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Coders Automating Their Own Job

theatlantic.com

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Re: Coders Automating Their Own Job

#251

Post by nstart »

This article really highlights how odd our methods of valuing output are. Ultimately if someone is idling for 6 years because they've written a program to do their job for them, who cares? They are delivering the same output which hopefully the company deemed was valued at X amount BECAUSE it delivers Y amount of profit/returns. This article is actually touching on a deeper level of dysfunction in how we do things like calculating salaries for people. Instead of making things about how much value is created, we tend to tie things to "seniority" or "experience" in isolation. Just because the two are sometimes correlated with value produced it does not justify making that the measure on its own.

I remember going up to one of the senior management people in the company I worked at a long time ago and pointing out how I'd saved the company from having to spend salaries and other overheads on 12-20 more people by automation. If the salary for each person was X, I asked for a salary bump of 3X. They gave me a bump of only 0.5X . I eventually pushed it to 1X but that experience taught me that most of the time, extra value you deliver rarely flows back to you in a reasonable way.

And from that point on, I stopped treating my job as an extension of my identity or fulfillment of purpose. It became a place where I primarily had a cold hard contract to deliver X value in exchange for Y returns. And if I was ever to work again in a company with similar opaque practices on salaries, any increase in Y returns would be best negotiated before showing my entire hand on how much I could increase the delivery on value X.

Re: Coders Automating Their Own Job

#252

Post by 6nf »

romwell wrote: post #243
6nf wrote: post #201

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If someone with this attitude worked for me, I'd get rid of them ASAP. We don't want people sitting around saying 'thats not my job' or 'I'm not going to look for ways to do things in a better way' or 'I wasnt hired for that' Our company culture is the complete opposite of that. We want people to help each other. We want people to challenge how things are done. We want to change things all the time, experiment, see w…

>Our company culture is the complete opposite of that. We want people to help each other. We want people to challenge how things are done. We want to change things all the time, experiment, see what works. OK, so you are explicitly making this a part of the job description . Which, arguably, was not the case for that particular employee at that particular job. >If someone with this attitude worked for me, I'd get rid…

You're really hung up about this 'not in the job description' thing. If you see a small fire in the cubicle next door, I guess you'll just ignore it cause putting out fires wasn't in the job description. Neither is looking out for fires and reporting it, so just let it burn.

You won't last the probation period working with us, thank god for that. I'd hate to be in an office full of people who only does what's in their job descriptions and never anything else. We hire people who care about each other and help each other in difficult periods. That's one of the reasons our employee retention is so high.

EDIT: If I thought that cleaning a toilet was for some reason the most valuable thing I could do for the company right now, I would do it.

Re: Coders Automating Their Own Job

#253

Post by arcsin »

baddox wrote: post #212
kbenson wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> there exists a large contingent of people who believe with all of their heart that God wanted them to find it, that the person who lost it should have been more careful, that they are just having a lucky day. A large part of how America sees work, poverty and wealth was historically influenced by the Protestant Work Ethic, and I think that lingers quite a bit today. I think it's why a lot of people view the poor as…

Okay, I’ll bite. I don’t think this large contingency of people exists. I’m sure a lot of people would keep lost money rather than turn it in, but I’m very skeptical that there is a widespread view that this is an acceptable or justifiable action.

I'm not sure about that. I've seen multiple threads on reddit about cases where someone was overtipped or accidentally transferred money and there's usually a lot of comments arguing why they shouldn't have to return the money.

Re: Coders Automating Their Own Job

#254

Post by visarga »

godelski wrote: post #189
imgabe wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think this doesn't quite get it. Will "hard work" lead to success? No, not exactly. I don't think anyone believes that. A prisoner in a work camp works hard. Hard work combined with personal agency leads to success. Are you responsible for yourself? That is, are you taking responsibility for yourself? If so, you will find a way to make yourself successful. If you are looking for someone else to take responsibility…

I think the quote "The harder I work the luckier I get." applies here. Hard work results in being able to take advantage of more opportunities. But you still have to have those opportunities. I think this is a case where people confuse correlation and causation. Hard work correlates with success, but it doesn't cause success.

> I think this is a case where people confuse correlation and causation. Hard work correlates with success, but it doesn't cause success.

Not true, hard work is a cause of success, just not the only cause. Luck (opportunity) is a factor, but a much more unreliable one at that. Genetics is also a factor (intelligence, passion, curiosity, playfulness).

I like to see this problem from the point of view of Reinforcement Learning - an agent playing a game in an environment, having to maximise rewards - which is the definition of success. The degree of success depends on many things, including:

- the environment (how complex it is, how many potential rewards it has for the agent)

- the internal structure of the agent (its ability to learn and perceive)

- bodily affordances (what the body can do)

- the exploration/exploitation strategy (will it try something new when it already has a strategy that is sort of ok)

- the amount of time it has to learn (life experience)

- if the agent exists as part of a multi-agent environment, then the strategies of the other agents count (cooperation/betrayal, tit for tat, forgiveness).

So there are many causes of success.

