4 ms·

Personally, I can do more than I could before as the result of AI. Honestly I could "retire" to a senior level role and have AI do 90% of my work and nobody wo

Personally, I can do more than I could before as the result of AI. Honestly I could "retire" to a senior level role and have AI do 90% of my work and nobody would know the difference. The benefits COULD hit by employers reducing everybody's hours. The blocker to this is the middle management disease where there's a class of people who spend 40+ hours a week in some kind of update meeting or another and that much talking can't be replaced by AI. (much of it could be replaced by just not doing it any more but that's a different story)

sarchertech 4mo ago
I could “retire” to a senior level role and run at 10% capacity with zero AI use at a bigco and nobody would know the difference.
- sublinear 4mo ago
  Yup. Everything after the first decade of a career is either jockeying for a promotion, jumping ship-to-ship as needed, or sitting around in meetings. It's not that people get lazy or are underemployed, but that expertise is just that valuable. You'd think this would be proof enough to break the AI echo chamber already.
sillysaurusx 4mo ago
Doesn't that mean your org could find someone 10% as productive as you and fire you? We seem to ignore that side of things. Concretely: if you can do 90% of your work with AI, someone else can also do that same work, making you interchangeable unless that 10% is really important. I think this is partly why it's so hard for people to find jobs right now. Everyone is interchangeable thanks to AI, so skill gives you less of an edge than it did in the past.
- colechristensen 4mo ago
  Sure, a good senior director or technical CTO could phone it in and do my job, but there aren't as many of those. Jobs were hard to find in the drawback after the COVID hiring boom in uncertain times as the result of Trump, inflation, tariffs, war, and the constantly impending but pushed off market crash we've been expecting since before COVID started. I'm not saying AI isn't contributing, but it's hardly the only factor. AI is far cheaper to fire than a person. "Everyone is interchangable" isn't quite right, a tremendous amount of people don't actually add all that much value and a lot of work is just running on a hamster wheel and now instead of taking time we've got a machine for running on hamster wheels for us.
- pdimitar 4mo ago
  > Concretely: if you can do 90% of your work with AI, someone else can also do that same work That's the part that is not true. Prompting and guard-rails and generally harness engineering do matter a lot lately. Seen it first-hand multiple times, especially after I used Fable 5 for a week.
  - beepbooptheory 4mo ago
    How long does it take to learn all that then? Can't imagine it would take that long.. At least compared to, eg, becoming an experienced Rust or C programmer. And if it does take that long, why is it so great anyway? Making labor hyper-interchangeable is kinda like the whole pitch here. It's two steps away from b2b SaaS labor if the PR is to be believed. Maybe you can say you're an elite prompter or whatever, but it always kinda sounds to me like "I know the secret menu at taco bell." Like the whole point of the product here is precisely to not need such pretense or complexity. You are paying hundreds (at least) a month to use something, but also you are using it in a special way? I really don't get it.
    - black_knight 4mo ago
      Judging by the students I have seen, it will take longer. You could become a mediocre programmer in months, and still be useful by doing grunt work. I don’t see how people will become master architects steering fleets of agents without a deep understanding of the fundamentals, which takes longer to master. Yes, you can vibe up a demo in no time. But LLMs still need guidance to produce an architecture that will hold up to real world scenarios.
    - pdimitar 4mo ago
      You are kind of ranting here and your point seem to mostly be "but we should not do harness engineering at all" which I agree with btw. I am describing the reality we are currently in. If I don't do some harness engineering then my bots crap on the floor and I start questioning whether I should delegate to them at all and if me doing it manually wouldn't still take less time. And you are describing a desired reality. I sympathize, mind you, it's just not the one we are currently living in.
stetrain 4mo ago
You can't shift productivity by 10X and expect the rest of the supply/demand equilibrium to stay the same, with you working 10% of the time and sipping drinks on the beach while retaining the same job opportunities and expected salaries. There will be increased competition for job openings, reductions in real wages, or increased expectations of productivity. Probably some combination of all three.
- vkou 4mo ago
  It would be one thing if those increases in productivity were improving my QOL as a consumer of produced goods, through cost reductions or increases in quality, but I'm not seeing any of that. All that seems to be happening is that these productivity gains roll up as profits for the owner class. What's the point of all that, to me?
  - colechristensen 4mo ago
    It's easier to enter the owner class. It's easier for you to do a startup where you're not the expert in everything. It's easier for you to rely less on buying things when you can make them yourself. The moat of the owner class is lower because now information is everywhere and it's less possible to hide behind trade secrets and implementation effort.
    - vkou 4mo ago
      > It's easier to enter the owner class. Based on what? The macroeconomics don't work out that way. IF productivity goes up, but consumption does not, that means that it's harder to enter the owner class, because fewer productive enterprises (owned by non-working people) are supplying a larger share of customer demand. This may make a difference on the margins for people in the software bubble. But for the other 8 billion people on the planet, they aren't all going to become owners in your brave new world, unless consumer demand goes to the moon to soak up all that productivity. It's not doing that. Prices aren't dropping. Quality isn't increasing. If you think I'm wrong - is there a cross-economy explosion of small one-person businesses that I'm somehow not seeing? Are gigacorps across the board all losing market share? Because on the macro scale I see nothing but further consolidation.
mlsu 4mo ago
Somebody will eventually know the difference. And then you’re fired.
RIMR 4mo ago
> I could "retire" to a senior level role and have AI do 90% of my work and nobody would know the difference. They would notice, and then they would fire 9/10 of the people in your role. If you are unlucky, you get laid off. If you are lucky, you get to botsit full time for the workload of 10 engineers for less pay and no career advancement. This would last until they figure out how to remove the human from the loop entirely.
- 0x3f 4mo ago
  Nobody has noticed where I work. I'm thinking of getting a second job, actually. Key factors for me: - Company is full of old school engineers who seem to hate AI and will scrutinize every command it runs. Means that even though we're both 'using' AI, I'm still way more productive. - Said engineers have too much inside knowledge of the horrific system they made that management can't possibly get rid of them. Helps that they're workers-rights minded too. - Company has enough revenue to keep up payroll indefinitely. That last part is probably the biggest risk, but we're in kind of a niche industry. Not really a big, juicy target. Now, does the AI write good code? Often not. But the codebase is already terrible, so it's no big difference.
throwatdem12311 4mo ago
> I can do more than I could before as the result of AI Are you getting paid more or are you just doing more for fun.
knifeinhead 4mo ago
"The benefits COULD hit by employers reducing everybody's hours." This will never happen in the USA. Together with UBI.
Yizahi 4mo ago
This a chamber of weights and measurements comment "I got mine, fuck everyone else".
eecc 4mo ago
The delusion of engineers is that finally we have the means to stop compromising on quality to deliver, and fix all the garbage we’ve had to put out rationalizing about “cost-benefit”. Trouble is management, who has the signature on the bank account which ultimately controls if and when the bailiffs are going to knock down your front door and throw you onto the street. Management thinks we can now continue putting more, much more, of the same compromised garbage. Cheaper, faster.

