4 ms·

I think this kind of overly dramatic writing makes me struggle to respect the arguments in the piece. Like the blog writer has this style like they’re documenti

by haburka 4mo ago

I think this kind of overly dramatic writing makes me struggle to respect the arguments in the piece. Like the blog writer has this style like they’re documenting the collapse of humanity or something when really it’s just a massive cloud company taking some direction that may be suboptimal. I understand this tone can be helpful to drive effective change but I think it should be reserved for situations where people are actually suffering as opposed to when extremely well paid people engineers are laid off.

lacewing 4mo ago
This is an AI-written story. It exists to get upvoted and reshared, so overly-dramatic language is the point.
bakugo 4mo ago
> Like the blog writer has this style You mean Claude has this style.
eoskx 4mo ago
Claude's style is now overuse of sentence fragments, which this "article" has in spades. Fragments are the new emdash or "delve".
- SV_BubbleTime 4mo ago
  I’ll miss when em dashes were a key giveaway. This generation of LLM has one sure fire tell. We’ll look back on 2026 AIs fondly.
- klodolph 4mo ago
  Beautiful, lovely sentence fragments. Last I heard, I was on the HN em dash leaderboard, and now sentence fragments?
- pfdietz 4mo ago
  And here's the thing
catigula 4mo ago
Claude is a bit of a drama queen.
sam1r 4mo ago
Any business with an aws account should by default pretend like that world revolves them and their company. Because if aws tanks, they will likely tank. I pardon the drama. If you were in those shoes and the costs being spent for operating business costs- wouldn’t you be freaking the heck out?
hilariously 4mo ago
If I scroll down and you do animations to the text I am out instantly.
mooreds 4mo ago
I get that the writing was a bit over the top. But the story, my goodness. Giving a damn is such a rare commodity. It makes me sad when companies throw away people with that quality. I hope that Tarus Balog finds a good spot to land. Here's his LI: https://www.linkedin.com/in/tarusbalog/ https://www.linkedin.com/in/tarusbalog/ if you're in the market for an "Open source wonk. Catalyst. Storyteller. Collector of Memories"
- zzzeek 4mo ago
  i dont think employees are expected to prioritize one customer of (we would assume) little monetary consequence in this way. amazon would rather everyone keep heads down, dont let the casualties slow down the machine or create exception cases, and definitely dont bother upper management with your personal salvation quests.
  - minraws 4mo ago
    Well then you get PR disasters like these, I have moved off of AWS and helped several services that use AWS at atleast 4 companies, who used to pay AWS mid 6 figures, and been paid chump change to do it, but I helped just cause AWS sucks I didn't spend much time really, 1 weekend each. Was the pay worth yeah, was seeing AWS's revenue hopefully take a minor hit worth it, most definitely would do it again hit me up if you really need help. If you pay Amazon over 10M I am certain we can bring it down below 1M lmao. AWS is just unhinged in terms of pricing and costs.
    - zzzeek 4mo ago
      Jeff Bezos went on NYT dealbook and had the gall to say "we did layoffs at the WP because it needs to be profitable; if it's not profitable, it's because people are not willing to buy the product it's selling" after he literally single-handedly ruined the product by personally censoring the editorial team and/or firing large numbers of journalists on multiple, extremely high-profile PR-disastering occasions [1] [2] from that perspective, Bezos seems perfectly content to weather PR disasters from his companies and drape them in bizarre rationalizations. [1] https://www.theguardian.com/media/2024/oct/29/washington-post-subscriber-cancellations https://www.theguardian.com/media/2024/oct/29/washington-pos... [2] https://finance.yahoo.com/news/more-60-000-washington-post-214621090.html https://finance.yahoo.com/news/more-60-000-washington-post-2...
qlm 4mo ago
I am so sick of reading this horseshit AI writing. It's like eating vaseline.
neutronicus 4mo ago
> Some switched to farming. Others opened coffee shops. One bakes bread now. That’s the level of abyss we’re talking about. These are people who know they can’t do anything online anymore. Not because they lack the skills. Because their brains were so filled and indoctrinated with complexity that they found decorating a cookie more fulfilling than maintaining 87 files of Kubernetes manifests plus CloudFormation templates plus Terraform state plus whatever abstraction layer Amazon invented that quarter. This is a very dramatic way to say "because they got so fucking rich they don't have to anymore"
- jaapz 4mo ago
  The wording also suggests decorating a cookie can't be as fulfilling as working on a complex software project. This "author" certainly never baked his own bread or grew his own vegetables. Let alone becoming a professional, which is hard work, probably more hard work than sitting at a desk asking claude to change this or that react component.
  - neutronicus 4mo ago
    Yeah, a lot of software devs think somewhat wistfully about possibly running a bakery or whatever. To me that sounds more like letting circumstances nudge you into implementing your "Coast FIRE" plan than taking some kind of principled stand.
- mschuster91 4mo ago
