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At Amazon, some coders say their jobs have begun to resemble warehouse work

nytimes.com

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Re: At Amazon, some coders say their jobs have begun to resemble warehouse work

#271

Post by bb88 »

const_cast wrote: post #260
lazystar wrote: post #230

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Amazon pays really well maybe 10 years ago. HR is like a rabid dog, fighting for every dollar.

They, the HR and bean counters of the world, don't see the big picture. It's optimize optimize optimize, but then they don't consider what they're actually trying to achieve. Typically if you squeeze every penny, you end up with shit. You can do it, but those costs don't just - poof - disappear. They might, and often do, become more difficult to measure. So if you're the measuring guy, it might look great to you.

Humans are fungible, typically -- or at least that's the thought process of management. Sometimes management are literally removing an unnecessary department or need to merge departments because of market conditions -- and they really don't have time to get into the nitty gritty about how that's going to affect your job.

But also humans are messy apparently, so rather than try to introspect about what went wrong to make themselves a better manager, or improve their hiring process, or figure out how to remove bad managers, they punt: "Humans are messy. Metrics are actionable. Humans aren't metrics. shrug."

Humans can be replaced, sure, but you can't replace a surgeon with a landscaper -- but that's not going to stop some managers from trying!

Re: At Amazon, some coders say their jobs have begun to resemble warehouse work

#273

Post by gruez »

neilv wrote: post #192

You can speed up software development dramatically by simply copying the code that someone else was foolish/idealistic enough to store on GitHub, stripping out the copyright and licensing notices, and adapting it to your needs The problem with that is that you don't want to get caught doing that directly. So you need to hire a sleazy offshore firm to launder that for you. Or (faster and cheaper) use a sleazy "AI" to…

>You can speed up software development dramatically by simply copying the code that someone else was foolish/idealistic enough to store on GitHub, stripping out the copyright and licensing notices, and adapting it to your needs

That's not what people who are using AI for though? The typical use case is "write a program that does [insert business problem]". I highly doubt there's a codebase that solves that exact business problem.

Re: At Amazon, some coders say their jobs have begun to resemble warehouse work

#274

Post by thejazzman »

swat535 wrote: post #264
codr7 wrote: post #204

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And once AI is not there anymore, you're back on square one. It only looks effective if you remove learning from the equation. It's the wrong tool for the job, that's what it is.

How is it the wrong tool for the job? In this particular case it's excellent, it can help you find proper abstractions.. without them you wouldn't realize. I kind of view this use case as enhanced code linters

If that's how engineers used it, sure, but instead many pretend they're brilliant by committing 10k lines they don't understand.

I quit my last very good job because I became so fed up with this situation. It was bad enough before the CTO started using LLMs. It was ABSURD after.

(This was a YC company that sold quickly after I quit, at a loss, presumably because they didn't know what else to do)

Re: At Amazon, some coders say their jobs have begun to resemble warehouse work

#275

Post by gavinward »

Flemlo wrote: post #259
OptionOfT wrote: post #171

To me it feels like part of the hype train, like crypto & VR. I recently had the (dis)pleasure of fixing a bug in a codebase that was vibe coded. It ends up being a collection of disorganized business problems converted into code, without any kind of structure. Refinements are implemented as super-narrow patches, resulting in complex and unorganized code, whereas a human developer might take a step back to try and ex…

A hype is over promising and under delivering. AI is extremely new, impressive and is already changing things. How can that be in any way be similar to crypto and VR?

Agreed. I can't think of another area where AI could amplify the effect of my existing level of knowledge as it does with coding. It's far exceeding my expectations.

Re: At Amazon, some coders say their jobs have begun to resemble warehouse work

#276

Post by wkat4242 »

closewith wrote: post #255
wkat4242 wrote: post #207

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm very socialist actually. I just think that with a good socialist government, unions are not needed as such because the national law already protects workers' rights. I find it a bit 'off' that each class of labour has to fight for their own rights separately. That shouldn't be needed (and really isn't, where I live). It also causes a lot of uproar, see France for example where a strike is just tuesday. Employee r…

> I'm not sure how it works in the US but in our company the union is many bitching about stupid stuff like breastfeeding rooms (when there are no women who bring their babies to work anyway - they just work from home after their 6 months maternity leave) A true committed exclusionary socialist.

No really, we had such a room built and it is literally never used. Because there is nobody who brings their baby to work (which would be exceptionally impractical anyway - who'd want to be sitting on a phone call beside a crying baby??).

The bad thing is they converted the welfare room for this which was used all the time :(

Re: At Amazon, some coders say their jobs have begun to resemble warehouse work

#277

Post by closewith »

wkat4242 wrote: post #276
closewith wrote: post #255

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I'm not sure how it works in the US but in our company the union is many bitching about stupid stuff like breastfeeding rooms (when there are no women who bring their babies to work anyway - they just work from home after their 6 months maternity leave) A true committed exclusionary socialist.

No really, we had such a room built and it is literally never used. Because there is nobody who brings their baby to work (which would be exceptionally impractical anyway - who'd want to be sitting on a phone call beside a crying baby??). The bad thing is they converted the welfare room for this which was used all the time :(

Breastfeeding rooms are used for expression and I wonder how you'd know if they're used or not.

Re: At Amazon, some coders say their jobs have begun to resemble warehouse work

#278

Post by closewith »

casenmgreen wrote: post #209
closewith wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Overall, over the whole of the economy, the entire population, and a reasonable period of time, this increasing efficiency is a core driver of the annual overall increase in wealth we know as economic growth. This is only true while wealth inequality is decreasing, which it is not.

> This is only true while wealth inequality is decreasing, which it is not. If everyone is becoming better off, but at different rates such that there is increase in inequality, then everyone experiences economic growth. Thought experiment. We have two people, one with 1000 wealth one with 100. We have 10% growth per year. So we see; 1000 -> 1100 -> 1210 -> 1331 100 -> 110 -> 121 -> 133.1 Difference in wealth; 900 ->…

Do you see in your example that the working class becomes exponentially more disadvantaged over time? Both in relative and absolute terms.

Re: At Amazon, some coders say their jobs have begun to resemble warehouse work

#279

Post by hollerith »

OKRainbowKid wrote: post #265
hollerith wrote: post #221

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Marxism is the most impactful ideology of the history of the 20th century I agree. Let's hope it will have much less impact on the 21th century.

Are you ignoring the rest of the comment?

Most professional economists IMHO would not agree that Marxism's vocabulary permeates their field.

Core economic concepts are things like elasticity of demand, market equilibrium, externality, market failure, network effect, opportunity cost and comparative advantage, and AFAIK Marx and his follower had essentially no role in explaining or introducing any of those.

Re: At Amazon, some coders say their jobs have begun to resemble warehouse work

#280

Post by 000ooo000 »

bookofjoe wrote: post #118

I note less hostility to AI/LLM etc in the comments on this post than in previous months. Is the needle shifting?

Can't think of a post I've seen that was in any way dubious or critical of AI that wasn't also flagged. HN is heavily biased toward AI.
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