sarchertech 4mo ago

I could “retire” to a senior level role and run at 10% capacity with zero AI use at a bigco and nobody would know the difference.

sublinear 4mo ago
Yup. Everything after the first decade of a career is either jockeying for a promotion, jumping ship-to-ship as needed, or sitting around in meetings. It's not that people get lazy or are underemployed, but that expertise is just that valuable. You'd think this would be proof enough to break the AI echo chamber already.

sillysaurusx 4mo ago

Doesn't that mean your org could find someone 10% as productive as you and fire you? We seem to ignore that side of things. Concretely: if you can do 90% of your work with AI, someone else can also do that same work, making you interchangeable unless that 10% is really important. I think this is partly why it's so hard for people to find jobs right now. Everyone is interchangeable thanks to AI, so skill gives you less of an edge than it did in the past.

colechristensen 4mo ago
Sure, a good senior director or technical CTO could phone it in and do my job, but there aren't as many of those. Jobs were hard to find in the drawback after the COVID hiring boom in uncertain times as the result of Trump, inflation, tariffs, war, and the constantly impending but pushed off market crash we've been expecting since before COVID started. I'm not saying AI isn't contributing, but it's hardly the only factor. AI is far cheaper to fire than a person. "Everyone is interchangable" isn't quite right, a tremendous amount of people don't actually add all that much value and a lot of work is just running on a hamster wheel and now instead of taking time we've got a machine for running on hamster wheels for us.
pdimitar 4mo ago
> Concretely: if you can do 90% of your work with AI, someone else can also do that same work That's the part that is not true. Prompting and guard-rails and generally harness engineering do matter a lot lately. Seen it first-hand multiple times, especially after I used Fable 5 for a week.
- beepbooptheory 4mo ago
  How long does it take to learn all that then? Can't imagine it would take that long.. At least compared to, eg, becoming an experienced Rust or C programmer. And if it does take that long, why is it so great anyway? Making labor hyper-interchangeable is kinda like the whole pitch here. It's two steps away from b2b SaaS labor if the PR is to be believed. Maybe you can say you're an elite prompter or whatever, but it always kinda sounds to me like "I know the secret menu at taco bell." Like the whole point of the product here is precisely to not need such pretense or complexity. You are paying hundreds (at least) a month to use something, but also you are using it in a special way? I really don't get it.
  - black_knight 4mo ago
    Judging by the students I have seen, it will take longer. You could become a mediocre programmer in months, and still be useful by doing grunt work. I don’t see how people will become master architects steering fleets of agents without a deep understanding of the fundamentals, which takes longer to master. Yes, you can vibe up a demo in no time. But LLMs still need guidance to produce an architecture that will hold up to real world scenarios.
  - pdimitar 4mo ago
    You are kind of ranting here and your point seem to mostly be "but we should not do harness engineering at all" which I agree with btw. I am describing the reality we are currently in. If I don't do some harness engineering then my bots crap on the floor and I start questioning whether I should delegate to them at all and if me doing it manually wouldn't still take less time. And you are describing a desired reality. I sympathize, mind you, it's just not the one we are currently living in.

