171–180 of 205 posts
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I dunno what you do for a job but if that is your hard problems or even medium problems then I think you lucked out big time.
I think Simon has a lot of experience solving hard problems: https://simonwillison.net/about/
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My read is that the people who do well in trades are smart, hard-working and ambitious. That combination of traits tends to do well no matter where they are applied. While there is plenty of money to be made in the trades, one thing that gets ignored is, as you said, the working conditions. Further, those working conditions compound over the years and absolutely wreck bodies.
Sitting at a desk for 8 hours a day will wreck your body too, don’t worry about that. The happiest I’ve been in my life is spending about 2-3 hours a day at a desk. It’s a shit life but we don’t see it like that coz we love sitting on our ass.
But not anything like 8+ hours a day of manual, repetitive, physical labor!
Come on, there's no comparison to desk work.
Can you elaborate on how you're actually using ChatGPT? I'm a developer and I haven't felt any need to use ChatGPT constantly. What tasks are you delegating to ChatGPT that were previously done by humans? Most of my input from others is regarding current information specific to the task at hand. I don't see how ChatGPT would have any idea what I'm talking about. Do you have some specific examples you could share?
I do Mac/iOS development and am constantly asking ChatGPT about various APIs and frameworks. Apple's documentation is not great for explaining how to actually use APIs, unless you can find the one WWDC video that explains it or a sample project that they released years ago. I would normally google for sample code, blog posts, tutorials, or Stack Overflow posts. Something that might take an hour of searching and readi…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
My read is that the people who do well in trades are smart, hard-working and ambitious. That combination of traits tends to do well no matter where they are applied. While there is plenty of money to be made in the trades, one thing that gets ignored is, as you said, the working conditions. Further, those working conditions compound over the years and absolutely wreck bodies.
Sitting at a desk for 8 hours a day will wreck your body too, don’t worry about that. The happiest I’ve been in my life is spending about 2-3 hours a day at a desk. It’s a shit life but we don’t see it like that coz we love sitting on our ass.
Except that can be trivially counteracted by get up to stretch every hour, taking a 20 minute walk at lunch and hitting the gym a couple of times a week.
> 2. I no longer feel the need to hire juniors. This is a short-term positive and maybe a long-term negative. > A lot of stuff I used to delegate to fellow humans are now being delegated to ChatGPT. And I can get the results immediately and at any time I want. I agree that it cannot operate on its own. I still need to review and correct things. I have do that even when working with other humans. The only difference i…
I don't think so. Junior engineers will learn much much faster than the past (think about how much more effective GPT4 is as a learning tool than the "rubber ducky method" or manpages or even stackoverflow). And a part of their role will morph into prompting GPT4 (much like this senior engineer has started doing). If GPTx ends up in the narrow area where it's universally smarter than junior engs but definitely not ca…
That's bunk. The OP is literally "feel[s] the need to hire junior" engineers because he can ChatGPT that work. How are they going to learn a job they won't be given the opportunity to have much faster?
> If GPTx ends up in the narrow area where it's universally smarter than junior engs but definitely not capable of being a senior eng, then junior engs will just shift to the little remaining work for senior engs, shadow them for months to years like an apprenticeship.
That doesn't make much sense. That kind of apprenticeship would be pure charity, so it's not going to happen. No one is going to learn to be a senior engineer in "months," and no one (except someone's rich parents) is going to pay for someone to sit around unproductively in and office for years while they learn. Even interns are required to produce output that adds value. They do that by successfully completing junior-level tasks that need to be done well.
> 2. I no longer feel the need to hire juniors. This is a short-term positive and maybe a long-term negative. > A lot of stuff I used to delegate to fellow humans are now being delegated to ChatGPT. And I can get the results immediately and at any time I want. I agree that it cannot operate on its own. I still need to review and correct things. I have do that even when working with other humans. The only difference i…
I don't think so. Junior engineers will learn much much faster than the past (think about how much more effective GPT4 is as a learning tool than the "rubber ducky method" or manpages or even stackoverflow). And a part of their role will morph into prompting GPT4 (much like this senior engineer has started doing). If GPTx ends up in the narrow area where it's universally smarter than junior engs but definitely not ca…
That's bunk. The OP is literally "feel[s] the need to hire junior" engineers because he can ChatGPT that work. How are they going to learn a job they won't be given the opportunity to have much faster?
