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

bbc.com

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

#11

Post by doctorwho42 »

gymbeaux wrote: post #9
mawadev wrote: post #5

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?

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.

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.

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

#12

Post by twister2920 »

GPerson wrote: post #7

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 h…

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

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

#13

Post by matrix87 »

GPerson wrote: post #7

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 h…

> 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.

I do the same thing, it's always kind of puzzled me how people say they work 10-12 hour days. Realistically, it's probably nowhere close to 12 consecutive hours of deep focus. Sometimes it's easier for me to just take breaks and work whenever I have the motivation. Maybe it stretches into odd hours. Sometimes it's less than expected. Sometimes it's a waste of time because I didn't take the time to step back and gain more perspective. Hours never seemed like a good measurement.

I do think part of it is that when people are in really "high intensity" workplaces, there's social pressure to give the appearance of working hard. That could be part of it. I also think SWE (in SV business culture) tends to be more deliverable oriented as opposed to caring about the hours worked

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

#14

Post by matrix87 »

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

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

#15

Post by 4rf4 »

matrix87 wrote: post #14

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 head…

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.

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

#16

Post by xyzelement »

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.

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

#17

Post by aleksiy123 »

matrix87 wrote: post #13
GPerson wrote: post #7

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 h…

> 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. I do the same thing, it's always kind of puzzled me how people say they work 10-12 hour days. Realistically, it's probably nowhere close to 12 consecutive hours of deep focus. Sometimes it's easier for me to just take breaks and work whenever I have the m…

I mean people don’t usually even do 8 hours of deep focus.

Also some things just have wall time. Sometimes it may take 3-4 hours to roll things out and test. Babysit some dashboards, cicd.

Working “12” hours may mean you get 3-4 attempts/iterations at something rather than 2-3. Over time that may add up.

It could also mean 6 hours of meetings followed by another 3-5 hours of coding + breaks

These aren’t deep focus, but they still take time.

I guess mostly agreeing you. My experience of working 10-12 hours is you are less efficient but you can get more done.

It’s rarely worth doing for long periods of time. But in some situations it can push things forward.

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

#18

Post by heelix »

bluefirebrand wrote: post #10
GPerson wrote: post #7

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 h…

> 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

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.

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

#19

Post by ChiperSoft »

> 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.

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

#20

Post by aussieguy1234 »

ChiperSoft wrote: post #19

> 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.

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
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