Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Appearing productive in the workplace

nooneshappy.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

91–100 of 686 posts

Re: Appearing productive in the workplace

#91

Post by j_w »

yed wrote: post #88
awakeasleep wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Considering that many high school kids won’t want to put in any effort at all, how else do you convey the amount of detail and effort you expect for a given writing assignment? It’s an imperfect proxy but I can’t think of a better one.

Yeah, this is seemingly the only effective proxy for "write with some amount of depth." If the word count gets BS'd then it will be obvious when reading the output.

Re: Appearing productive in the workplace

#92

Post by LinuxAmbulance »

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…

AI has made my work about 5-8x quicker, just because I'm able to have it cover a lot of the grunt work (update 42 if statements in 32 different files) that took time, but no particular skill.

I think the use cases where AI makes an economic improvement to the status quo for a business are rare, but they do exist, and they can be a significant improvement.

It's like the early days of the dotcom boom and bust - people thought the internet was good for every use case under the sun, including shipping people a single candy bar at a loss. After the dotcom bust, a lot of that went by the wayside, but there was a tremendous economic advantage to the businesses that were more useful when available on the internet.

Re: Appearing productive in the workplace

#93

Post by voxl »

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.

Have a second of critical thinking on this topic will make it abundantly obvious why this line of questioning is anti-education and anti-intellectual. You write in school to practice. No just composition, but grammar, spelling, individual sentences. Practice requires volume.

Subject yourself to a classroom of kids that you must teach to write, and throw out minimums. Will some students do fine? Sure, of course, and what of the others that turn in one sentence? That never grow? That have to go into the math class and hear their idiot parents say "why are you learning that we have calculators"

Re: Appearing productive in the workplace

#94

Post by LinuxAmbulance »

atomicnumber3 wrote: post #77
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…

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…

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

I think we're seeing a ton of that right now, and it's not slowing down any time soon it seems.

Re: Appearing productive in the workplace

#95

Post by physicsguy »

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…

In my experience I'm pasting a lot more into AI to get the high level summary though.

Re: Appearing productive in the workplace

#96

Post by Swizec »

j_w wrote: post #91
yed wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Considering that many high school kids won’t want to put in any effort at all, how else do you convey the amount of detail and effort you expect for a given writing assignment? It’s an imperfect proxy but I can’t think of a better one.

Yeah, this is seemingly the only effective proxy for "write with some amount of depth." If the word count gets BS'd then it will be obvious when reading the output.

> Yeah, this is seemingly the only effective proxy for "write with some amount of depth." If the word count gets BS'd then it will be obvious when reading the output.

My high school professors had a really good solution to this:

Minimum word lengths but you have to write the essay in class by hand. You have 2 periods.

Some of us still write a lot but having limited time and space (4 pages) really put a hard limit without saying so. In higher classes they started saying “I’m gonna stop reading after 3 pages so make sure you get to the point”

Re: Appearing productive in the workplace

#97

Post by notahacker »

yed wrote: post #88
awakeasleep wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Considering that many high school kids won’t want to put in any effort at all, how else do you convey the amount of detail and effort you expect for a given writing assignment? It’s an imperfect proxy but I can’t think of a better one.

Yeah. 1000 words is not a long essay that requires padding, and any competent teacher marks an essay with 1000 words achieved mainly by repetition and bad sentence construction much lower than one discussing the subject matter in a suitable level of detail, and probably lower than a better- written essay which gets marks deducted for only having 985 words.

Since "write an essay" can be anything from three paragraphs to a 50 page paper and the teacher probably doesn't think either is the appropriate response to the task, some sort of numerical guide is a good starting point, even if a fairly wide range is a better guide than just a minimum...

(plus actually there are real world work tasks involving composing text that fits within a certain word range, and since being concise and focused isn't AI text generation's strong suit, I'm not sure those work tasks will disappear...)

Re: Appearing productive in the workplace

#98

Post by a34729t »

dude250711 wrote: post #89
jdauriemma wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Whenever I see AI-generated content put forward for my attention, I extract myself from the situation with the minimum possible time expenditure from my side. It's some sort of a leverage: "I spend 5 minutes prompting, so that you could spend 30 minutes reviewing". Not gonna happen LLM buddies.

If you were too lazy to write it, I'm too lazy to read it.

Re: Appearing productive in the workplace

#99

Post by 20after4 »

bonesss wrote: post #63
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’m an LLM enjoyer who also thinks that ‘er ‘jerbs are safe and, taken to their logical conclusion, most LLM-stroking online around coding reduces to an argument that we should be speaking Haskell to LLMs and also in specs and documentation (just kidding, OCaml is prettier). But also, I do a little business. You’ve hit the real issue, IT management is D-tier and lacks self awareness. “Agile” is effed up as a rule, wh…

> We don’t pay mechanics to Google “how to fix car”.

No, instead of google they just look it up on alldata.

Re: Appearing productive in the workplace

#100

Post by tayo42 »

yed wrote: post #88
awakeasleep wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Considering that many high school kids won’t want to put in any effort at all, how else do you convey the amount of detail and effort you expect for a given writing assignment? It’s an imperfect proxy but I can’t think of a better one.

When the teacher goes to grade it? If you turn in one sentence with or without a minimum your getting an F...
Post reply on HN