5 ms·

Tech leaders say AI means less work – staff say they work up to 90 hours a week

151 points by dijksterhuis 2mo ago

great_wubwub 2mo ago
"It appears you've misunderstood. We meant less work _per person for the number of people we have right now_."
agenticworldcup 2mo ago
There's a subtlety about using AI that can make folks less efficient if they aren't careful. Since LLMs spit out LOTS of text, a person may waste lots of valuable time simply meandering through responses, and trying to keep it all in their head. Contrast this to talking to a person who might just say "umm.. no no that's not how it works - because blah".
- ofjcihen 2mo ago
  My personally anecdote on poor LLM usage making things take longer: I had a side (still work) project I wanted to complete that was extremely simple. In my AWS account create an EC2 image builder pipeline that set up a specific component. Just one, very uncomplicated and documented component. I figured I’d just have Codex do it. I realized after about 3 days of various back and forth in between other work things that we were somehow stuck. I figured this must be more complicated than I had imagined so I take a look. No, apparently Codex had failed, made an incorrect assumption as to why it failed (again, documents were provided and dead simple) and then continued trying to fix the issue based on the incorrect assumption.
- bigstrat2003 2mo ago
  > Since LLMs spit out LOTS of text, a person may waste lots of valuable time simply meandering through responses, and trying to keep it all in their head. That is called "doing your job correctly". If you aren't actually understanding what the LLM puts out and reviewing it, you are going to get burned sooner or later.
  - gymbeaux 2mo ago
    But what if all your coworkers are doing it, so by taking the time to understand and review LLM output you’re painting a target on your back? Anyway I’m not getting burned- the company is.
  - agenticworldcup 2mo ago
    Depends on what phase of the foraging you're doing. Working with AIs can mean anything from "be a google I can talk to" to "solve this very concrete problem right now". The rabbit hole potentials are very different for each one.
mawadev 2mo ago
I find it funny how businesses can induce fear in people who think they are losing their jobs to ai. Then they lay people off anyway and make the remaining ones do the work of multiple roles. It is a kind of deadlock coming from stagnation, like how can you be motivated to use AI and make up for its mistakes by working overtime?
- gymbeaux 2mo ago
  Everyone who could be considered a role model in my life has been “laid off” (fired) at least once. These are successful people. They’re all millionaires (not just the retired ones). We need to get over the fear and stigma of getting fired. It means nothing except your boss didn’t like you.
  - doctorwho42 2mo ago
    I think you are focusing on the survivorship bias in role models, as those successful people in your life who you view as role models are more visible to you (the younger person) because they succeeded. You wouldn't pick someone who ended up a Uber driver, because they dont look to you as someone from your field to model your future on. Ultimately, getting fired can drastically change your life. Either for the betterment or detriment to their lives.
    - gymbeaux 2mo ago
      I look at all the “role model” esque people in my life - they’ve all been fired from a job at least once. There are also plenty of people I know who I wouldn’t consider role model esque who are simply lousy employees (and probably get fired many more times than the “role model” types). I say role model types simply to mean “people who you would be surprised to learn were fired from their job”.
  - mawadev 2mo ago
    I never said anything about a role model, I said people having to do multiple roles in one. But I kind of agree with you, if your boss doesn't like you, you can literally build rockets to the moon and get laid off :^) These days it is much harsher, if you are not socially accepted or liked, you are out of luck, your skill doesn't matter in their eyes, until... it does again
GPerson 2mo ago
This is just a random pet peeve of mine, but I simply don’t believe knowledge workers who claim to work 90 hour work weeks; this includes bankers and lawyers. I say this because I spend a lot of energy and time thinking about how to increase my effective hours worked, and I time myself. When I’m not severely depressed I’m able to do two four hours blocks separated by a break in a day, and maybe squeeze out an extra hour or two on a fantastic day. (But this only includes real work hours, not just being present at the office or sitting unproductively in a meeting.) And this is extremely tiring, and certainly not doable 7 days a week. So when people tell me they’re doing 90 hour work weeks what that tells me is they’re just harming themselves to be in an office for an unhealthy length of time, hoping it translates into something productive. There’s a perverse incentive here to make the hours and pain go up, without tracking productive output. Now I’m aware that there are exceptionally energetic people who can probably do Einstein level deep thinking for 80 hours some weeks. I just think the average highly qualified and talented knowledge worker probably maxes out around 30-40, and the rest is fumes and cope really.
- bluefirebrand 2mo ago
  > I just think the average highly qualified and talented knowledge worker probably maxes out around 30-40, and the rest is fumes and cope really I think a lot of it is just people being at the office for long hours, not really productive work happening
  - heelix 2mo ago
    The issue is so many god damn meetings. There can be days in a row where I won't see 15 minutes of uninterrupted time during core work hours. Early, late... that ends up being quiet time to do the things I have in my queue. I'll agree that most of the meetings would be a real struggle to call it something productive.
- twister2920 2mo ago
  I think this is undoubtedly true, but I also think not all knowledge work is created equally. A lawyer spending 80 hours reading case files is not really performing a comparable task to a programmer designing and implementing a program
matrix87 2mo ago