stetrain 4mo ago

You can't shift productivity by 10X and expect the rest of the supply/demand equilibrium to stay the same, with you working 10% of the time and sipping drinks on the beach while retaining the same job opportunities and expected salaries. There will be increased competition for job openings, reductions in real wages, or increased expectations of productivity. Probably some combination of all three.

vkou 4mo ago
It would be one thing if those increases in productivity were improving my QOL as a consumer of produced goods, through cost reductions or increases in quality, but I'm not seeing any of that. All that seems to be happening is that these productivity gains roll up as profits for the owner class. What's the point of all that, to me?
- colechristensen 4mo ago
  It's easier to enter the owner class. It's easier for you to do a startup where you're not the expert in everything. It's easier for you to rely less on buying things when you can make them yourself. The moat of the owner class is lower because now information is everywhere and it's less possible to hide behind trade secrets and implementation effort.
  - vkou 4mo ago
    > It's easier to enter the owner class. Based on what? The macroeconomics don't work out that way. IF productivity goes up, but consumption does not, that means that it's harder to enter the owner class, because fewer productive enterprises (owned by non-working people) are supplying a larger share of customer demand. This may make a difference on the margins for people in the software bubble. But for the other 8 billion people on the planet, they aren't all going to become owners in your brave new world, unless consumer demand goes to the moon to soak up all that productivity. It's not doing that. Prices aren't dropping. Quality isn't increasing. If you think I'm wrong - is there a cross-economy explosion of small one-person businesses that I'm somehow not seeing? Are gigacorps across the board all losing market share? Because on the macro scale I see nothing but further consolidation.

mlsu 4mo ago

Somebody will eventually know the difference. And then you’re fired.

RIMR 4mo ago

> I could "retire" to a senior level role and have AI do 90% of my work and nobody would know the difference. They would notice, and then they would fire 9/10 of the people in your role. If you are unlucky, you get laid off. If you are lucky, you get to botsit full time for the workload of 10 engineers for less pay and no career advancement. This would last until they figure out how to remove the human from the loop entirely.

0x3f 4mo ago
Nobody has noticed where I work. I'm thinking of getting a second job, actually. Key factors for me: - Company is full of old school engineers who seem to hate AI and will scrutinize every command it runs. Means that even though we're both 'using' AI, I'm still way more productive. - Said engineers have too much inside knowledge of the horrific system they made that management can't possibly get rid of them. Helps that they're workers-rights minded too. - Company has enough revenue to keep up payroll indefinitely. That last part is probably the biggest risk, but we're in kind of a niche industry. Not really a big, juicy target. Now, does the AI write good code? Often not. But the codebase is already terrible, so it's no big difference.

throwatdem12311 4mo ago

> I can do more than I could before as the result of AI Are you getting paid more or are you just doing more for fun.

knifeinhead 4mo ago

"The benefits COULD hit by employers reducing everybody's hours." This will never happen in the USA. Together with UBI.

Yizahi 4mo ago

This a chamber of weights and measurements comment "I got mine, fuck everyone else".

eecc 4mo ago

The delusion of engineers is that finally we have the means to stop compromising on quality to deliver, and fix all the garbage we’ve had to put out rationalizing about “cost-benefit”. Trouble is management, who has the signature on the bank account which ultimately controls if and when the bailiffs are going to knock down your front door and throw you onto the street. Management thinks we can now continue putting more, much more, of the same compromised garbage. Cheaper, faster.