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Appearing productive in the workplace

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Re: Appearing productive in the workplace

#131

Post by idle_zealot »

ge96 wrote: post #114
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…

> Requirements documents that were once a page are now twelve. man I see this on Jira a PM or BA is like "yeah I'll write that AC for you" giant bullet list filled in a bunch of emojis and checkmarks

You're not supposed to read the Jira ticket. You're supposed to paste the link along with instructions for your Claude agent to "do this ticket, no mistakes," then raise an MR for whatever it writes. The text is a wire protocol between agents. If a PM doesn't care enough about the requirements to write, or even read them, then would they even notice if the code works or not? Why would they care about that? What does "works" even mean if no human knows the spec?

How quickly we become reverse centaurs.

Re: Appearing productive in the workplace

#132

Post by InexSquirrel »

ge96 wrote: post #114
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…

> Requirements documents that were once a page are now twelve. man I see this on Jira a PM or BA is like "yeah I'll write that AC for you" giant bullet list filled in a bunch of emojis and checkmarks

God I hate the emoji and checkmark usage so much. It feels so try-hard cutesy.

Just give me normal bulleted items, I can read.

Re: Appearing productive in the workplace

#133

Post by dude250711 »

jrockway wrote: post #110
chatmasta wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I just don’t read this crap. The problem solves itself since anyone sending me that isn’t going to bother to follow up about it anyway.

Unfortunately, there is pressure to treat this stuff in good faith. Maybe the PR author really did write all this. Maybe they really did spend 6 hours writing this document. So, I approach it in good faith, but I do get upset when people say "I'll ask claude". You need to be the intermediary, I can also prompt claude and read back the result. If you are going to hire an employee to do work on your behalf, you are res…

> If you are going to hire an employee to do work on your behalf, you are responsible for their performance at the end of the day.

So, what you are saying is that I should fire the bottom N% of underperforming agent instances?

You know, like employers do as opposed to taking any responsibility?

Re: Appearing productive in the workplace

#134

Post by bitwize »

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.

A huge AI signal to me is not em dashes, not emoji, not even the "not X, it's Y" construction which oh god I'm falling into the trap right now aren't I.

It's a combination of these factors plus a tendency to fluff out the piece with punchy but vague language, often recapitulating the same points in slightly reworded ways, that sounds like... an eighth grader trying to write an impressive-sounding essay that clears the minimum word limit.

Did the bright sparks who trained these things just crack open the printer paper boxes in their parents' homes filled with their old schoolwork, and feed that into the machine to get it started?

Re: Appearing productive in the workplace

#135

Post by chao- »

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.

I write the words that I hear in my head, as though I am speaking. With the exception of timed, in-class essays, I always turned in papers far in excess of any minimum during high school.

In college, I took a constructive writing course because I thought "Hey, easy A!" After the second or third week, the professor told me that, while the class had a word minimum, I would also be given a separate word maximum. She said I needed to learn brevity and simplicity, before anything else.

The point being: I was able to cruise through high school with my longwindedness as a cheat code, never stressing about minimum lengths, despite my writing being crap in other ways.

Although I have regressed in the two decades since, it helped me a good deal. I am grateful to that professor for doing that.

Re: Appearing productive in the workplace

#136

Post by nyc_data_geek1 »

physicsguy wrote: post #95
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.

And they are generating the longer version with AI, that you are then using AI to summarize.

This is not adding value for anyone except people whose function is to look busy, and people trying to avoid their busy work.

Re: Appearing productive in the workplace

#137

Post by wutwutwat »

idle_zealot wrote: post #131
ge96 wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Requirements documents that were once a page are now twelve. man I see this on Jira a PM or BA is like "yeah I'll write that AC for you" giant bullet list filled in a bunch of emojis and checkmarks

You're not supposed to read the Jira ticket. You're supposed to paste the link along with instructions for your Claude agent to "do this ticket, no mistakes," then raise an MR for whatever it writes. The text is a wire protocol between agents. If a PM doesn't care enough about the requirements to write, or even read them, then would they even notice if the code works or not? Why would they care about that? What does…

> then would they even notice if the code works or not?

it's literally their job to ship functional product features...

Re: Appearing productive in the workplace

#138

Post by kristjansson »

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…

> Professional formatting, length, and clear prose are no longer indicators of care and work quality (they never were, but in the past, if someone drafts up a twelve page spec, at least you know they care enough to spend a lot of time on it).

I feel the loss of this signal acutely. It’s an adjustment to react to 10-30 page “spec” choc-a-block with formatting and ascii figures as if it were a verbal spitball … because these days it likely is.

Re: Appearing productive in the workplace

#139

Post by dude250711 »

danaw wrote: post #129

i have a strong suspicion that the most productive software teams that leverage llms to build quality software will use it for the following: - intelligent autocomplete: the "OG" llm use for most developers where the generated code is just an extension of your active thought process. where you maintain the context of the code being worked on, rather than outsourcing your thinking to the llm - brainstorming: llms can…

> related, i feel it's likely teams that go "all in" on agentic coding are going to inadvertently sabotage their product and their teams in the long run.

They are trying to get warm by pissing their pants.

Re: Appearing productive in the workplace

#140

Post by pixelpoet »

voxl wrote: post #119
pixelpoet wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Subject yourself to a classroom of kids that you must teach to write, and throw out minimums. Strawman argument; the correct thing to do is not to throw out minimum word count and leave it at that, rather to emphasize the role of brevity and concision while still being sufficiently thorough. It's widely understood that LOC is a poor measure for many coding purposes, so it shouldn't be controversial that word count…

This ENTIRE argument is about whether or not minimum word count is a good idea, perhaps improve your reading comprehension before pretending to know logical fallacies

Almost your entire post history is angry and confrontational, just like here, and I was also talking about whether or not word counts are a good idea, obviously; right back at you about reading comprehension.
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