A lot of it is just fake work. There was already a bunch of fake work before AI. Now there's even more fake work. Organizations tend to produce more and more of it. The general impression I get is that the real bottleneck isn't needing to write code faster, it's understanding what the technical problems are and having the freedom to do what is needed (which is sometimes risky I guess). It doesn't seem like we're headed in this direction (from my n=1 perspective on the ground). It seems like we've just dialed up the fake work and fear culture. People are too busy and afraid to actually look around and figure out what the fuck is going on. There's just more bullshit fake work and it just keeps coming. And it's getting done faster, sure, but it was never tied to any specific economic outcome anyway and solely exists to waste people's time and empire build. And there's not really an incentive to fix the problem either. In corporate cultures which try to be "lean" and are firing people all the time, management is incentivized to intentionally overstaff teams and keep people pushed away from critical initiatives so that they have sacrificial lambs for the next layoff. In cultures which have more fat, there's no real downward pressure anyway. You can't force organizations to be efficient without cutting out the middlemen and taking the time to figure out what the fuck is actually happening. At large companies, this is already unsustainable anyway. Maybe this is what McKinsey used to do (and what AI is now going to help with): getting an omniscient view of what's happening organizationally. This would require leadership to do stuff that actually makes sense, which is why it won't happen
- 4rf4 2mo ago
  I think the rude awakening is going to come when someone figures out how to build something better that wipes out 10+ firms who were delivering the same kind of thing. There will be a mauling - but it won't be because of this intangible technology box alone. It'll be because creative people figure out the rest of the pieces to re-imagine how something is done.
  - asdff 2mo ago
    Better doesn't sell. That is why there are 10+ firms. There probably is a genuinely better solution at that point. But sales departments sell, so you are more likely to get the product that has the strongest sales department than one that is actually better on its own merits.
xyzelement 2mo ago
I have a much more ai enabled job compared to earlier - and I enjoy it more and spend more time on it I think AI has to an extent taken away the worst drudgery so the impact of "working another hour" or whatever has gotten a lot higher while the reluctance has decreased.
ChiperSoft 2mo ago
> A "sprint" is term for a common period in technology companies in which people work long hours in the weeks leading up to a release of a new feature or product. Alright, who bullshitted to the BBC? I know its fun to mess with the normies, but that was just mean.
- stavros 2mo ago
  I guess they conflated "sprint" with "crunch".
  - EdwardDiego 2mo ago
    Or "death march".
- aussieguy1234 2mo ago
  Most companies I've been in carefully plan each sprint so as not to include work beyond the teams capacity, not sure where they got this definition of sprint from
  - pjmlp 2mo ago
    I definitely have worked in projects where sprint and crunch could be synonymous, with tickets dragged across several sprints.
  - scary-size 2mo ago
    They didn’t get a definition. Probably looked at the word „sprint“. Went: „Yep, sounds fast but only for a short period. Gotta be these 90 hour weeks once in a while. Definitely can’t be the thing these folks are doing continuously.“. Crunch would be a better fit for that.
  - ratelimitsteve 2mo ago
    I have an idea, but I also have conflicting idea that they couldn't find the source of this definition with both hands and a map.
- 2mo ago
Deeds67 2mo ago
I guess it depends on how you use it and what the expectations are. I'm definitely in the camp of working way more, but it's just because I enjoy using AI to build.
p0w3n3d 2mo ago
I'd say the worst 80% of the evil in the world comes from the management and the marketing. E.g. Boeing crashes - from the management. Private minecraft servers are illegal? - management No disc selling from Playstation? - Marketing Why mentioning here? Because the greedy marketing team again told managers the AI is making people 100x more efficient without any proof, anything, just to sell sell sell. And the greedy managers again got fooled, and that's what we're witnessing here. According to my experience the LLM assistance gives 0.5x-10x boost unevenly. This is really hard to predict, it's really fast on the first phase but getting lost in deep tasks, and looks like being optimised to win at the Turing test, but slack later
- gmerc 2mo ago
  Almost there. Who controls management?
  - tayo42 2mo ago
    More managers?
  - nairboon 2mo ago
    Good question. The issue is probably more subtle: are the intended management controls working and doing their job?
  - Krypto26 2mo ago
    H.A.L.?
  - closeparen 2mo ago
    Pension fund managers, who in turn work for public employees and voters.
  - pixelready 2mo ago
    To complete this thread: “Managers” are controlled by the C-Suite through institutional politics and incentive structures, the C suite (via the CEO) is held accountable by shareholders, and the board (who are theoretically representing shareholder interests). A rough picture of shareholder concentration is as follows: 50% of stocks and mutual funds are held by the top 1% richest, 87% by the top 10% richest. Vanguard/Blackrock/State Street cast about a quarter of the votes at S&P500 shareholder meetings, ostensibly in the interest of their shareholders. So that’s who “controls” management, and whose interests drive most corporate decision making, though obviously there are nuances.
shenenee 2mo ago
BBC can't even get their terminology straight; don't pay too much attention
eithed 2mo ago
The problem is that while I'm more efficient while utilising LLMs, I'm given more work. This is nothing new - it's just more spinning plates at the same time; previously though I'd just say "I have so many things I'm doing, I cannot accept anything more". Now I've more tasks that I'm waiting for response and need to keep track of.