  > This is a very dramatic way to say "because they got so fucking rich they don't have to anymore" A lot of pretty normal people without much to their name are deciding to call it quits over the AI craze. I'm one of them, I'm heading for electrical engineering - even if the "engineering" part gets replaced by AI sooner than later, I'll still be more qualified running wires than some robot. Besides, opening up coffee shops and bakeries isn't that capital intensive. Don't need millions for that, there's a reason a lot of non-chain restaurants are founded and operated by immigrants.
  - neutronicus 4mo ago
dilap 4mo ago
It's just Claudeslop. It's everywhere. An epidemic. If you're familiar it stands out instantly. (Would you let someone else talk for you? In real life? Like open up your mouth and let a TTS system spit out the sounds and pick the words? No? Then you shouldn't do the same thing with writing!)
- breakpointalpha 4mo ago
  I actually think many people would choose this option, if it was possible. 21% of Americans are functionally illiterate according to the University of Alabama.
  - pseudalopex 4mo ago
    > 21% of Americans are functionally illiterate according to the University of Alabama. This was false. University of Alabama said this was according to the National Center for Educational Statistics.[1] NCES said 21% of US adults had low English literacy. This meant could not participate due to a language barrier or a cognitive or physical inability to be interviewed, below level 1, or level 1. Their definition of functionally illiterate in English was below level 1. This was 4.1%.[2] [1] https://risingtide.ua.edu/education/statewide-ua-literacy-center/ https://risingtide.ua.edu/education/statewide-ua-literacy-ce... [2] https://nces.ed.gov/pubs2019/2019179/index.asp https://nces.ed.gov/pubs2019/2019179/index.asp
  - neutronicus 4mo ago
    Independently of literacy, I think many people desperately yearn for someone else to write or speak for them. "Putting their name on documents" or "speaking publicly" is just an excruciating requirement to keep cashing checks, and each time it comes up the first thought bubbling up from the autonomic system is "how the fuck do I get out of this".
- IcePic 4mo ago
  It worked for Stephen Hawking, and he was totally worth listening to.
breakpointalpha 4mo ago
I quit reading after the first paragraph when I saw this pattern: "Not X, not y, not z, A!" The overly emotional paragraph headlines were also off putting.
- mindcrime 4mo ago
  > "Not X, not y, not z, A!" You know, humans do that sometimes as well. Not GenAI's, not Agents, not automated systems, but actual humans!
  - Planktonne 4mo ago
    Humans do it sometimes, for effect. Not all the time, giving every phrase the same impact.
  - SpicyLemonZest 4mo ago
    Sometimes! But when the cost of generating pages upon pages of bombastic text is near-zero, I have to apply quick heuristics to decide which text by people I don't personally know is worth my time to read in detail, and this article doesn't pass.
    - mindcrime 4mo ago
      Fair enough. I just wouldn't lean on one single "tell" like that to judge an entire article, at least not as a general rule. But that's just me.
    - brd529 4mo ago
      100% agree with this. The irony of this article critical of AI development culture is that the author used AI to write it. The 'not a, not b, but c' writing style used to be _effective_. If someone wrote that way I paid attention because it was good writing. But because it is everywhere now, it has ceased to be effective, and it has the opposite effect. My mental heuristic sees this and zones out now.
  - fastforwardius 4mo ago
Aurornis 4mo ago
This extra dramatic writing style really appeals to the current doomer zeitgeist. The rhetorical trick is to write everything so dramatically and exaggerated that when any point is challenged the critic gets attacked for taking it too literally. These articles exist in a duality of wanting to be taken as deadly serious but also immune to criticism; If you try to challenge any point in the story it will be brushed off as taking it too literally. The real point remains hidden in the mist behind the dramatic tone and will shape shift any time it is challenged. Even the premise of the article has built-in ridiculousness, as if the author has enough special insight into all of AWS to conclude that all of the other employees are bad. Of course by point that out I’m sure this comment will be critiqued as missing the point. The point is you’re supposed to be angry and not think about the details of the story in a way that diminishes that anger!
deleted 4mo ago
[deleted]
dogleash 4mo ago
> overly dramatic writing I feel like everything posted to HN that talks about technology or the business around it while trying to show personality or make arguments from humanity gets this kind of response. Sure each time the reason is tailored, but they all add up to point the vector in one direction. Unless it's bland buisnessminded blandness, it can't be taken serious. Even the cringe coke-fueled rants about tech are received better because they're in the direction of excitement for building future product.

by haburka 4mo ago

lacewing 4mo ago

This is an AI-written story. It exists to get upvoted and reshared, so overly-dramatic language is the point.

bakugo 4mo ago

> Like the blog writer has this style You mean Claude has this style.

eoskx 4mo ago

Claude's style is now overuse of sentence fragments, which this "article" has in spades. Fragments are the new emdash or "delve".

