Tech leaders say AI means less work – staff say they work up to 90 hours a week
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Re: Tech leaders say AI means less work – staff say they work up to 90 hours a week
#2"It appears you've misunderstood. We meant less work _per person for the number of people we have right now_."
Re: Tech leaders say AI means less work – staff say they work up to 90 hours a week
#3There'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".
Re: Tech leaders say AI means less work – staff say they work up to 90 hours a week
#4There'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".
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.
Re: Tech leaders say AI means less work – staff say they work up to 90 hours a week
#5I 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?
Re: Tech leaders say AI means less work – staff say they work up to 90 hours a week
#6There'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".
> 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.
Re: Tech leaders say AI means less work – staff say they work up to 90 hours a week
#7This 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.
Re: Tech leaders say AI means less work – staff say they work up to 90 hours a week
#8There'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".
> 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.
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.
Re: Tech leaders say AI means less work – staff say they work up to 90 hours a week
#9I 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.
Re: Tech leaders say AI means less work – staff say they work up to 90 hours a week
#10This 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