Earlier quoted context omitted.
All the while creating more CO2
most (all?) self driving companies are electric. Cruise, Waymo, Tesla
And how is that electricity generated in most of the US/world?
AI for developers and Google Workspace
201–210 of 249 posts
Re: AI for developers and Google Workspace
#202Earlier quoted context omitted.
Fortunately for middle and line managers, the vaunted 1:1 hasn't been automated yet, nor does it scale, so the technology doesn't allow managers to have more than, say, 60 direct report effectively. Meeting with each of them for 1 hour every other week only leaves 20 hours every other week for work that isn't a 1:1. I think middle management will be safe for a little while longer.
Why is meeting with direct reports needed every other week?
In manager speak, because the meeting was created by someone higher on the org chart, it doesn't stand to reason that we can find fault with it.
Re: AI for developers and Google Workspace
#203Earlier quoted context omitted.
Why is meeting with direct reports needed every other week?
Less frequent than that and people start forgetting the gripes and inconveniences they need help with. Managers are supposed to work on the system, at least in theory. 1on1’s are for the manager like server metrics are for the SRE. An early warning system of future problems. Ideally you can fix issues before the problem blows up into an alarm.
A professional midwestern 1-on-1 starts with the assumption that no work was performed since the last one and it falls on the underling to prove otherwise during this time.
Re: AI for developers and Google Workspace
#204I really hope the big take away from such developments is that if an AI can rattle out fancy-sounding reports and slide decks in seconds then there was never any value in such content to begin with. It was and still is corporate busy work. Maybe instead of using a text model to convert 5 bullet points into a 3-page report, we should just share the bullet points? But hey they also sell you an AI that summarizes this r…
As someone who spends some amount of time at work doing stuff like converting 5 bullet points to a 3 page powerpoint presentation, I think everyone already knows it's corporate busy work. The point of it is not that anyone is going to read that 3 page report, it's to show that you've done work and produced some output ("demonstrating toil"). As long as they're insisting that it get done and are willing to pay for it…
Genuinely curious: what makes you think your employer will let you ship that toil off to an AI instead of just letting you go (or downsizing your team) and shipping off the toil themselves?
The acceptance that you've been doing corporate busywork as your career seems at odds with your confidence that you'll be the one to outsource that busywork to an AI. Doesn't the rapidly increasing capability of automated systems to pull off this busywork imply that careers built on doing that busywork are increasingly at risk? Am I missing something?
Re: AI for developers and Google Workspace
#205> So if you’re a manager onboarding a new employee, Workspace saves you the time and effort involved in writing that first welcome email. If you really can't be bothered to write the welcome email maybe just don't, rather than throwing some ML generated drivel as the first impression a new hire gets of your management. The direction this is going in is so focused on automating away the hassle of email, with the end s…
At the end of the day, you're still responsible for reading the email before you send it. I don't think it matters how the email was written. I think the final content matters more. There's many ways to prompt an AI, both carelessly and with extreme attention to detail.
For example, I typed this message. But I'm sure with careful massaging, I could get an AI to write the same thing, word-for-word. The laziness you're referring to probably happens even if the manager is typing the email out themselves.
Re: AI for developers and Google Workspace
#206Ooof, exactly as predicted a few days ago:
https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2023/03/google-dusts-off-the...
Now every Google team needs to shoehorn "AI" into its products, no matter if it makes sense or not.
Re: AI for developers and Google Workspace
#207> So if you’re a manager onboarding a new employee, Workspace saves you the time and effort involved in writing that first welcome email. If you really can't be bothered to write the welcome email maybe just don't, rather than throwing some ML generated drivel as the first impression a new hire gets of your management. The direction this is going in is so focused on automating away the hassle of email, with the end s…
[deleted]
Re: AI for developers and Google Workspace
#208Unless I missed it, only example in the blog:
“So if you’re a manager onboarding a new employee, Workspace saves you the time and effort involved in writing that first welcome email.”
Some great announcements, could have given more pertinent examples. You save your time elsewhere using AI tools, so you spend time with your valuable newcomer.
Re: AI for developers and Google Workspace
#209Earlier quoted context omitted.
As someone who spends some amount of time at work doing stuff like converting 5 bullet points to a 3 page powerpoint presentation, I think everyone already knows it's corporate busy work. The point of it is not that anyone is going to read that 3 page report, it's to show that you've done work and produced some output ("demonstrating toil"). As long as they're insisting that it get done and are willing to pay for it…
Genuinely curious: what makes you think your employer will let you ship that toil off to an AI instead of just letting you go (or downsizing your team) and shipping off the toil themselves? The acceptance that you've been doing corporate busywork as your career seems at odds with your confidence that you'll be the one to outsource that busywork to an AI. Doesn't the rapidly increasing capability of automated systems…
It could always happen, of course, especially now that we're in a bear market.
Most of us techies, at some point in our career, have managed to automate some boring or tedious part of our job. We don't tend to get let go for doing this, it just frees us up to do other, possibly higher-value things. Or, if you are less lucky, your employer just comes up with other not-yet-automated tedious things for you to do to demonstrate toil.
Our days are all filled with a combination of useless, low-value tasks and useful, high-value tasks. I'm personally a believer of finding the low-value tasks and automating them, so that you can spend more of your time on the high-value ones. I've worked with people who have the opposite view: Spend your time visibly toiling on whatever is easiest, because most employers can't tell the difference between spinning your wheels being busy and providing actual value.
Re: AI for developers and Google Workspace
#210Earlier quoted context omitted.
I don't really want to read (or "write") a bunch of impersonal junk written by AI. Can we skip this phase of technology? Edit: Maybe this will inspire the next wave of tech burnouts turned mushroom farmers
Piles of impersonal junk created by humans at work. People lope through life, especially work life, a lot. If you are doing repetitive welcome emails they are almost guaranteed to be impersonal, I don't think anyone could rinse and repeat personalized emails for hundreds of people without burning out.
Just because lots of people do it, doesn't mean it has to continue to be done.
If you're growing so fast you're sending hundreds of emails in a short time span, then maybe you should replace a pseudo-personal ai-written "welcome email" for new hires with something that scales better and feels personal.