5 ms·

With the basic and enormous difference that the feedback loop is 100 or even 1000x faster. Which changes the type of game completely, although other issues will

With the basic and enormous difference that the feedback loop is 100 or even 1000x faster. Which changes the type of game completely, although other issues will probably arise as we try this new path.

Terr_ 9mo ago
That embeds an assumption that the outsourced human workers are incapable of thought, and experience/create zero feedback loops of their own. Frustrated rants about deliverables aside, I don't think that's the case.
- darkwater 9mo ago
  No. It just means the harsh reality: what's really soul crushing in outsourced work is having endless meetings to pass down / get back information, having to wait days/weeks/months to get some "deliverable" back on which iterate etc. Yes, outsourced human workers are totally capable of creative thinking that makes sense, but their incentive will always be throughput over quality, since their bosses usually give closed prices (at least in what I lived personally). If you are outsourcing to an LLM in this case YOU are still in charge of the creative thought. You can just judge the output and tune the prompts or go deep in more technical details and tradeoffs. You are "just" not writing the actual code anymore, because another layer of abstraction has been added.
  - Jagerbizzle 9mo ago
    Also, with an LLM you can tell it to throw away everything and start over whenever you want. When you do this with an outsourced team, it can happen at most once per sprint, and with significant pushback, because there's a desire for them to get paid for their deliverable even if it's not what you wanted or suffers some other fundamental flaw.
    - raw_anon_1111 9mo ago
      Yep, just these past two weeks. I tried to reuse an implementation I had used for another project, it took me a day to modify it (with Codex), I tried it out and it worked fine with a few hundred documents. Then I tried to push through 50000 documents, it crashed and burned like I suspected. It took one day to go from my second more complicated but more scalable spec where I didn’t depend on an AWS managed service to working scalable code. It would have taken me at least a week to do it myself
  - dimitrios1 9mo ago
    It doesn't have to be soul crushing. Just like people more, and have better meetings. Life is what you make it. Enjoy yourself while you can.
    - darkwater 9mo ago
      It's not strictly soul-crushing for me, but I definitely don't like to waste time in non-productive meetings where everyone bullshits everyone else. Do you like that? Do you find it a good use of your time and brain attention capacity?
    - docmars 9mo ago
      I think there's a certain kind of irony in being asked externally to enjoy the rubbish I've been given to eat. It's still rubbish.
      - dimitrios1 9mo ago
        You sit at a desk. You get paid in the top 1% globally You have benefits Some hope or dreams for what to do with your future, life after work, retirement. You get to work with other people, overseas. Talk to those contractors sometimes. They are under tremendous pressure. They are mistreated. One wrong move, they're gone. They undergo tremendous prejudices, and soft racism everyday especially by us FTEs. You find out that they struggle with the drudgery as well, looking for solutions, better understanding, etc. We all feel disposable by our corporate masters, but they feel it even more so. Be the change you want to see in the world.
        docmars 9mo ago
        > Be the change you want to see in the world. Gladly! I think what I would choose is building on-shore teams exclusively. That's the change I'd like to see more of, while overseas teams build their own economies instead of ripping away jobs from domestic citizens in an already difficult job market.
        9mo ago
  - johnnyanmac 9mo ago
    >If you are outsourcing to an LLM in this case YOU are still in charge of the creative thought. The meetings will continue regardless. Those meetings aren't purely there for productivity reasons. It's the incentives for middle managers and directors and whatnot. Its just that all that throughput of an outside team is pushed onto you and 0-3 more engineers. You will optimize accordingly for your job and get something out to satisfy their demands. Likely sacrificing quality in the process. It's not different domesticating the outsourcing. And that's fpr now. Maybe in decades' time the engineer is extinct and it's simply cheap scriptors who run it.
- ambicapter 9mo ago
  Not really, its just obviously true that the communication cycle with your terminal/LLM is faster than with a human over Slack/email.

Terr_ 9mo ago

That embeds an assumption that the outsourced human workers are incapable of thought, and experience/create zero feedback loops of their own. Frustrated rants about deliverables aside, I don't think that's the case.

darkwater 9mo ago
No. It just means the harsh reality: what's really soul crushing in outsourced work is having endless meetings to pass down / get back information, having to wait days/weeks/months to get some "deliverable" back on which iterate etc. Yes, outsourced human workers are totally capable of creative thinking that makes sense, but their incentive will always be throughput over quality, since their bosses usually give closed prices (at least in what I lived personally). If you are outsourcing to an LLM in this case YOU are still in charge of the creative thought. You can just judge the output and tune the prompts or go deep in more technical details and tradeoffs. You are "just" not writing the actual code anymore, because another layer of abstraction has been added.
- Jagerbizzle 9mo ago
  Also, with an LLM you can tell it to throw away everything and start over whenever you want. When you do this with an outsourced team, it can happen at most once per sprint, and with significant pushback, because there's a desire for them to get paid for their deliverable even if it's not what you wanted or suffers some other fundamental flaw.
  - raw_anon_1111 9mo ago
    Yep, just these past two weeks. I tried to reuse an implementation I had used for another project, it took me a day to modify it (with Codex), I tried it out and it worked fine with a few hundred documents. Then I tried to push through 50000 documents, it crashed and burned like I suspected. It took one day to go from my second more complicated but more scalable spec where I didn’t depend on an AWS managed service to working scalable code. It would have taken me at least a week to do it myself
- dimitrios1 9mo ago
  It doesn't have to be soul crushing. Just like people more, and have better meetings. Life is what you make it. Enjoy yourself while you can.
  - darkwater 9mo ago
    It's not strictly soul-crushing for me, but I definitely don't like to waste time in non-productive meetings where everyone bullshits everyone else. Do you like that? Do you find it a good use of your time and brain attention capacity?
  - docmars 9mo ago
    I think there's a certain kind of irony in being asked externally to enjoy the rubbish I've been given to eat. It's still rubbish.
    - dimitrios1 9mo ago
      You sit at a desk. You get paid in the top 1% globally You have benefits Some hope or dreams for what to do with your future, life after work, retirement. You get to work with other people, overseas. Talk to those contractors sometimes. They are under tremendous pressure. They are mistreated. One wrong move, they're gone. They undergo tremendous prejudices, and soft racism everyday especially by us FTEs. You find out that they struggle with the drudgery as well, looking for solutions, better understanding, etc. We all feel disposable by our corporate masters, but they feel it even more so. Be the change you want to see in the world.
      - docmars 9mo ago
        > Be the change you want to see in the world. Gladly! I think what I would choose is building on-shore teams exclusively. That's the change I'd like to see more of, while overseas teams build their own economies instead of ripping away jobs from domestic citizens in an already difficult job market.
        9mo ago
- johnnyanmac 9mo ago
  >If you are outsourcing to an LLM in this case YOU are still in charge of the creative thought. The meetings will continue regardless. Those meetings aren't purely there for productivity reasons. It's the incentives for middle managers and directors and whatnot. Its just that all that throughput of an outside team is pushed onto you and 0-3 more engineers. You will optimize accordingly for your job and get something out to satisfy their demands. Likely sacrificing quality in the process. It's not different domesticating the outsourcing. And that's fpr now. Maybe in decades' time the engineer is extinct and it's simply cheap scriptors who run it.
ambicapter 9mo ago
Not really, its just obviously true that the communication cycle with your terminal/LLM is faster than with a human over Slack/email.