Re: Coders Automating Their Own Job

#255

Post by pandapower2 »

PopeDotNinja wrote: post #248
kbenson wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> there exists a large contingent of people who believe with all of their heart that God wanted them to find it, that the person who lost it should have been more careful, that they are just having a lucky day. A large part of how America sees work, poverty and wealth was historically influenced by the Protestant Work Ethic, and I think that lingers quite a bit today. I think it's why a lot of people view the poor as…

> I think it's why a lot of people view the poor as lazy (because obviously if they weren't lazy, they wouldn't be poor, right?). There's a sleeps-on-the-street homeless guy living in my neighborhood. I talk to him on occasion. A couple days ago he said he was bored off his ass, and that he was thinking of getting a part time job. I did not verbally respond to his potential quest for employment, but I did find myself…

Not many that I can think of. Look out for local drug dealers?

Possible he could find a job that includes access to a shower. I know of once case where that has occurred. It was a job in a warehouse and there were showers and change rooms he could use. I believe he was actually provided with an unused room tucked away somewhere where could stay overnight before someone higher up in the company found out about it and put an end to that arrangement.

"Perpetually drunk" is more difficult and likely a deal breaker.

Re: Coders Automating Their Own Job

#256

Post by someguydave »

nstart wrote: post #251

This article really highlights how odd our methods of valuing output are. Ultimately if someone is idling for 6 years because they've written a program to do their job for them, who cares? They are delivering the same output which hopefully the company deemed was valued at X amount BECAUSE it delivers Y amount of profit/returns. This article is actually touching on a deeper level of dysfunction in how we do things li…

This is related to Taleb's observation that employment is a kind of "slavery". What he means by this is that you effectively have sold your option to own those to outsized returns in exchange for a regular paycheck.

Re: Coders Automating Their Own Job

#257

Post by hawkice »

someguydave wrote: post #256
nstart wrote: post #251

This article really highlights how odd our methods of valuing output are. Ultimately if someone is idling for 6 years because they've written a program to do their job for them, who cares? They are delivering the same output which hopefully the company deemed was valued at X amount BECAUSE it delivers Y amount of profit/returns. This article is actually touching on a deeper level of dysfunction in how we do things li…

This is related to Taleb's observation that employment is a kind of "slavery". What he means by this is that you effectively have sold your option to own those to outsized returns in exchange for a regular paycheck.

That's... not what slavery is. That analogy is extremely poor compared to using securities derivatives, which is a field Taleb is familiar with.

Edit: also, is this feature of salaried employment so misunderstood as to require an analogy? You get paid a fixed amount, or with specified bonus structure. It's literally the number one fact people know about their employment contracts.

Re: Coders Automating Their Own Job

#258

Post by Strongerpass »

sonnyblarney wrote: post #239
peteforde wrote: post #119

You know how sometimes you love an article so much that you are annoyed you didn't write it? This does a better job than I could have of tieing together a dozen threads of conversation that I've had with various friends for years. I actually believe that there's a culture war implied in this debate; the question of who deserves to reap the gains of automation is more than just philosophy or ethics. The question "is t…

"God wanted them to find it" I think you'll find that most people who 'keep the wallet' are probably not religious and don't think about it the morality of it all that much, whereas those who are regular temple/church/mosque attenders would be among the least likely to 'keep it'.

What do you base that on?

Re: Coders Automating Their Own Job

#259

Post by kbenson »

PopeDotNinja wrote: post #248
kbenson wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> there exists a large contingent of people who believe with all of their heart that God wanted them to find it, that the person who lost it should have been more careful, that they are just having a lucky day. A large part of how America sees work, poverty and wealth was historically influenced by the Protestant Work Ethic, and I think that lingers quite a bit today. I think it's why a lot of people view the poor as…

> I think it's why a lot of people view the poor as lazy (because obviously if they weren't lazy, they wouldn't be poor, right?). There's a sleeps-on-the-street homeless guy living in my neighborhood. I talk to him on occasion. A couple days ago he said he was bored off his ass, and that he was thinking of getting a part time job. I did not verbally respond to his potential quest for employment, but I did find myself…

Lots of outside work, depending on locale. Lawn mowing (depending on the type of alcoholic. Best not to contribute to lost fingers or toes), ditch digging, etc.

Dumpster diving (if it's still worth while, which it might not be).[1] If you're serious about it, it's not really any less of a job than those American Pickers guys.[2]

There's lots of jobs out there, especially if you widen your criteria for "job".

1: I had an interesting run-in with a homeless man at a taco truck almost two decades ago. He was in clean clothes, had a bike with a trailer, and was trying to sell a 49ers jacket. My friends and I started talking to him and he explained that he found a few of the jackets in a dumpster behind one of the big sports stores around, and had a few other things to sell too. He explained that he and a few friends actually had a fairly nice camp (carpeted areas, make-shift shower with water in the day through solar of some sort, DVD player with TV hooked up to solar trickle cell). He camped a little outside the stalled development of a local apartment complex, where they had an agreement with the developers that they could stay there and they would keep people from squatting in the partially completed complex so it didn't sustain damage. He said he was on disability from the military, and liked living outdoors, but would probably rent an apartment for the winter with his girlfriend and friend. Honestly, I left the interaction feeling a little envious of his freedom.

2: https://www.history.com/shows/american-pickers

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