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Appearing productive in the workplace

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Re: Appearing productive in the workplace

#351

Post by danaw »

bsimpson wrote: post #271
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 spen…

oof. nothing like a home grown tool that gets more in your way than helps!

i especially find suggestions distracting in markdown where i feel is the key place i really dont want an llm trying to interfere in my ability to communicate to other developers on my team

Re: Appearing productive in the workplace

#352

Post by danaw »

marcosdumay wrote: post #193
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…

On troubleshooting, either LLMs used to be better, or I'm in a huge bad luck strake. All of the last few times I tried to ask one, I've got a perfectly believable and completely wrong answer that weren't even on the right subject. On code review, the amount of false positives is absolutely overwhelming. And I see no reason for that to improve. But yes, LLMs can probably help on those lines.

this can absolutely happen and i've experienced it myself recently. that said id say its still better than some of the alternatives and i've had probably 60-80% luck with it if properly prompted

what models have you been using that are the least helpful?

Re: Appearing productive in the workplace

#353

Post by wazHFsRy »

As everyone is an expert now[1] on paper I think it is unfortunately time for a shift again. For years I was big proponent of asynchronous remote work. But it seems like the only reasonable way forward is to discuss things face to face. I still prefer to prepare things async, but then discuss them in person to understand if people actually understand what they are talking about. So far I also have a good time with really being frank and honest with colleagues if something is clearly AI expertise and not that persons expertise.

1: https://www.dev-log.me/everyone_is_an_expert_now/

Re: Appearing productive in the workplace

#354

Post by danaw »

proofofcontempt wrote: post #149
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'm with you on all apart from code review. Our team has tried a couple tools. Most of the issues highlighted are either very surface level or non-issues. When it reviews code from the less competent team members, it misses deeper issues which human review has caught, such as when the wrong change has been made to solve a problem which could be solved a better way. Our manager uses it as evidence to affirm his bias t…

ouch, sounds like your manager is more a problem than the llm review!

i find it as a good backstop to catch dumb mistakes or suggest alternatives but is not a replacement for human review (we require human review but llm suggestions are always optional and you're free to ignore)

Re: Appearing productive in the workplace

#355

Post by aryehof »

jimbokun wrote: post #308
dr_kiszonka wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I work under the assumption that the primary audience of everything I write at work is an AI. Managers will take what I send and have it summarized and evaluated by some chatbot or agent. (Of course, I cannot send them the summary myself.) So like ATS checkers for resumes, I find myself needing an AI checker for my text. Ultimately, we will have AI write everything for another AI to parse, which will be a massive was…

I’m too lazy to tell the AI what I want to say, then copy and send its output. I just type what I want to say and hit send. YOLO

> I just type what I want to say and hit send. YOLO

Made me smile. Perhaps the new term for making a human hand-written reply is that I didnt use AI … “I YOLOed it”.

Re: Appearing productive in the workplace

#356

Post by bigfatkitten »

pocksuppet wrote: post #156
wutwutwat wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> then would they even notice if the code works or not? it's literally their job to ship functional product features...

Everyone's job is to please their manager. Their job is shipping functional product features only if that's what their manager likes. In functional companies, that should be the case. There aren't many functional companies.

In my last company, what my manager liked was an increase in AI adoption metrics, because that’s what his boss likes.

Re: Appearing productive in the workplace

#357

Post by danaw »

Merad wrote: post #186
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…

> intelligent autocomplete I'm curious how much value others are finding in this. Personally I turned it off about a year ago and went back to traditional (jetbrains) IDE autocomplete. In my experience the AI suggestions would predict exactly what I wanted < 1% of the time, were useful perhaps 10% of the time, and otherwise were simply wrong and annoying. Standard IDE features allowing me to quickly search and/or bro…

[dead]

Re: Appearing productive in the workplace

#358

Post by appplication »

Art9681 wrote: post #335

Counterpoint: If humans shipped perfect products they would no longer havejobs. The majority of time spent in an organization is fixing problems humans caused. For good reasons and bad excuses. We are not machines. What we, collectively as a species are building now with AI is a mirror that reflects the failures and successes we contributed to. No engineer here has a perfect record. No senior or principal either. We…

I think it’s worth recognizing that people’s issues with LLMs isn’t that they make mistakes. And I think hammering the argument that humans also make mistakes indicates a bit of a disconnect with the more common reasons there is frustration with LLM use.

Ultimately I think people find it frustrating because many of us have spent years refining our communication so that it is deliberate and precise. LLMs essentially represent a layer of indirection to both of those goals. If I prepare some communication (email, code, a blog post, etc) and try to use an LLM more actively, I find at best I end up with something that more or less captures what I probably was going to communicate but doesn’t quite feel like an extension of my own thoughts as much as an slightly blurred approximation.

I think this also explains to some degree why it seems folks who were never particularly critical of their own communication have a hard time comprehending why anyone could be upset about this.

There is of course the flip side where now when receiving communication that I have to attempt to deduce if I’m reading a 5 paragraph, meticulously formatted email (or 200 line, meticulously tested function) because whoever sent it was too lazy to more concisely write 2-3 well thought out sentences (or make a 15-line diff to an existing function). And of course the answer here for the AI pragmatist is that I should consider having an AI summarize these extensive communications back down to an easily digestible 2-3 sentence summary (or employ an AI to do code review for me).

For those that value precise communications, this experience is pretty exhausting.

Re: Appearing productive in the workplace

#359

Post by aryehof »

cm11 wrote: post #214
pocksuppet wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Everyone's job is to please their manager. Their job is shipping functional product features only if that's what their manager likes. In functional companies, that should be the case. There aren't many functional companies.

Don't forget that they're also functionally structured. The managers don't own products or features, they manage functions (engineering, sales, design). And in practice, they usually only manage people, with little control over the function. So the managers aren't particularly interested or tied to shipping product features. The PM maybe, but they don't have reports or own much.

> And in practice, they usually only manage people …

I usually differentiate between real managers who exist to make decisions, versus those who manage people. The latter are “overseers” not managers.

Re: Appearing productive in the workplace

#360

Post by mikestorrent »

ex-aws-dude wrote: post #295
Aurornis wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I first noticed it when Notion became popular. All of the PMs I interacted with across companies started using Notion for everything at the same time. Filling Notion documents with emojis was the style of the time. This slightly pre-dated AI tools becoming entirely usable for me.

Was going to say the same Notion-core

Insert the grug IQ curve meme here. Some folks really like to hyper-optimize on tooling side quests.
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