> If GPTx ends up in the narrow area where it's universally smarter than junior engs but definitely not capable of being a senior eng, then junior engs will just shift to the little remaining work for senior engs, shadow them for months to years like an apprenticeship.
That doesn't make any sense. That kind of apprenticeship is pure charity, so it's not going to happen.
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Seems like a logical fallacy to assume that the past extrapolates cleanly into the future. "It was okay last time" isn't a good enough argument.
Well i mean unless someone comes up with a theory why this time is different from last time, then isn't my argument just modus tollens? That's pretty much the opposite of a logical fallacy. This time may very well be different, but there would have to be some additional factor and nobody has given a compelling answer as to what that might be.
History isn't math, dude. This time is always different from last time. The fallacy is making the claim that it's the same (conveniently ignoring all the differences that make it different).
Another mistake is taking an aloof perspective. A lot of changes that "turned out OK" from that perspective were pretty terrible for the people who actually had to live through them.
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I don't think so. Junior engineers will learn much much faster than the past (think about how much more effective GPT4 is as a learning tool than the "rubber ducky method" or manpages or even stackoverflow). And a part of their role will morph into prompting GPT4 (much like this senior engineer has started doing). If GPTx ends up in the narrow area where it's universally smarter than junior engs but definitely not ca…
> I don't think so. Junior engineers will learn much much faster than the past (think about how much more effective GPT4 is as a learning tool than the "rubber ducky method" or manpages or even stackoverflow). That's bunk. The OP is literally "feel[s] the need to hire junior" engineers because he can ChatGPT that work. How are they going to learn a job they won't be given the opportunity to have much faster? > If GPT…
There's always a set of junior eng with high growth potential who are being trained to become senior. They will continue be hired, albeit with less simple work than before, because most companies do run scenario planning like "what if X left who is our backup".
The juniors who are not expected to ever grow to that level would no longer be sought out for simpler tasks as those tasks will be automated away.
Net impact is fewer total engineers, but those who remain are at a higher level of average skill.
> 2. I no longer feel the need to hire juniors. This is a short-term positive and maybe a long-term negative. > A lot of stuff I used to delegate to fellow humans are now being delegated to ChatGPT. And I can get the results immediately and at any time I want. I agree that it cannot operate on its own. I still need to review and correct things. I have do that even when working with other humans. The only difference i…
I don't think so. Junior engineers will learn much much faster than the past (think about how much more effective GPT4 is as a learning tool than the "rubber ducky method" or manpages or even stackoverflow). And a part of their role will morph into prompting GPT4 (much like this senior engineer has started doing). If GPTx ends up in the narrow area where it's universally smarter than junior engs but definitely not ca…
> 2. I no longer feel the need to hire juniors. This is a short-term positive and maybe a long-term negative. > A lot of stuff I used to delegate to fellow humans are now being delegated to ChatGPT. And I can get the results immediately and at any time I want. I agree that it cannot operate on its own. I still need to review and correct things. I have do that even when working with other humans. The only difference i…
>> it's that they'll cause a lot of economic devastation to people who make a living through labor requiring skill and knowledge, especially future generations of skilled labor. Occasionally I would see clips from or read reactions to Idiocracy , and be left scratching my head, because somehow, somewhere, there have to be the people who are thinking. The whole conceit of the film is that there are no smart, curious p…
Regarding Idiocracy, once of the background conceits of the film is those kinds of people set up automation to keep things going before they died out (for the reasons clearly explained at the start of the movie). If you pay attention everything in that world is automated: a diagnostic machine with a playskool interface (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hmUVo0xVAqE) is what's actually doing the doctor's job, a major company is run by a computer the CEO doesn't understand (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jBFREFtFEgs), etc.