151 points by dijksterhuis 2mo ago

"It appears you've misunderstood. We meant less work _per person for the number of people we have right now_."

There's a subtlety about using AI that can make folks less efficient if they aren't careful. Since LLMs spit out LOTS of text, a person may waste lots of valuable time simply meandering through responses, and trying to keep it all in their head. Contrast this to talking to a person who might just say "umm.. no no that's not how it works - because blah".

ofjcihen 2mo ago
My personally anecdote on poor LLM usage making things take longer: I had a side (still work) project I wanted to complete that was extremely simple. In my AWS account create an EC2 image builder pipeline that set up a specific component. Just one, very uncomplicated and documented component. I figured I’d just have Codex do it. I realized after about 3 days of various back and forth in between other work things that we were somehow stuck. I figured this must be more complicated than I had imagined so I take a look. No, apparently Codex had failed, made an incorrect assumption as to why it failed (again, documents were provided and dead simple) and then continued trying to fix the issue based on the incorrect assumption.
bigstrat2003 2mo ago
> Since LLMs spit out LOTS of text, a person may waste lots of valuable time simply meandering through responses, and trying to keep it all in their head. That is called "doing your job correctly". If you aren't actually understanding what the LLM puts out and reviewing it, you are going to get burned sooner or later.
- gymbeaux 2mo ago
  But what if all your coworkers are doing it, so by taking the time to understand and review LLM output you’re painting a target on your back? Anyway I’m not getting burned- the company is.
- agenticworldcup 2mo ago
  Depends on what phase of the foraging you're doing. Working with AIs can mean anything from "be a google I can talk to" to "solve this very concrete problem right now". The rabbit hole potentials are very different for each one.

mawadev 2mo ago

I find it funny how businesses can induce fear in people who think they are losing their jobs to ai. Then they lay people off anyway and make the remaining ones do the work of multiple roles. It is a kind of deadlock coming from stagnation, like how can you be motivated to use AI and make up for its mistakes by working overtime?

