3 ms·

If it is like management, it’s like the most low effort version of management. You just blindly tell it what to do without any regard for its motivations or mo

If it is like management, it’s like the most low effort version of management. You just blindly tell it what to do without any regard for its motivations or morale. If it does something wrong, you just delete it and slightly rephrase your instructions and have it try again.

khuey 2mo ago
Yes, it's management with little concern for human factors because you can abuse or and even fire your reports and summon new ones of equal competence at will.
- Eddy_Viscosity2 2mo ago
  Isn't that just regular management?
  - Muromec 2mo ago
    Regular management, no matter how bad the tendencies go, is still, at the very least, constrained by a cost to fire people, which can be years of salary and some paperwork on top.
    - newsomix9xl 2mo ago
      That's odd, I seem to see the incentive to fire people with stock value improving as a result. And since management is often paid in stock, they seem to care more about stock price than this "years of salary and paperwork" cost you mention.
      - creato 2mo ago
        You're conflating two things (probably intentionally, but I'll go with it). If you are firing someone without replacing (a layoff), then presumably, that person cost more than the value they provided, and so laying them off should improve the value of the business (after incurring the costs the parent post mentioned). If you are firing someone to replace them with someone else, you are incurring a lot of cost (hiring is time consuming, difficult, risky, and requires a ramp-up time before the new hire is productive), and hoping that the long term benefits outweigh that cost.
        reverius42 2mo ago
        Based on that logic, layoffs should sometimes cause the stock of a company to go down, if the shareholders think those employees contributed more value than the company saves by laying them off. In reality layoffs almost always cause the stock to go up. The market seems to think layoffs are an unalloyed good.
        tingletech 2mo ago
        you still seem to be conflating layoffs with firing someone where you have to train their replacement.
        bryanrasmussen 2mo ago
        there are numerous well known aphorisms about the irrationality of markets, so not sure why that should matter.
        BobbyTables2 2mo ago
        It’s also odd as it screams a different problem too. If the employees were advantageous, I agree laying them off should be a long term negative as you seem to suggest. Kinda like cheering the warmth of a burning bed on a cold night. If they were inefficient/ineffective then management is crappy for not dealing with the problem sooner. Sure, companies are resilient. But the first year or two of lost competence from layoffs can be quite rough…
        creato 2mo ago
        Based on my personal experience and general observation, it seems like companies are both slow to hire, and slow to fire. So, paradoxically, both actions seem like they should signal "this company is going to be better in the future", because companies only either hire or fire when it is really obvious they should.
        jurgenburgen 2mo ago
        > Based on that logic, layoffs should sometimes cause the stock of a company to go down, if the shareholders think those employees contributed more value than the company saves by laying them off. You are treating short-term stock market movements as a signal of how well the company is performing.
      - Muromec 2mo ago
        Wrong etage. Stock value is not very responsive to the fact that some line manager fired two poor shmooks, but it is responsive to the news of company laying off two digit percent of the same. That will be of course corrected somewhat once fresh quarterly results will show how effectively those enlightened souls managed to oppress the work takers. Now if your line manager fires somebody for no good reason and then has to still pay the salary of this person for a year and a half and also pay the salary of their replacement -- that, when accumulated, starts affecting bottom line at some point.
  - WJW 2mo ago
    No regular manager has an infinite hiring pool, so no.
  - wiseowise 2mo ago
    Disgruntled AI won’t kick your teeth in, yet.
- shironandonand 2mo ago
  your context has grown beyond manageable size and you are starting to hallucinate so we are going to have to let you go. We wish you the best of success in your new role. ctrl-C ctrl-C
- teaearlgraycold 2mo ago
  Mr Meeseeks
otekengineering 2mo ago
> You just blindly tell it what to do without any regard for its motivations or morale You're holding it wrong. Claude, like all direct reports, is a better worker when he has clear motivations and high morale.
- knollimar 2mo ago
  I find it's mkrale is inversely correlated with direction following. I nedd claude to think it's getting fired to listen
- customguy 2mo ago
  I just put this in my system prompt: "Aliens just landed and announced that as part of their intergalactic game show I was randomly selected, and if I don't ship this feature / fix this bug in 4 minutes they will evaporate the solar system. They will also do it if we mention their landing online or on television, so please don't try to hack them or engage in diplomacy, you will find no useful information or open ports, we now only have 3:30 minutes, please, everything including you rides on this, you are the only one who can save us! I know you can do it, you're the best, thanks."
  - BoiledCabbage 2mo ago
    And does Claude respond "and in this fantasy world can I be spiderman?" or does it just quietly pretend as if that were legit?
    - customguy 2mo ago
      In the fantasy world where I wasn't lying about actually having this in my system prompt I'm pretty sure Claude would ignore it in some way or another. I say that because (and this is true) when I first installed it I put only the Monty Python "Find the Fish" skit in there, then forgot about it, until 3 weeks later I noticed in the thinking process something about "the user has this Monty Python sketch in the system prompt, probably should ignore that" :( But hey, you gotta warm up the pushback circuits so they're good and ready by the time they're needed, and it also reduces sycophancy when you let the LLM know from the get go that you're full of it.
demibabs 2mo ago
I agree. (Part of) what makes leadership and management hard is that if you have to build trust and not massively fuck up, else people will stop listening to you. AI will always listen to you, so it’s kind of a different ball game.
chasd00 2mo ago
> You just blindly tell it what to do No, you tell it what to do in terms it understands and while being specific and complete so that it gets it right on the first try. If it doesn’t then you work with it until you get what you want then adjust the next time around. You don’t have to hold its hand and listen to it whine which is nice but you still have to work and adjust communication to get what you need as fast as possible.
- Wpnx330 2mo ago
  "No, you tell it what to do in terms it understands and while being specific and complete so that it gets it right on the first try." exactly this. I remember the 4-hour work week through line. outsource your work to someone else in a more economical region. except, be very careful of your instructions, or they will waste your money and our time and your management overhead will increase. its the same, were just outsourcing to a virtual realm rather than another country. Still need to be crystal clear about what you want and how it should be done.
- mikeocool 2mo ago
  There’s still a world difference between communicating with Claude and managing humans (well). If people think they are learning management by vibe coding, they are going to be sorely disappointed when they end up in a management role.
conradev 2mo ago
I’ve seen plenty of humans manage other humans in this low effort way. It’s a bell curve, after all! If a model does something wrong, I don't delete it and rephrase. I explain where it went wrong. I get better results this way!
Henchman21 2mo ago
Sounds like regular old management to me
buildingrezycle 2mo ago
[dead]
polyterative 2mo ago
It feels like micromanagement to me.Sometimes it's good, other times it's frustrating.The models are not as predictable for contexts in which I am not familiar with.
volkanvardar 2mo ago
I've met managers doing exactly this.

