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AI is making us work more

tawandamunongo.dev

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Re: AI is making us work more

#71

Post by pmg101 »

everdrive wrote: post #47
Aurornis wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Automation is a broad topic. At home I save time because my dishwasher automates washing my dishes. The clothes washer and dryer are a lot easier than doing it by hand. The fruit and vegetable at the grocery store are a lot cheaper than they would be without automation. I think individuals who get comfortable in their jobs don’t like automation arriving at their station because it upends the order of things just as t…

>Being adaptable now is more important than ever. I do actually plan on getting old, and as much as I would love to retire before I'm no longer adaptable, I'm not so sure my finances or my brain will comply. >At home I save time because my dishwasher automates washing my dishes. I don't think this fits my analogy, because you personally can go watch TV or read a book or exercise given the time that is saved by the di…

Let's say you could automate your job and go on a hike. Great! You can have a fun hike. But you wouldn't get paid for that.

I think it's broadly reasonable that you would only be paid for doing something someone else needs doing.

Re: AI is making us work more

#72

Post by mlsu »

daymanstep wrote: post #5
dustingetz wrote: post #3

when the bottleneck is communication (coordination costs scale polynomial with number of nodes in the graph), the optimal strategy is to have fewer nodes working harder. If AI makes individual nodes more effective, then in terms of people we’re going to eliminate jobs and concentrate effort. The mean job effort (including the unemployed) may be halftime while the median is 996 and the mode is 0. Whether it works is m…

Could you explain how AI is going to make energy, water, food, and shelter cheaper ?

I wish i could see a credible explanation from anyone that logically explains this.

so far ime it's just 1000x more slop everywhere. fake emails at work, fake images on every app, fake text in every comment. and we are sooo productive because we can produce this crap faster than anyone can wade through it

Re: AI is making us work more

#73

Post by hirvi74 »

When I was younger, I was given a warning about the world of work. I was told, "The reward for digging the biggest hole is a bigger shovel."

As jaded as that may be, I believe LLMs for many will become our bigger shovels.

Re: AI is making us work more

#74

Post by themanmaran »

rodolphoarruda wrote: post #41

Site is down to me, but I agree with the argument. I speak for myself: I think AI has removed a lot of small barriers that would naturally slow my work down, increasing dissatisfaction and stress with it. Without barriers, productivity increases and with it, work satisfaction. It's just nice to get things done(tm) faster and at a lower effort due to the quality of the virtual assistant.

This is certainly something I have felt. The idea of spending a day or two debugging a small problem, coming up with the right regex, or setting up boilerplate is all gone. Now it's 30 seconds, and you're right back to the high level "what do I build next" thinking.

Which is great, and has unblocked so much productivity, but I do miss some of the grunt work. I feel like it helped spawn new ideas and gave you some time to think through implementation.

Re: AI is making us work more

#75

Post by fellerts »

4ndr3vv wrote: post #56
sh3rl0ck wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ah yes, the good ol' HN hug o' death.

Always wondered how much this much traffic is. Would love to see a behind the scenes view of the numbers of requests made

The peak is a handful of requests per second. If you have a static site, the cheapest Hetzner tier handles it just fine.

Re: AI is making us work more

#76

Post by everdrive »

pmg101 wrote: post #71
everdrive wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Being adaptable now is more important than ever. I do actually plan on getting old, and as much as I would love to retire before I'm no longer adaptable, I'm not so sure my finances or my brain will comply. >At home I save time because my dishwasher automates washing my dishes. I don't think this fits my analogy, because you personally can go watch TV or read a book or exercise given the time that is saved by the di…

Let's say you could automate your job and go on a hike. Great! You can have a fun hike. But you wouldn't get paid for that. I think it's broadly reasonable that you would only be paid for doing something someone else needs doing.

Of course, but then why would I be excited about automation? I can imagine that the executives and shareholders could be excited for automation, but I'm not sure that it benefits me whatsoever.

Re: AI is making us work more

#77

Post by DrewADesign »

HWR_14 wrote: post #65
anarticle wrote: post #6

Yes, this is why it's better to be a contractor/individual right now. You need to capture this efficiency yourself. You have access to the same tools faster than BigCos, so go hard in the paint. If you estimate 3h, and it takes 15m it's up to you how to reconcile this. Personally I bill the 3h.

> Personally I bill the 3h. So, fraud? If you put a fixed price based on 3 hours, that's of course fine. If you lie about how long work takes you, that's fraud. Unless your bids are what you bill not what it takes, and you would bill the same 3 hours if it took you 4. In which case it's a fixed price under a different name.

Yeah contracted flat rate and hourly billing are just different. If you’re billing someone for time and not deliverables, it’s not ethical to bill someone for more time than you spend on it because you were more efficient. The ‘right’ way to do it is be able to deliver more than everyone else so you get a lot more work, undercut your competition, and take a bigger market share. If you’re not willing to do that, use a different metric to bill or charge 10x your hourly.

Re: AI is making us work more

#78

Post by consumer451 »

I know it's making me work more, and I am thrilled. I have not shipped production code for 20 years, and it was desktop back then.

I am now able to single-handedly create webapp MVPs, one of which is getting traction. If anything actually takes-off, there will certainly be need for a real dev to take over. Also, my commits are not "vibe coded." I have read every single loc, and found so many issues that I am stunned that "vibe coding" is actually a thing. I do let the models run wild on prototypes though.

I think that I happen to be in some magical sweet spot as a person who knows the words, kept up with tech, but not the syntax of framework xyz.

I thought this sweet spot was very transient, and I am very happy that the tools appear to be reaching a plateau for now, so I still have at least another year of being useful.

Since agentic dev tools arrived, I am having the time of my life while gladly working 60hrs per week.

I realize that I am an outlier, but is anyone else in this same boat? If you have product ideas, is this not the best time ever to build? All of our ideas are being indirectly subsidized by billions of VC & FAANG dollars. That is pretty freaking cool.

Re: AI is making us work more

#79

Post by almosthere »

jadelcastillo wrote: post #60
Aurornis wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Automation is a broad topic. At home I save time because my dishwasher automates washing my dishes. The clothes washer and dryer are a lot easier than doing it by hand. The fruit and vegetable at the grocery store are a lot cheaper than they would be without automation. I think individuals who get comfortable in their jobs don’t like automation arriving at their station because it upends the order of things just as t…

It's an interesting analogy. But one difference between dishwashers and LLMs is that you don't need to check the dishes afterward (if you maintain and use it properly).

Yeah but to continue the analogy, the washer was JUST invented and your clothes will come out ruined for a while.

Re: AI is making us work more

#80

Post by mettamage »

kelnos wrote: post #36
mettamage wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You need to capture this efficiency yourself. One could simply work less. Even if you're full in the office, you can just use that extra time to learn something new.

That doesn't work if your coworkers are getting more done now. Then you get a bar performance review and you're out.

Where I work, they clearly don’t and it’s not even close
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