y ago
Is eliminating jobs an unintended consequence, or is it the fundamental purpose of software development? Personally, I see job elimination as my goal and my purpose as a developer. Whenever my company is able to lay people off as a result of my work, that means I am doing a good job. I always try to keep track of how many people my software can replace and how much my company pays these people, so that I can take credit for these cost savings and claim a portion of their salaries for myself during salary negotiations.
- kevingadd 3y ago
  For tools programmers at least, generally the work you do is meant to enable the work other people at the company do - they aren't able to do it without you. Eliminating their jobs entirely is a different matter, even if that can also be done by a tools programmer. For creative tasks like game development the applications for full automation are usually narrower, so you're typically doing 'force multiplier' sort of stuff, like creating powerful macros or error checkers etc. Hammers and nails don't eliminate carpenters. Most of what I did at that job was building a syntax highlighting editor w/autocomplete for game scripts, making builds faster, etc. Instead of eliminating jobs that mostly let us ship the same product faster.

chii 3y ago

> A good lesson to think about all the implications of the software I'm writing. only in so far as not reaping the rewards for having done more work than the company paid you for. Efficiency improvements are always good for society as a whole, despite it hurting some people who originally was paid due to the inefficiency.

mschuster91 3y ago
> Efficiency improvements are always good for society as a whole, despite it hurting some people who originally was paid due to the inefficiency. When the economic/capital/wealth 1% end up hoarding all the profitability gains, society as a whole loses. I have come to loathe the term "disruption" as it has always meant externalizing costs to make a quick buck: either by technology replacing actual, real humans with real families who now have to struggle to survive or by breaking laws and regulations like Uber and AirBnB did, with society paying the costs associated with that - in the case of Uber, society picked up the tab for underinsured drivers or for their pension/social security contributions which don't apply for "freelancers", and in the case of AirBnB all the neighbors affected by the noise and literal other disruptions an AirBnB brings with it.
- droopyEyelids 3y ago
  This is a criticism of the USA's economic system, where we only give people money through _factor payments_ (exchanging money for labor) or _ownership of capital_. It isn't actually a criticism of technology/automation! In healthier countries, like the Nordics, they've organized their society so that automation, resource extraction, and really all success in business benefits their society as a whole rather than concentrating the wealth into the hands of the elite. Having written that, I feel like I'm picking a nit, because what you said is true in the USA and I don't see it changing in my lifetime.
  - mschuster91 3y ago
    Norway is one of the very few democratic nations having a sizable sovereign wealth fund and a strong tradition of the responsibility of the state to take care of all of its citizens (partially because the natural conditions make survival without cooperation all but impossible). Out of all the top 20 SWFs [1], only four to six belong to healthy democracies, six if you count Turkey and the US as one - the rest are essentially grifting arms for the local rulers. Everyone else barely has a SWF worth the name and almost all Western and Western-allied countries have fallen into the neoliberal/"lean government" trap. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_sovereign_wealth_funds https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_sovereign...
    - droopyEyelids 3y ago
      Thats true but a sovereign wealth fund isn't the only way to link success of the country's businesses to the success of the people. Using tax revenue to fund a social safety net, public works, education, and housing achieves the goal. The sovereign wealth fund is more about what to do with the money between taxation and social works. If the country has a sovereign wealth fund without all the social spending then I'd say the success of the country's business hasn't been linked to the wellbeing of the people.
- jschveibinz 3y ago
  The 1% do not get wealthy from “hoarding the profitability gains.” This is a common misconception on HN and society in general. Profits of businesses are typically in 10% range for small businesses and even lower on average for large businesses [1]. Wealth is not income. It’s the value of owned assets: money, property, etc. So where does the wealth come from? There are a couple of different answers-and I’m not going to discuss stealing, slavery, exploitation or other illegal and immoral practices-but generally the answer for lots of wealthy, legitimate people is it is CREATED from “deals.” Wherever one person (or group) can sell something to someone else at a multiple of its current value, wealth is created. The expectation that something of value will either generate income or grow in value in future years creates a higher price for that thing right now. That entices the buyer, and creates wealth for the seller. How much wealth? If you have a rock today that you can tell a story about being potentially worth 100x in 10 years, then you can probably sell that rock for 10x of its actual value today. That is wealth creation. This is related to the concept of “time value of money.” Real estate is one example. Selling a business is another. Art is yet another example. Have a great day. Edit: [1] https://www.aei.org/carpe-diem/the-public-thinks-the-average-company-makes-a-36-profit-margin-which-is-about-5x-too-high-part-ii/ https://www.aei.org/carpe-diem/the-public-thinks-the-average...
droopyEyelids 3y ago
In countries with no safety net like the USA, people do prefer to work at tedious soul-deadening tasks like manually copy pasting into a CSV than to lose their housing and starve. However, there is a benefit to the person who is no longer employed doing mindless toil! It gives them another chance to find healthier work. Again, in the USA this benefit is outweighed by the possibility of immiseration, but it is at least a small plus in the 'pros' column.
- jschveibinz 3y ago
  Ok, but one issue with your comment: the U.S. has a huge safety net. Entitlements (social programs including social security, welfare, Medicare/Medicaid), etc.) compose 52% of the federal budget ($2 trillion). This equates to almost $10,000 per American. [1] In fact, the U.S. spends more per capita than the Nordic countries, as discussed in other comments. Norway is around $7,500 per person. [2] So what’s the difference? The U.S. is the “wild, Wild West” and Norway is not, according to [2]. [1] https://federalsafetynet.com/entitlement-programs/entitlement-spending/ https://federalsafetynet.com/entitlement-programs/entitlemen... [2] https://freakonomics.com/2010/05/who-spends-more-on-social-welfare-the-united-states-or-sweden/#:~:text=If%20we%20take%20into%20account,%245%2C800%2C%20and%20Finland%20at%20%244%2C900 https://freakonomics.com/2010/05/who-spends-more-on-social-w....
  - wing-_-nuts 3y ago
    Does any of this make a difference to the unemployed? I assure you, the unemployed in the US and norway have two very different experiences and I'd much rather be unemployed in a scandi country than in the US.
    - chii 3y ago
      So why is it worse in the US, when the spending is ostensibly higher? What is the root cause of this inefficiency?

byyyy 3y ago

Do you see the irony? You wrote code that could have eliminated other people's jobs. Someone else "wrote" chatGPT and it very much looks like the precursor to the thing that could eliminate your job. I can almost imagine the people at openai having the same "Whoops" attitude as you.

welshwelsh 3y ago

Is eliminating jobs an unintended consequence, or is it the fundamental purpose of software development? Personally, I see job elimination as my goal and my purpose as a developer. Whenever my company is able to lay people off as a result of my work, that means I am doing a good job. I always try to keep track of how many people my software can replace and how much my company pays these people, so that I can take credit for these cost savings and claim a portion of their salaries for myself during salary negotiations.

kevingadd 3y ago
For tools programmers at least, generally the work you do is meant to enable the work other people at the company do - they aren't able to do it without you. Eliminating their jobs entirely is a different matter, even if that can also be done by a tools programmer. For creative tasks like game development the applications for full automation are usually narrower, so you're typically doing 'force multiplier' sort of stuff, like creating powerful macros or error checkers etc. Hammers and nails don't eliminate carpenters. Most of what I did at that job was building a syntax highlighting editor w/autocomplete for game scripts, making builds faster, etc. Instead of eliminating jobs that mostly let us ship the same product faster.