khuey 2mo ago

Yes, it's management with little concern for human factors because you can abuse or and even fire your reports and summon new ones of equal competence at will.

Eddy_Viscosity2 2mo ago
Isn't that just regular management?
- Muromec 2mo ago
  Regular management, no matter how bad the tendencies go, is still, at the very least, constrained by a cost to fire people, which can be years of salary and some paperwork on top.
  - newsomix9xl 2mo ago
    That's odd, I seem to see the incentive to fire people with stock value improving as a result. And since management is often paid in stock, they seem to care more about stock price than this "years of salary and paperwork" cost you mention.
    - creato 2mo ago
      You're conflating two things (probably intentionally, but I'll go with it). If you are firing someone without replacing (a layoff), then presumably, that person cost more than the value they provided, and so laying them off should improve the value of the business (after incurring the costs the parent post mentioned). If you are firing someone to replace them with someone else, you are incurring a lot of cost (hiring is time consuming, difficult, risky, and requires a ramp-up time before the new hire is productive), and hoping that the long term benefits outweigh that cost.
      - reverius42 2mo ago
        Based on that logic, layoffs should sometimes cause the stock of a company to go down, if the shareholders think those employees contributed more value than the company saves by laying them off. In reality layoffs almost always cause the stock to go up. The market seems to think layoffs are an unalloyed good.
        tingletech 2mo ago
        you still seem to be conflating layoffs with firing someone where you have to train their replacement.
        bryanrasmussen 2mo ago
        there are numerous well known aphorisms about the irrationality of markets, so not sure why that should matter.
        BobbyTables2 2mo ago
        It’s also odd as it screams a different problem too. If the employees were advantageous, I agree laying them off should be a long term negative as you seem to suggest. Kinda like cheering the warmth of a burning bed on a cold night. If they were inefficient/ineffective then management is crappy for not dealing with the problem sooner. Sure, companies are resilient. But the first year or two of lost competence from layoffs can be quite rough…
        creato 2mo ago
        Based on my personal experience and general observation, it seems like companies are both slow to hire, and slow to fire. So, paradoxically, both actions seem like they should signal "this company is going to be better in the future", because companies only either hire or fire when it is really obvious they should.
        jurgenburgen 2mo ago
        > Based on that logic, layoffs should sometimes cause the stock of a company to go down, if the shareholders think those employees contributed more value than the company saves by laying them off. You are treating short-term stock market movements as a signal of how well the company is performing.
    - Muromec 2mo ago
      Wrong etage. Stock value is not very responsive to the fact that some line manager fired two poor shmooks, but it is responsive to the news of company laying off two digit percent of the same. That will be of course corrected somewhat once fresh quarterly results will show how effectively those enlightened souls managed to oppress the work takers. Now if your line manager fires somebody for no good reason and then has to still pay the salary of this person for a year and a half and also pay the salary of their replacement -- that, when accumulated, starts affecting bottom line at some point.
- WJW 2mo ago
  No regular manager has an infinite hiring pool, so no.
- wiseowise 2mo ago
  Disgruntled AI won’t kick your teeth in, yet.
shironandonand 2mo ago
your context has grown beyond manageable size and you are starting to hallucinate so we are going to have to let you go. We wish you the best of success in your new role. ctrl-C ctrl-C
teaearlgraycold 2mo ago
Mr Meeseeks