SV_BubbleTime 4mo ago
I’ll miss when em dashes were a key giveaway. This generation of LLM has one sure fire tell. We’ll look back on 2026 AIs fondly.
klodolph 4mo ago
Beautiful, lovely sentence fragments. Last I heard, I was on the HN em dash leaderboard, and now sentence fragments?
pfdietz 4mo ago
And here's the thing

catigula 4mo ago

Claude is a bit of a drama queen.

sam1r 4mo ago

Any business with an aws account should by default pretend like that world revolves them and their company. Because if aws tanks, they will likely tank. I pardon the drama. If you were in those shoes and the costs being spent for operating business costs- wouldn’t you be freaking the heck out?

hilariously 4mo ago

If I scroll down and you do animations to the text I am out instantly.

mooreds 4mo ago

I get that the writing was a bit over the top. But the story, my goodness. Giving a damn is such a rare commodity. It makes me sad when companies throw away people with that quality. I hope that Tarus Balog finds a good spot to land. Here's his LI: https://www.linkedin.com/in/tarusbalog/ https://www.linkedin.com/in/tarusbalog/ if you're in the market for an "Open source wonk. Catalyst. Storyteller. Collector of Memories"

zzzeek 4mo ago
i dont think employees are expected to prioritize one customer of (we would assume) little monetary consequence in this way. amazon would rather everyone keep heads down, dont let the casualties slow down the machine or create exception cases, and definitely dont bother upper management with your personal salvation quests.
- minraws 4mo ago
  Well then you get PR disasters like these, I have moved off of AWS and helped several services that use AWS at atleast 4 companies, who used to pay AWS mid 6 figures, and been paid chump change to do it, but I helped just cause AWS sucks I didn't spend much time really, 1 weekend each. Was the pay worth yeah, was seeing AWS's revenue hopefully take a minor hit worth it, most definitely would do it again hit me up if you really need help. If you pay Amazon over 10M I am certain we can bring it down below 1M lmao. AWS is just unhinged in terms of pricing and costs.
  - zzzeek 4mo ago
    Jeff Bezos went on NYT dealbook and had the gall to say "we did layoffs at the WP because it needs to be profitable; if it's not profitable, it's because people are not willing to buy the product it's selling" after he literally single-handedly ruined the product by personally censoring the editorial team and/or firing large numbers of journalists on multiple, extremely high-profile PR-disastering occasions [1] [2] from that perspective, Bezos seems perfectly content to weather PR disasters from his companies and drape them in bizarre rationalizations. [1] https://www.theguardian.com/media/2024/oct/29/washington-post-subscriber-cancellations https://www.theguardian.com/media/2024/oct/29/washington-pos... [2] https://finance.yahoo.com/news/more-60-000-washington-post-214621090.html https://finance.yahoo.com/news/more-60-000-washington-post-2...

qlm 4mo ago

I am so sick of reading this horseshit AI writing. It's like eating vaseline.

neutronicus 4mo ago

> Some switched to farming. Others opened coffee shops. One bakes bread now. That’s the level of abyss we’re talking about. These are people who know they can’t do anything online anymore. Not because they lack the skills. Because their brains were so filled and indoctrinated with complexity that they found decorating a cookie more fulfilling than maintaining 87 files of Kubernetes manifests plus CloudFormation templates plus Terraform state plus whatever abstraction layer Amazon invented that quarter. This is a very dramatic way to say "because they got so fucking rich they don't have to anymore"

