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I'm OK being left behind, thanks

shkspr.mobi

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Re: I'm OK being left behind, thanks

#391

Post by mh- »

jrjeksjd8d wrote: post #244
mh- wrote: post #221

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The only thing I've mandated for engineers is that folks give it a try occasionally, as models, best practices, and tooling improves. I'm currently tracking exactly two numeric metrics: total MAUs (to track the aforementioned), and total DAUs (to gauge adoption and rightsize seat-licensed contracts.)

Why do you care so much? If these are really revolutionary tools that vastly optimize work, why bother forcing people to "try new models and best practices"? If the benefit is there people will use it or get left behind, there's no sense having a mandate that people resentfully try the new tooling. Imagine you had a developer who writes Java using vim. It sounds insane but they are just as productive as everyone else…

> FWIW in the face of these kind of mandates I have been using tokens but ignoring the output. So it's costing my employer money and they have a warped metric of whether the tool is actually useful.

What you're actually doing here, from my POV, is incentivizing your employer to use more invasive metrics when they tried to stay hands-off and mandate the absolute bare minimum of "uh, give it a shot and see if you think it's useful right now."

The analytics that Claude Enterprise exposes are far more intrusive than I would want to be subjected to as an engineer, so I rolled out a compromise. I don't even track who the active users are, currently.

But maybe you're right, and there are enough people sabotaging the metrics out of spite, that there's a reason they provide the other data.

I hope that the engineers in my org are more mature than that, and would be willing to just say "I'm not currently using it", but thanks for giving me something to think about.

Re: I'm OK being left behind, thanks

#392

Post by slfnflctd »

bonoboTP wrote: post #205
slfnflctd wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The vast majority of tires that need to be repaired or replaced (and the processes to do so) haven't changed much if at all, though. And there are entire franchises that pretty much only do tires. Same with many other manual labor tasks. These are predictable jobs with very few variables that there is still no sign of automation replacing any time soon. They often don't suck as bad as people think. One of the most en…

Hm, why don't you just go do it then? Seems strange to spread this knowledge and create competition for yourself. Theres a reason most people want a white collar job and send their kids to college instead of to such manual jobs.

> most people want a white collar job and send their kids to college

Part of the reason for my prior comment is the clear fact that a not-insignificant percentage of white collar jobs are being massively devalued at the moment, which means many people who thought they'd be able to send their kids to college with income from such jobs won't.

Considering that the field of robotics is so far behind LLMs in terms of clear value outside of niche industrial applications, I think manual labor is about due for a resurgence. There may be some major rebalancing happening. The big question for laborers will be - as it has always been - what can I do that sucks the least but also allows me to pay for a decent life? Answers will vary.

Re: I'm OK being left behind, thanks

#393

Post by bitwize »

SoftTalker wrote: post #292
another-dave wrote: post #110

On the otherhand, when Cloud Computing started to come in, I knew a bunch of sysadmins. Some were in the "it'll never take off" camp and no doubt they know it now, kicking and screaming. 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…

> Suddenly the job ads were "Android Dev. Must have 3 years experience". So just read up on it and say you do. They don't really need 3 years experience, so you don't really need to have it.

Employers check your work history. You'd better be able to back up having the amount of experience they require with paid, value-delivering work at past employers, or they'll pass.

Re: I'm OK being left behind, thanks

#394

Post by jghn »

irusensei wrote: post #362
jghn wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A friend told me about bitcoin in early 2010, back when the coins were effectively free. I laughed at the idea and called it stupid. I still think it's stupid, but I'd be a whole lot richer if I went along with it at the time!

IMO the only way you'd be rich with bitcoin would be if you forget about your coins and reminded of it years later or if you were a hardcore "fix the money fix the world hodl" believer. Otherwise you would most likely have sold during one of huge crashes or values, attempted trade and lost it all, invested into the new shitcoin NFT or whatever or just got hacked along the way.

indeed. even if I didn't lose them along the way or have them stolen via hack, I would have cashed out back when they were outlandishly priced at $100. I never would have held on to them this long.