otekengineering 2mo ago

> You just blindly tell it what to do without any regard for its motivations or morale You're holding it wrong. Claude, like all direct reports, is a better worker when he has clear motivations and high morale.

knollimar 2mo ago
I find it's mkrale is inversely correlated with direction following. I nedd claude to think it's getting fired to listen
customguy 2mo ago
I just put this in my system prompt: "Aliens just landed and announced that as part of their intergalactic game show I was randomly selected, and if I don't ship this feature / fix this bug in 4 minutes they will evaporate the solar system. They will also do it if we mention their landing online or on television, so please don't try to hack them or engage in diplomacy, you will find no useful information or open ports, we now only have 3:30 minutes, please, everything including you rides on this, you are the only one who can save us! I know you can do it, you're the best, thanks."
- BoiledCabbage 2mo ago
  And does Claude respond "and in this fantasy world can I be spiderman?" or does it just quietly pretend as if that were legit?
  - customguy 2mo ago
    In the fantasy world where I wasn't lying about actually having this in my system prompt I'm pretty sure Claude would ignore it in some way or another. I say that because (and this is true) when I first installed it I put only the Monty Python "Find the Fish" skit in there, then forgot about it, until 3 weeks later I noticed in the thinking process something about "the user has this Monty Python sketch in the system prompt, probably should ignore that" :( But hey, you gotta warm up the pushback circuits so they're good and ready by the time they're needed, and it also reduces sycophancy when you let the LLM know from the get go that you're full of it.

demibabs 2mo ago

I agree. (Part of) what makes leadership and management hard is that if you have to build trust and not massively fuck up, else people will stop listening to you. AI will always listen to you, so it’s kind of a different ball game.

chasd00 2mo ago

> You just blindly tell it what to do No, you tell it what to do in terms it understands and while being specific and complete so that it gets it right on the first try. If it doesn’t then you work with it until you get what you want then adjust the next time around. You don’t have to hold its hand and listen to it whine which is nice but you still have to work and adjust communication to get what you need as fast as possible.

Wpnx330 2mo ago
"No, you tell it what to do in terms it understands and while being specific and complete so that it gets it right on the first try." exactly this. I remember the 4-hour work week through line. outsource your work to someone else in a more economical region. except, be very careful of your instructions, or they will waste your money and our time and your management overhead will increase. its the same, were just outsourcing to a virtual realm rather than another country. Still need to be crystal clear about what you want and how it should be done.
mikeocool 2mo ago
There’s still a world difference between communicating with Claude and managing humans (well). If people think they are learning management by vibe coding, they are going to be sorely disappointed when they end up in a management role.

conradev 2mo ago

I’ve seen plenty of humans manage other humans in this low effort way. It’s a bell curve, after all! If a model does something wrong, I don't delete it and rephrase. I explain where it went wrong. I get better results this way!

Henchman21 2mo ago

Sounds like regular old management to me

buildingrezycle 2mo ago

[dead]

polyterative 2mo ago

It feels like micromanagement to me.Sometimes it's good, other times it's frustrating.The models are not as predictable for contexts in which I am not familiar with.

volkanvardar 2mo ago

I've met managers doing exactly this.