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Appearing productive in the workplace

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Re: Appearing productive in the workplace

#71

Post by imiric »

bambax wrote: post #35

I intensely agree with everything that's being said in TFA; this however could be nuanced: > Never ask a model for confirmation; the tool agrees with everyone If asked properly, LLMs can be used to poke holes in an existing reasoning or come up with new ideas or things to explore. So yes, never ask a model for confirmation or encouragement; but you can absolutely ask it to critique something, and that's often of valu…

> never ask a model for confirmation or encouragement; but you can absolutely ask it to critique something, and that's often of value.

What's the difference? The end result is equally unreliable.

In either case, the value is determined by a human domain expert who can judge whether the output is correct or not, in the right direction or not, if it's worth iterating upon or if it's going to be a giant waste of time, and so on. And the human must remain vigilant at every step of the way, since the tool can quickly derail.

People who are using these tools entirely autonomously, and give them access to sensitive data and services, scare the shit out of me. Not because the tool can wipe their database or whatnot, but because this behavior is being popularized, normalized, and even celebrated. It's only a matter of time until some moron lets it loose on highly critical systems and infrastructure, and we read something far worse than an angry tweet.

Re: Appearing productive in the workplace

#72

Post by awakeasleep »

Swizec wrote: post #49
wcfrobert wrote: post #42

> "Requirements documents that were once a page are now twelve. Status updates that were once three sentences are now bulleted summaries of bulleted summaries. Retrospective notes, post-incident reports, design memos, kickoff decks: every artifact that can be elongated is, by people who do not read what they produce, for readers who do not read what they receive." Great article. The "elongation" of workplace artifact…

> Reminded me of when I had to be extra wordy to meet the 1000 minimum word limit for my high school essays. Minimum word lengths are the greatest dis-service high school and college have ever done to future communication skills. It takes years for people to unlearn this in the workplace. Max word counts only please. Especially now with AI making it so easy to produce fluff with no signal.

Minimum word lengths were really a terrible idea and I wonder what arguments were used to get all the teachers to buy into that system.

Re: Appearing productive in the workplace

#73

Post by wahnfrieden »

jaggederest wrote: post #56
wahnfrieden wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's also wrong advice. After an LLM produces code, asking it if it's correct (in a variety of other ways) can often find actual problems with it.

Also, all code is wrong in the wrong context, all code is right in the right context, the reason AI cannot one shot a complete architecture is that it's not a defined and possible task - if you fully specify the architecture the AI isn't designing anything, and if you don't fully specify the architecture how is the AI going to resolve ambiguity without either guessing, asking questions to make you do the necessary wo…

That is why advice like "never ask for confirmation" is unhelpful

Re: Appearing productive in the workplace

#74

Post by randusername »

> The cost of producing a document has fallen to nearly zero; the cost of reading one has not, and is in fact rising, because the reader must now sift the synthetic context for whatever the document was originally about.

This resonates. It's a spectacular full-reversal kind of tragedy because it used to be asymmetric the other way. Author puts in 10 effort points compiling valuable information and reader puts in 1 effort points to receive the transmission.

Re: Appearing productive in the workplace

#75

Post by pmg101 »

funimpoded wrote: post #57
switchbak wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think for a lot of companies, AI is a destabilizing force that their managerial structure is unable to compensate for. When you change the economics to such a degree, you're basically removing a dam - resulting in far more stress on the rest of the system. If the leaders of the org don't see the potential downsides and risks of that, they're in for a world of hurt. I think we're going to see a real surge of compani…

I increasingly see “AI” as a sort of virus tuned to target management, specifically. Its output is catnip to them, and it’s going to be unavoidable for those who want to look good to superiors and peers (i.e. the #1 priority for managers) even as it adds no actual value whatsoever to what they do. People under them, too, will have to start burning tokens on bullshit to satisfactorily perform competence and “doing wor…

I agree with everything you've said, but don't you think quite a lot of things have also been like this before, just to a lesser degree?

I've often had the sense that most of what is done inside companies is a kind of performance of work rather than work itself. Mostly all a big status game between various different factions. All actual value provided by just a few engineers here and there who are able to shut out the noise and build things.

Re: Appearing productive in the workplace

#76

Post by jdauriemma »

wcfrobert wrote: post #42

> "Requirements documents that were once a page are now twelve. Status updates that were once three sentences are now bulleted summaries of bulleted summaries. Retrospective notes, post-incident reports, design memos, kickoff decks: every artifact that can be elongated is, by people who do not read what they produce, for readers who do not read what they receive." Great article. The "elongation" of workplace artifact…

Whenever I see a document with horizontal rules between headers and the blues and purples that Claude Cowork adds to .docx files, I sigh.

