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Appearing productive in the workplace

nooneshappy.com

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Re: Appearing productive in the workplace

#421

Post by noduerme »

TrackerFF wrote: post #414

I watched a video of some (unemployed) programmer lamenting over the current job situation market. He had been coding for a good while, but had recently been laid off. The vid was mainly concerning the searching and interview process, but it also did highlight something I find somewhat true and important: Right now we're in a gold rush. Companies, that be established ones or startups, are in a frenzy to transform or…

Companies that don't fall under that rubric are established and have actual money on the line if their software shits the bed. Software that handles actual logistics and transactions can't be treated to lots of LLM updates without some serious problems arising. Startups and B2B ones especially have always been cheap, cut corners, screwed up and apologized later, and most importantly just created hype and fluff to get investment that's rarely spent on building solid foundations. There's not much crap AI is writing for them now, as code or marketing material, that wasn't already just as junky when it was written by humans. That's been the mutually agreed upon game that startups and VC have played since the 90s. LLMs just distill the douchery and the flawed logic, and it's pleasant to watch their artifacts go down in flames.

Re: Appearing productive in the workplace

#422

Post by nly »

whstl wrote: post #420
TrackerFF wrote: post #414

I watched a video of some (unemployed) programmer lamenting over the current job situation market. He had been coding for a good while, but had recently been laid off. The vid was mainly concerning the searching and interview process, but it also did highlight something I find somewhat true and important: Right now we're in a gold rush. Companies, that be established ones or startups, are in a frenzy to transform or…

If anything, the current era looks like how 1995-2015 was for me. Back then I was not in the “nitpicker’s radar” yet. I was working in small teams and shipping like crazy, sometimes fixing small bugs literally in seconds. Things worked, were stable, made money, teams were fun and code and product had quality. The post-Thoughtworks, post-Uncle-Bob world of 2015-2025 was absolute hell for a maker. It was 100% about per…

Nothing you describe is recognisable to me. It just seems like you chose to work at bad places.

Re: Appearing productive in the workplace

#423

Post by kakacik »

noduerme wrote: post #421
TrackerFF wrote: post #414

I watched a video of some (unemployed) programmer lamenting over the current job situation market. He had been coding for a good while, but had recently been laid off. The vid was mainly concerning the searching and interview process, but it also did highlight something I find somewhat true and important: Right now we're in a gold rush. Companies, that be established ones or startups, are in a frenzy to transform or…

Companies that don't fall under that rubric are established and have actual money on the line if their software shits the bed. Software that handles actual logistics and transactions can't be treated to lots of LLM updates without some serious problems arising. Startups and B2B ones especially have always been cheap, cut corners, screwed up and apologized later, and most importantly just created hype and fluff to get…

Most of the software engineering field ain't no startups, however distorted the most vocal representation on HN could be.

Neither are they code sweat shops churing one quick templated eshop/company site after another (knew some people in that space, even 20 years ago 1 individual churned out easily 2-3 full sites in a week depending on complexity).

Typical companies, this includes banks btw, see these llms as production boosters, to cut off expensive saas offerings and do more inhouse, rather than head count cutting tool par excellence. Not everybody is as dumb and pennypinching-greedy as ie amazon is. There, quality of output is still massively more important than volume of it or speed. CTOs are not all bunch of shortsighted idiots. But these dont make catchy headlines, do they.

Re: Appearing productive in the workplace

#424

Post by pelagicAustral »

nly wrote: post #422
whstl wrote: post #420

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If anything, the current era looks like how 1995-2015 was for me. Back then I was not in the “nitpicker’s radar” yet. I was working in small teams and shipping like crazy, sometimes fixing small bugs literally in seconds. Things worked, were stable, made money, teams were fun and code and product had quality. The post-Thoughtworks, post-Uncle-Bob world of 2015-2025 was absolute hell for a maker. It was 100% about per…

Nothing you describe is recognisable to me. It just seems like you chose to work at bad places.

Come on now. Even I know exactly what he's talking about and I have worked far and beyond all the craze of the real world, having mainly dedicated time to small dev shops in the past 2 decades.

Re: Appearing productive in the workplace

#425

Post by nly »

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.

It's like an amplification attack.

Re: Appearing productive in the workplace

#427

Post by my-next-account »

pelagicAustral wrote: post #424
nly wrote: post #422

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nothing you describe is recognisable to me. It just seems like you chose to work at bad places.

Come on now. Even I know exactly what he's talking about and I have worked far and beyond all the craze of the real world, having mainly dedicated time to small dev shops in the past 2 decades.

No man, it's because of their poor ability to pick jobs, not because the other commenter was in a different niche or whatever than they are. It's absolutely not possible for 2 people to have a different experience, as there are at most 5 programmers in the entire world.

Re: Appearing productive in the workplace

#428

Post by philipp-gayret »

TrackerFF wrote: post #414

I watched a video of some (unemployed) programmer lamenting over the current job situation market. He had been coding for a good while, but had recently been laid off. The vid was mainly concerning the searching and interview process, but it also did highlight something I find somewhat true and important: Right now we're in a gold rush. Companies, that be established ones or startups, are in a frenzy to transform or…

You have described exactly the situation of almost all of my clients. And in some way it is good to see our business model validated as we help steer organisations at this level, also technically. I would only add that the quality of software has improved significantly. From my perspective, the bar for quality at most organisations like this is low, extremely low.

Re: Appearing productive in the workplace

#429

Post by whstl »

nly wrote: post #422
whstl wrote: post #420

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If anything, the current era looks like how 1995-2015 was for me. Back then I was not in the “nitpicker’s radar” yet. I was working in small teams and shipping like crazy, sometimes fixing small bugs literally in seconds. Things worked, were stable, made money, teams were fun and code and product had quality. The post-Thoughtworks, post-Uncle-Bob world of 2015-2025 was absolute hell for a maker. It was 100% about per…

Nothing you describe is recognisable to me. It just seems like you chose to work at bad places.

That's the crazy thing about criticizing the industry in general: you can't really get away with it without someone calling you incompetent, point blank! :D

What I am describing here is FAANG (two of them) and every startup (two YC) or enterprise (a big Fintech) that copied it.

If you happen to "like it", perhaps it's time to think about accepting how other people don't.

I even prefaced it with "for me".

Re: Appearing productive in the workplace

#430

Post by stefan_ »

mediaman wrote: post #130
smallmancontrov wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Does anyone know where that style came from? Did it become popular in listicles or on github or something? Or is there one person deep inside OpenAI or Anthropic who built the synthetic data pipeline and one day made the decision on a whim to doom us to an eternity of emoji bullet points?

I think it likely performed well in A/B preference tests with chat users. I've noticed Claude does far fewer listicles than ChatGPT. I suspect that they don't blindly follow supervised learning feedback from chats as much as ChatGPT. I get Apple vs Google design approach from those two companies, in that Apple tends not to obsess over interaction data, instead using design principles, while Google just tests everythi…

There was a time when also Claude would absolutely fill code with emojis, which is why now their system prompt has

> Claude does not use emojis unless the person in the conversation asks it to

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