But even $100 would have been nice given you could still pop them out for free on a standard PC back then with mining software.

Re: I'm OK being left behind, thanks

#395

Post by muskstinks »

Crypto was interesting to think through and it was clear very early on how many flaws it has. It basically just moved the goal post to level deeper and it was quite an eye opener how few people even understood the major flaw of crypto: You can only do crypto savely with anything on blockchain and it has not solved any real issue off blockchain (which means you can literlay just send crypto to each other and thats it).

But AI is a beast.

Its A LOT to learn. RAG, LLMs, Architecture, tooling, ecosystem, frameworks, approaches, terms etc. and this will not go away.

Its clear today already and it was clear with GPT-3 that this is the next thing and in comparison to other 'next things' its the next thing in the perfect environment: The internet allows for fast communication and we never have been as fast and flexible and global scaled manufactoring than today.

Which means whatever the internet killed and changed, will happen / is happening a lot faster with ai.

And tbh. if someone gets fired in the AI future, it will always be the person who knows less about AI and knows less about how to leverage than the other person.

For me personally, i just enjoy the whole new frontier of approaches, technologies and progress.

But i would recommend EVERYONE to regularly spend time with this technology. Play around regularly. You don't need to use it but you will not gain any gut knowledge of models vs. models and it will be A LOT to learn when it crosses the the line for whatever you do.

Re: I'm OK being left behind, thanks

#396

Post by drstewart »

quantified wrote: post #261
halapro wrote: post #218

The last comment is ridiculous. Newborns have a literal lifetime to catch up—rather, they will learn what they need when they need it.

Actually, given the path their world is on (in the USA anyway), it's true. Falling economic opportunity, worsening physical environment, social atomization, increased indebtedness, etc.

You mean in Canada:

https://nationalpost.com/news/canada/canada-falls-in-the-wor...

https://financialpost.com/news/canada-manufacturing-longest-...

https://thehub.ca/2026/02/02/canadas-spiralling-debt-problem...

Re: I'm OK being left behind, thanks

#397

Post by muskstinks »

xondono wrote: post #100
heytakeiteasy wrote: post #14

Feels like a false equivalency. It's just my experience, but I've completely ignored crypto and the metaverse, and I don't get the sense I'm missing out on much. In contrast, LLMs in their current state have (for me) dramatically reduced the distance between an idea and a working implementation, which has been legitimately transformative in my software dev life. Transformative for the better? Time will tell I suppose…

This depends very much on your line of work. As a freelancer I do a bit of everything, and I’ve seen places where LLM breezes through and gets me what I want quickly, and times where using an LLM was a complete waste of time.

But this learning is also value.

Without playing around with it, you wouldn't know when to use an LLM and when not.

Re: I'm OK being left behind, thanks

#398

Post by nromiun »

Getting early into any technology only makes sense if you are building your business on top of it. Or you are making money from it in some way. Other than that it makes sense for the rest of us to wait.

Of course those that believe that AI will convert into AGI and destroy society as we know it won't be convinced.

Re: I'm OK being left behind, thanks

#399

Post by suhputt »

augusto-moura wrote: post #164
stiiv wrote: post #33

> 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…

What I get a bit annoyed is companies forcing AI tools, getting usage metrics and actively hunting the engineers that don't use the tool "enough", I've never seen anything like it for a technically optional tool. Even in the past, aside from technical limitaions, you were not required to use enough of a tool. It just sounds like a giant scheme to burn through tokens and give money to the AI corps, and tech directors…

[dead]

Re: I'm OK being left behind, thanks

#400

Post by dist-epoch »

Tade0 wrote: post #186

To me the main question is the long term pricing. It is said that major providers more than break even on what they're charging. But at the same time that's not the point of capitalism, is it? The point is to charge close to the value you're providing. My lunch money is approximately $10 and I often blow through as much in Claude tokens generously provided by the company which hired me. But I'm not getting $10 value…

NVIDIA Jensen predicted today that soon engineers will spend $20k in tokens every month.
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