gymbeaux 2mo ago
Everyone who could be considered a role model in my life has been “laid off” (fired) at least once. These are successful people. They’re all millionaires (not just the retired ones). We need to get over the fear and stigma of getting fired. It means nothing except your boss didn’t like you.
- doctorwho42 2mo ago
  I think you are focusing on the survivorship bias in role models, as those successful people in your life who you view as role models are more visible to you (the younger person) because they succeeded. You wouldn't pick someone who ended up a Uber driver, because they dont look to you as someone from your field to model your future on. Ultimately, getting fired can drastically change your life. Either for the betterment or detriment to their lives.
  - gymbeaux 2mo ago
    I look at all the “role model” esque people in my life - they’ve all been fired from a job at least once. There are also plenty of people I know who I wouldn’t consider role model esque who are simply lousy employees (and probably get fired many more times than the “role model” types). I say role model types simply to mean “people who you would be surprised to learn were fired from their job”.
- mawadev 2mo ago
  I never said anything about a role model, I said people having to do multiple roles in one. But I kind of agree with you, if your boss doesn't like you, you can literally build rockets to the moon and get laid off :^) These days it is much harsher, if you are not socially accepted or liked, you are out of luck, your skill doesn't matter in their eyes, until... it does again

GPerson 2mo ago

This is just a random pet peeve of mine, but I simply don’t believe knowledge workers who claim to work 90 hour work weeks; this includes bankers and lawyers. I say this because I spend a lot of energy and time thinking about how to increase my effective hours worked, and I time myself. When I’m not severely depressed I’m able to do two four hours blocks separated by a break in a day, and maybe squeeze out an extra hour or two on a fantastic day. (But this only includes real work hours, not just being present at the office or sitting unproductively in a meeting.) And this is extremely tiring, and certainly not doable 7 days a week. So when people tell me they’re doing 90 hour work weeks what that tells me is they’re just harming themselves to be in an office for an unhealthy length of time, hoping it translates into something productive. There’s a perverse incentive here to make the hours and pain go up, without tracking productive output. Now I’m aware that there are exceptionally energetic people who can probably do Einstein level deep thinking for 80 hours some weeks. I just think the average highly qualified and talented knowledge worker probably maxes out around 30-40, and the rest is fumes and cope really.

bluefirebrand 2mo ago
> I just think the average highly qualified and talented knowledge worker probably maxes out around 30-40, and the rest is fumes and cope really I think a lot of it is just people being at the office for long hours, not really productive work happening
- heelix 2mo ago
  The issue is so many god damn meetings. There can be days in a row where I won't see 15 minutes of uninterrupted time during core work hours. Early, late... that ends up being quiet time to do the things I have in my queue. I'll agree that most of the meetings would be a real struggle to call it something productive.
twister2920 2mo ago
I think this is undoubtedly true, but I also think not all knowledge work is created equally. A lawyer spending 80 hours reading case files is not really performing a comparable task to a programmer designing and implementing a program

matrix87 2mo ago

A lot of it is just fake work. There was already a bunch of fake work before AI. Now there's even more fake work. Organizations tend to produce more and more of it. The general impression I get is that the real bottleneck isn't needing to write code faster, it's understanding what the technical problems are and having the freedom to do what is needed (which is sometimes risky I guess). It doesn't seem like we're headed in this direction (from my n=1 perspective on the ground). It seems like we've just dialed up the fake work and fear culture. People are too busy and afraid to actually look around and figure out what the fuck is going on. There's just more bullshit fake work and it just keeps coming. And it's getting done faster, sure, but it was never tied to any specific economic outcome anyway and solely exists to waste people's time and empire build. And there's not really an incentive to fix the problem either. In corporate cultures which try to be "lean" and are firing people all the time, management is incentivized to intentionally overstaff teams and keep people pushed away from critical initiatives so that they have sacrificial lambs for the next layoff. In cultures which have more fat, there's no real downward pressure anyway. You can't force organizations to be efficient without cutting out the middlemen and taking the time to figure out what the fuck is actually happening. At large companies, this is already unsustainable anyway. Maybe this is what McKinsey used to do (and what AI is now going to help with): getting an omniscient view of what's happening organizationally. This would require leadership to do stuff that actually makes sense, which is why it won't happen

