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Appearing productive in the workplace

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Re: Appearing productive in the workplace

#271

Post by bsimpson »

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…

I usually use git and open source tooling, but I've been working with our internal tech stack recently. It includes an editor with AI-powered autocomplete, and it drives me crazy.

It populates suggestions nearly instantly, which is constantly distracting. They're often wrong (either not the comment I was leaving, or code that's not valid). Most of the normal navigation keys implicitly accept the suggestion, so I spend an annoying amount of time editing code I didn't write, and fighting with the tool to STFU and let me work. Sometimes I'll try what it suggests only to find out that it doesn't build or is broken in other stupid ways.

All of this with the constant anxiety to "be more productive because AI."

Re: Appearing productive in the workplace

#272

Post by groos »

As I am continually amazed at how well Claude 4.7 deals with highly complicated C++ code, I am also becoming painfully aware of the developing situation mentioned in this article: I no longer completely understand the code it is editing, not because I'm incapable of doing it, but because I have not authored the changes. I am trading throughput for understanding, and, eventually, judgment.

Re: Appearing productive in the workplace

#273

Post by groos »

During the last few months when AI usage was mandated in our team and usage exploded, our team's throughput has barely changed. Now, if this was due to people working 2 hours a day and painting, cooking and playing golf the rest of the day, this would be a great result, but I see many people work past 6pm, and yet the output is mostly the same. We are not tackling harder problems or fixing more bugs despite authoring numerous skills for AI. Eventually the reckoning is sure to come, and I think it will not be pretty.

Re: Appearing productive in the workplace

#274

Post by Gigachad »

roygbiv2 wrote: post #267
paodealho wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I like them. It tells very clearly how much effort went into someone's work. I like them even more on code comments. It tells _precisely_ how much effort went into the pull request, so I don't spend time reviewing lazy work.

Lazy or efficient? A dev could spend an hour on something or 10 mins, if the outcome is the same what's does it matter?

Because the reviewer ends up doing the real work actually checking it works.

The laziness is offloading work down the line.

Re: Appearing productive in the workplace

#275

Post by Gigachad »

chatmasta wrote: post #107
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…

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.

I just stopped reading my work emails and the announcement channels. Everything that actually matters either ends up DMed to me or shows up in my calendar.

Re: Appearing productive in the workplace

#276

Post by Gigachad »

anthonypasq wrote: post #143
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…

it actually insane that this sort of thing is tolerated. Its a culture thing and frankly just rude. My org is pretty AI-pilled and this type of behavior will just not fly. I need to be assured im talking to a human who is using their brain.

There’s people who use AI to solve problems, and then there’s people who have completely offloaded all of their thinking to LLMs. I have a manager who when asked a question won’t think even for a moment about it and will just paste paragraphs of AI generated text back.

Re: Appearing productive in the workplace

#277

Post by Gigachad »

bitwize wrote: post #134
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 re…

Another hint is when the structure and formality of the response doesn’t match the medium. Like when someone sends you a whole article back in DMs along with headings for the sections.

Even though real humans write like that when writing documents, they never did that in informal messaging.

Re: Appearing productive in the workplace

#278

Post by Pannoniae »

zbentley wrote: post #260
Pannoniae wrote: post #232

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ideally. But that requires the correct abstraction, requires keeping it up to date.... that's basically an unachievable ideal. You either have overabstraction/overengineering (most codebases) or you have repetition. Repetition is actually more preferable in the LLM-world because you have to keep less stuff in your head. And the LLM's head too. Even if something does look copypasted, it might actually be semantically…

Totally fair, but 42 if-statements across 32 files isn't something you need to fix with like ... a grand refactor or hexagonal architecture or event sourcing or whatever the overengineering pattern du jour is. You can fix that with a utility function or three, and a file/class/module/whatever that owns the code relating to some of those conditions. I'm not some DRY zealot, but I've been in the "this system needs real…

Sure but even wiring that utility function in is work :D If you have even just a 2-3-million LoC codebase, not even something truly enormous - making global changes does require typing, and a whole lot of it...

Re: Appearing productive in the workplace

#279

Post by boron1006 »

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 can’t tell if we’re in identical situations or we work in the same place…

Re: Appearing productive in the workplace

#280

Post by cottsak »

paodealho wrote: post #157
InexSquirrel wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I like them. It tells very clearly how much effort went into someone's work. I like them even more on code comments. It tells _precisely_ how much effort went into the pull request, so I don't spend time reviewing lazy work.

I wonder if we humans are already checking out from PR reviews from human effort that we've misjudged as AI. we are in so much trouble! lol
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