jaapz 4mo ago
The wording also suggests decorating a cookie can't be as fulfilling as working on a complex software project. This "author" certainly never baked his own bread or grew his own vegetables. Let alone becoming a professional, which is hard work, probably more hard work than sitting at a desk asking claude to change this or that react component.
- neutronicus 4mo ago
  Yeah, a lot of software devs think somewhat wistfully about possibly running a bakery or whatever. To me that sounds more like letting circumstances nudge you into implementing your "Coast FIRE" plan than taking some kind of principled stand.
mschuster91 4mo ago
> This is a very dramatic way to say "because they got so fucking rich they don't have to anymore" A lot of pretty normal people without much to their name are deciding to call it quits over the AI craze. I'm one of them, I'm heading for electrical engineering - even if the "engineering" part gets replaced by AI sooner than later, I'll still be more qualified running wires than some robot. Besides, opening up coffee shops and bakeries isn't that capital intensive. Don't need millions for that, there's a reason a lot of non-chain restaurants are founded and operated by immigrants.
- neutronicus 4mo ago

dilap 4mo ago

It's just Claudeslop. It's everywhere. An epidemic. If you're familiar it stands out instantly. (Would you let someone else talk for you? In real life? Like open up your mouth and let a TTS system spit out the sounds and pick the words? No? Then you shouldn't do the same thing with writing!)

breakpointalpha 4mo ago
I actually think many people would choose this option, if it was possible. 21% of Americans are functionally illiterate according to the University of Alabama.
- pseudalopex 4mo ago
  > 21% of Americans are functionally illiterate according to the University of Alabama. This was false. University of Alabama said this was according to the National Center for Educational Statistics.[1] NCES said 21% of US adults had low English literacy. This meant could not participate due to a language barrier or a cognitive or physical inability to be interviewed, below level 1, or level 1. Their definition of functionally illiterate in English was below level 1. This was 4.1%.[2] [1] https://risingtide.ua.edu/education/statewide-ua-literacy-center/ https://risingtide.ua.edu/education/statewide-ua-literacy-ce... [2] https://nces.ed.gov/pubs2019/2019179/index.asp https://nces.ed.gov/pubs2019/2019179/index.asp
- neutronicus 4mo ago
  Independently of literacy, I think many people desperately yearn for someone else to write or speak for them. "Putting their name on documents" or "speaking publicly" is just an excruciating requirement to keep cashing checks, and each time it comes up the first thought bubbling up from the autonomic system is "how the fuck do I get out of this".
IcePic 4mo ago
It worked for Stephen Hawking, and he was totally worth listening to.

breakpointalpha 4mo ago

I quit reading after the first paragraph when I saw this pattern: "Not X, not y, not z, A!" The overly emotional paragraph headlines were also off putting.

mindcrime 4mo ago
> "Not X, not y, not z, A!" You know, humans do that sometimes as well. Not GenAI's, not Agents, not automated systems, but actual humans!
- Planktonne 4mo ago
  Humans do it sometimes, for effect. Not all the time, giving every phrase the same impact.
- SpicyLemonZest 4mo ago
  Sometimes! But when the cost of generating pages upon pages of bombastic text is near-zero, I have to apply quick heuristics to decide which text by people I don't personally know is worth my time to read in detail, and this article doesn't pass.
  - mindcrime 4mo ago
    Fair enough. I just wouldn't lean on one single "tell" like that to judge an entire article, at least not as a general rule. But that's just me.
  - brd529 4mo ago
    100% agree with this. The irony of this article critical of AI development culture is that the author used AI to write it. The 'not a, not b, but c' writing style used to be _effective_. If someone wrote that way I paid attention because it was good writing. But because it is everywhere now, it has ceased to be effective, and it has the opposite effect. My mental heuristic sees this and zones out now.
- fastforwardius 4mo ago

Aurornis 4mo ago

This extra dramatic writing style really appeals to the current doomer zeitgeist. The rhetorical trick is to write everything so dramatically and exaggerated that when any point is challenged the critic gets attacked for taking it too literally. These articles exist in a duality of wanting to be taken as deadly serious but also immune to criticism; If you try to challenge any point in the story it will be brushed off as taking it too literally. The real point remains hidden in the mist behind the dramatic tone and will shape shift any time it is challenged. Even the premise of the article has built-in ridiculousness, as if the author has enough special insight into all of AWS to conclude that all of the other employees are bad. Of course by point that out I’m sure this comment will be critiqued as missing the point. The point is you’re supposed to be angry and not think about the details of the story in a way that diminishes that anger!

deleted 4mo ago

[deleted]

dogleash 4mo ago

> overly dramatic writing I feel like everything posted to HN that talks about technology or the business around it while trying to show personality or make arguments from humanity gets this kind of response. Sure each time the reason is tailored, but they all add up to point the vector in one direction. Unless it's bland buisnessminded blandness, it can't be taken serious. Even the cringe coke-fueled rants about tech are received better because they're in the direction of excitement for building future product.