4rf4 2mo ago
I think the rude awakening is going to come when someone figures out how to build something better that wipes out 10+ firms who were delivering the same kind of thing. There will be a mauling - but it won't be because of this intangible technology box alone. It'll be because creative people figure out the rest of the pieces to re-imagine how something is done.
- asdff 2mo ago
  Better doesn't sell. That is why there are 10+ firms. There probably is a genuinely better solution at that point. But sales departments sell, so you are more likely to get the product that has the strongest sales department than one that is actually better on its own merits.

xyzelement 2mo ago

I have a much more ai enabled job compared to earlier - and I enjoy it more and spend more time on it I think AI has to an extent taken away the worst drudgery so the impact of "working another hour" or whatever has gotten a lot higher while the reluctance has decreased.

ChiperSoft 2mo ago

> A "sprint" is term for a common period in technology companies in which people work long hours in the weeks leading up to a release of a new feature or product. Alright, who bullshitted to the BBC? I know its fun to mess with the normies, but that was just mean.

stavros 2mo ago
I guess they conflated "sprint" with "crunch".
- EdwardDiego 2mo ago
  Or "death march".
aussieguy1234 2mo ago
Most companies I've been in carefully plan each sprint so as not to include work beyond the teams capacity, not sure where they got this definition of sprint from
- pjmlp 2mo ago
  I definitely have worked in projects where sprint and crunch could be synonymous, with tickets dragged across several sprints.
- scary-size 2mo ago
  They didn’t get a definition. Probably looked at the word „sprint“. Went: „Yep, sounds fast but only for a short period. Gotta be these 90 hour weeks once in a while. Definitely can’t be the thing these folks are doing continuously.“. Crunch would be a better fit for that.
- ratelimitsteve 2mo ago
  I have an idea, but I also have conflicting idea that they couldn't find the source of this definition with both hands and a map.
2mo ago

Deeds67 2mo ago

I guess it depends on how you use it and what the expectations are. I'm definitely in the camp of working way more, but it's just because I enjoy using AI to build.

p0w3n3d 2mo ago

I'd say the worst 80% of the evil in the world comes from the management and the marketing. E.g. Boeing crashes - from the management. Private minecraft servers are illegal? - management No disc selling from Playstation? - Marketing Why mentioning here? Because the greedy marketing team again told managers the AI is making people 100x more efficient without any proof, anything, just to sell sell sell. And the greedy managers again got fooled, and that's what we're witnessing here. According to my experience the LLM assistance gives 0.5x-10x boost unevenly. This is really hard to predict, it's really fast on the first phase but getting lost in deep tasks, and looks like being optimised to win at the Turing test, but slack later

gmerc 2mo ago
Almost there. Who controls management?
- tayo42 2mo ago
  More managers?
- nairboon 2mo ago
  Good question. The issue is probably more subtle: are the intended management controls working and doing their job?
- Krypto26 2mo ago
  H.A.L.?
- closeparen 2mo ago
  Pension fund managers, who in turn work for public employees and voters.
- pixelready 2mo ago
  To complete this thread: “Managers” are controlled by the C-Suite through institutional politics and incentive structures, the C suite (via the CEO) is held accountable by shareholders, and the board (who are theoretically representing shareholder interests). A rough picture of shareholder concentration is as follows: 50% of stocks and mutual funds are held by the top 1% richest, 87% by the top 10% richest. Vanguard/Blackrock/State Street cast about a quarter of the votes at S&P500 shareholder meetings, ostensibly in the interest of their shareholders. So that’s who “controls” management, and whose interests drive most corporate decision making, though obviously there are nuances.

shenenee 2mo ago

BBC can't even get their terminology straight; don't pay too much attention

eithed 2mo ago

The problem is that while I'm more efficient while utilising LLMs, I'm given more work. This is nothing new - it's just more spinning plates at the same time; previously though I'd just say "I have so many things I'm doing, I cannot accept anything more". Now I've more tasks that I'm waiting for response and need to keep track of.