Everyone in Seattle hates AI • Hacker News Board

Re: Everyone in Seattle hates AI

#311

Post by layer8 » Wed, Dec 03, 2025, 9:50 PM UTC

averyvery wrote: post #144

bccdee wrote: post #41

> Engineers don't try because they think they can't. This article assumes that AI is the centre of the universe, failing to understand that that assumption is exactly what's causing the attitude they're pointing to. There's a dichotomy in the software world between real products (which have customers and use cases and make money by giving people things they need) and hype products (which exist to get investors excite…

Yeah, "Engineers don't try" is a frustrating statement. We've all tried generative AI, and there's not that much to it — you put text in, you get text back out. Some models are better at some tasks, some tools are better at finding the right text and connecting it to the right actions, some tools provide a better wrapper around the text-generation process. Certain jobs are very easy for AI to do, others are impossibl…

> Yeah, "Engineers don't try" is a frustrating statement. We've all tried generative AI, and there's not that much to it — you put text in, you get text back out.

"Engineers don't try" doesn’t refer to trying out AI in the article. It refers to trying to do something constructive and useful outside the usual corporate churn, but having given up on that because management is single-mindedly focused on AI.

One way to summarize the article is: The AI engineers are doing hype-driven AI stuff, and the other engineers have lost all ambition for anything else, because AI is the only thing that gets attention and helps the career; and they hate it.

Re: Everyone in Seattle hates AI

#312

Post by groos » Wed, Dec 03, 2025, 9:51 PM UTC

My esteem of Seattle area engineers compared to Silicon Valley engineers has just gone up.

Re: Everyone in Seattle hates AI

#313

Post by lambchoppers » Wed, Dec 03, 2025, 9:51 PM UTC

Forgeties79 wrote: post #183

lambchoppers wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Health and safety seems irrelevant to me. I complain about cars, I point out "obscure" facts like that they are a major cause of lung related health problems for innocent bystanders, I don't actually ride in cars on any regular basis, I use them less in fact than I use AI. There were people at the car's introduction who made all the points I would make today. The world is not at all about fairness of benefits and imp…

> health and safety seems irrelevant to me Honestly I don’t really know what to say to that, other than it seems rather relevant to me. I don’t really know what to elaborate on given we disagree on such a fundamental level.

Do you think the industry will stop because of your concern? If for example, AI does what it says on the box but causes goiters for prompt jockeys do you think the industry will stop then or offshore the role of AI jockey?

It's lovely that you care about health, but I have no idea why you think you are relevant to a society that is very much willing to risk extinction to avoid the slightest upset or delay to consumer convenience measured progress.

Re: Everyone in Seattle hates AI

#314

Post by aiono » Wed, Dec 03, 2025, 9:51 PM UTC

I think treating AI as the best possible field for everyone smart and capable is itself very narrow minded and short sighted. Some people just aren't interested in that field, what's so hard to accept it? World still needs experts in other fields even within computing.

Re: Everyone in Seattle hates AI

#315

Post by blibble » Wed, Dec 03, 2025, 9:52 PM UTC

mips_avatar wrote: post #286

buildsjets wrote: post #237

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is one of the most depressing things I have ever read on Hacker News. You claim to have become so de-actualized as a human being that you cannot fulfill the most basic items of Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs (food, health, personal security, shelter, transportation) without the aid of an LLM.

IDK I got really sick in a foreign country, I wasn't sure how to get to the hospital and I was alone in a hotel room. I don't really know how using chatgpt to help me isn't actualizing.

did you try asking at the reception desk?

Re: Everyone in Seattle hates AI

#316

Post by MaintenanceMode » Wed, Dec 03, 2025, 9:53 PM UTC

Whenever I see "everyone", and broad statements that try to paint an entire geography based on one company "Microsoft" I'm suspect of the motives of the author at worst, or just dismissive of the premise at best.

I see what the author is saying here, but they're painting with an overly broad brush. The whole "San Francisco still thinks it can change the world" also is annoying.

I am from the Seattle area, so I do take it a bit personally, but this isn't exactly my experience here.

Re: Everyone in Seattle hates AI

#317

Post by palmotea » Wed, Dec 03, 2025, 9:53 PM UTC

Freak_NL wrote: post #214

hectdev wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would say it is like that. No one HAS to use AI. But the shared goal is to get a change to the codebase to achieve a desired outcome. Some will outsource a significant part of that to AI, some won't. And its tricky because I'm trying not to appeal to emotion despite being fascinated with how this tool has enabled me to do things in a short amount of time that it would have taken me weeks of grinding to get to and i…

> No one HAS to use AI. Well… That's no longer true, is it? My partner (IT analyst) works for a company owned by a multinational big corporation, and she got told during a meeting with her manager that use of AI is going to become mandatory next year. That's going to be a thing across the board. And have you called a large company for any reason lately? Could be your telco provider, your bank, public transport compan…

> My partner (IT analyst) works for a company owned by a multinational big corporation, and she got told during a meeting with her manager that use of AI is going to become mandatory next year. That's going to be a thing across the board.

My multinational big corporation employer has reporting about how much each employee uses AI, with a naughty list of employees who aren't meeting their quota of AI usage.

Re: Everyone in Seattle hates AI

#318

Post by runarberg » Wed, Dec 03, 2025, 9:54 PM UTC

I live in Seattle (well a 20 min ferry from Seattle) and I too hate AI. In fact I have a Kanji learning app which I am trying to push on to people, and I brand it as AI free. No AI was used to develop it, no AI used to write content, no AI is there to “help you learn”.

When I see apps like Wanderfugl, I get the same sense of disgust as OPs ex coworker. I don‘t want to try this app, I don’t want to see it, just get it away from me.

Re: Everyone in Seattle hates AI

#319

Post by skybrian » Wed, Dec 03, 2025, 9:54 PM UTC

OvidNaso wrote: post #306

skybrian wrote: post #258

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This seems to be almost purely bandwagon value, like preferring Coca-Cola to some other drink. There are other blockchains that are better technically along a bunch of dimensions, but they don't have the mindshare. Bitcoin is probably unkillable. Even if were to crash, it won't be hard to round up enough true believers to boost it up again. But it's technically stagnant.

True, but then so is a lot of "tech". There were certainly, at least equivalent, social applications before and all throughout Facebooks dominance, but like Bitcoin the network effect becomes primary, after a minimum feature set.

For Bitcoin, it doesn't exactly seem to be a network effect? It's not like choosing a chat app because that's what your friends use.

Many other cryptocurrencies are popular enough to be easily tradable and have features to make them work better for trade. Also, you can speculate on different cryptocurrencies than your friends do.

Re: Everyone in Seattle hates AI

#320

Post by samdoesnothing » Wed, Dec 03, 2025, 9:54 PM UTC

dwaltrip wrote: post #277

dwaltrip wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can vibe-code a throwaway UI for investigating some complex data in less than 30 minutes. The code quality doesn't matter, and it will make your life much easier. Rinse and repeat for many "one-off" tasks. It's not going away, you need to learn how to use it. shrugs shoulders

It’s kind of fun watching this comment go up and down :) There’s so much evidence out there of people getting real value from the tools. Some questions you can ask yourself are “why doesn’t it work for me?” and “what can I do differently?”. Be curious, not dogmatic. Ignore the hype, find people doing real work.

Most people don't have a problem with using genai for stuff like throwaway UI's. That's not even remotely relevant to the criticisms. People reject having it forced down their throats by companies who are desperate to make us totally reliant on it to justify their insane investments. And people reject the evangelicals who claim that it's going to replace developers because it can spit out mostly working boilerplate.