Re: Appearing productive in the workplace

#77

Post by atomicnumber3 »

switchbak wrote: post #28
proofofcontempt wrote: post #19

What is described here closely resembles my experience too. My company is full of managers who haven't written code in years. They hired an architect 18 months ago who used AI to architect everything. To the senior devs it was obvious - everything was massively over engineered, yet because he used all the proper terminology he sounded more competent to upper management than the other senior managers who didn't. When…

I think for a lot of companies, AI is a destabilizing force that their managerial structure is unable to compensate for. When you change the economics to such a degree, you're basically removing a dam - resulting in far more stress on the rest of the system. If the leaders of the org don't see the potential downsides and risks of that, they're in for a world of hurt. I think we're going to see a real surge of compani…

Honestly, the most impactful thing I've seen AI do for any workplace is serve as the ultimate excuse for whatever pet thing someone's wanted to do, that can't stand on its own merits, and what they really need is a solid excuse.

Rewrite that old crunchy system that has had 0 incidents in the last year and is also largely "done" (not a lot of new requirements coming in, pretty settled code/architecture)? It's actually one of our most stable systems. But someone who doesn't even write code here thinks the code is yucky! But that doesn't convince the engineers who are on-call for it to replace it for almost no reason. Well guess what. We can do it now, _because AI!!!_ (cue exactly what you think happens next happening next)

Need to lay off 10% of staff because you think the workers are getting too good of a deal? AI.

Need to convince your workers to go faster, but EMs tell you you can't just crack the whip? AI mandates / token spend mandates!

Didn't like code reviews and people nitpicking your designs? Sorry, code reviews are canceled, because of AI.

Don't like meetings or working in a team? Well now everyone is a team of 1, because of AI. Better set up some "teams" full of teams of 1, call them "AI-first" teams, and wait what do you mean they're on vacation and the service is down?

Etc. And they don't even care that these things result in the exact negative outcomes that are why you didn't do them before you had the excuse. You're happy that YOUR thing finally got done despite all the whiners and detractors. And of course, it turns out that businesses can withstand an absurd amount of dysfunction without really feeling it. So it just happens. Maybe some people leave. You hire people who just left their last place for doing the thing you just did and now maybe they spend a bit of time here. And the game of musical chairs, petty monarchies, and degenerate capitalism continues a bit longer.

Big props to the people who managed to invent and sell an excuse machine though. Turns out that's what everyone actually wanted.

Re: Appearing productive in the workplace

#78

Post by xXSLAYERXx »

Who cares? I obviously didn't like the article.

> Schemes were all wrong

Why'd you let him run wild for two months? What software org would let anyone, even principle do that? Wouldn't the very first thing you'd do is review the guys schema? This reads like all the other snarky posts on HN about how everyone is punching above their pay grade and people who are much more advanced in some space just watch like two trains colliding.

I'll tell you what is productive in the workplace. Communication. That is it. Communicate and lift the guy up, give the guy a running start instead of chilling in the break room snarking with all your snarky co-workers.

Re: Appearing productive in the workplace

#79

Post by iterateoften »

awakeasleep wrote: post #72
Swizec wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Reminded me of when I had to be extra wordy to meet the 1000 minimum word limit for my high school essays. Minimum word lengths are the greatest dis-service high school and college have ever done to future communication skills. It takes years for people to unlearn this in the workplace. Max word counts only please. Especially now with AI making it so easy to produce fluff with no signal.

Minimum word lengths were really a terrible idea and I wonder what arguments were used to get all the teachers to buy into that system.

It’s easier to judge an objective output like number of words than subjective like quality.

Same as lines of code, etc.

Re: Appearing productive in the workplace

#80

Post by htrp »

proofofcontempt wrote: post #45
saganus wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From past experiences (and I'm sure I'm not alone here), I can almost guarantee that the senior devs did communicate the problems, but they were ignored or brushed aside. Very seldomly does middle/upper management truly listens to engineers, unless there's buy-in from the CTO/VP to champion the ideas and complaints.

The CTO got fired last month, presumably for poor performance. And the director that has taken is place is now all in on AI because he's desperate to turn things around but has no idea how.

Was the CTO advocating a more measured approached to ai adoption?
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