101–110 of 800 posts
FOMO is making me feel like I should mess around with openclaw but I can’t see any use cases that I can’t accomplish with other tools. What should I do based on this article?
I actually think the opposite approach might be the most optimal one, at least from a monetary perspective. That is, be on the cutting-edge of something, but be willing to bail out at the moment its future starts seeming questionable. Or even more specifically, maximize your foothold in it while minimizing your downside. Bitcoin is a good example: if you bought it 15 years ago and held it, you're probably quite wealt…
Why launch Voyager-1 if, in X years, no matter how far it flies, we’ll catch up to it and overtake it using a new version?
There's value in being early - in the right thing. - If you'd invested in Bitcoin in 2016, you'd have made a 200x return - If you'd specialized in neural networks before the transformer paper, you'd be one of the most sought-after specialists right now - If you'd started making mobile games when the iPhone was released, you could have built the first Candy Crush Of course, you could just as well have - become an Acti…
I still think it's stupid, but I'd be a whole lot richer if I went along with it at the time!
It's a horrifying feeling facing the possibility that the career I spent so much time and money to get into is fading away. Sure, LLMs are not there yet, and they might not ever quite get there. But will companies start hiring again? If productivity has gone up, and it seems like it has, then no. So, a decade of hanging by a thread, getting by and doubling down on CS, hoping that the job market sees an uptick? Or try…
> But will companies start hiring again? Anecdata, but the few people I know who were looking to switch gigs all had multiple offers within a few weeks. One thing they all had in common was taking a very targeted approach with their search and leveraging their networks. Not spamming thousands of resumes into the ether.
Just finished a search - agree. The resume process is fundamentally broken, but a strong network makes it irrelevant. Lean on connections - there's a ton of opportunity out there.
> If this tech is as amazing as you say it is, I'll be able to pick it up and become productive on a timescale of my choosing not yours. Broadly speaking, I think this is a wise assessment. There are opportunities for productivity gains right now, but it I don't think it's a knockout for anyone using the tech, and I think that onboarding might be challenging for some people in the tech's current state. It is safe to…
It also seems like skills with particular tech (prompt engineering, harnesses, mixture of experts set ups) doesn't always necessarily pay off when there's a sea change. Hard to predict what you'll want in a few years anyway, right?
Kind of weird tools also incorporate addictive gambling game's UX design. They're literally allowing you to multiply your output: 3x, 4x, 5x (run it 5 times for a better shot at a working prompt). You're being played by billionaires who are selling you a slot machine as a thinking machine.
I actually think the opposite approach might be the most optimal one, at least from a monetary perspective. That is, be on the cutting-edge of something, but be willing to bail out at the moment its future starts seeming questionable. Or even more specifically, maximize your foothold in it while minimizing your downside. Bitcoin is a good example: if you bought it 15 years ago and held it, you're probably quite wealt…
Yeah it looks reasonable when you only pick success stories for your examples. If you sold the farm to get in early in the Metaverse, you're totally hosed now because that was a dead end. The idea of digital real estate was as terrible then as it is now.
> Or even more specifically, maximize your foothold in it while minimizing your downside.
It's a horrifying feeling facing the possibility that the career I spent so much time and money to get into is fading away. Sure, LLMs are not there yet, and they might not ever quite get there. But will companies start hiring again? If productivity has gone up, and it seems like it has, then no. So, a decade of hanging by a thread, getting by and doubling down on CS, hoping that the job market sees an uptick? Or try…
I cannot but agree. It's a massive skill leveling where software development is transforming from high skilled coding to low skilled prompting. For an old dog like myself it feels an unjust rug pull.
I know many jobs are about giving partial access to secrets or insider knowledge etc but I simply can't see myself accepting that this is my value proposition.
No, let the pie grow. Let more people be able to do more things. Use the new capabilities to do even more. See how you can provide genuine value in the new environment. I know it isn't easy. There are many unknowns. But at least aspirationally I see that as the only positive way forward.
The same thing has happened to many jobs. 100 years ago being a photographer was a difficult skill. They must have felt a rug pull when compact cameras became mainstream and they were no longer called to take all family pictures. Surely the codex writers felt a rug pull when printing became widespread. Typesetters when people could use word processors on their PC with font settings. Prop designers and practical effects people when movies switched to vfx. Etc etc.
But the curious early adopters were the ones best positioned to be leading the charge on "cloud migration" when the business finally pulled the trigger.
Similarly with mobile dev. As a Java dev at the time that Android came along, I didn't keep abreast of it - I can always get into it later. Suddenly the job ads were "Android Dev. Must have 3 years experience".
Sometimes, even just from self-interest, it's easier to get in on the ground floor when the surface area of things to learn is smaller than it is to wait too long before checking something out.