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

Nobody Pushed Back: Why Engineers Stay Silent Until It's Too Late

howtocenterdiv.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

21–30 of 38 posts

Re: Nobody Pushed Back: Why Engineers Stay Silent Until It's Too Late

#21

Post by automatic6131 »

renyicircle wrote: post #20
automatic6131 wrote: post #11

This article is written atrociously. It's geniunely unpleasant to read the basement tier slop like this. It doesn't matter if it has a salient point because this article could have been a comment.

Agreed, I can't read articles anymore with that Claudish stench of confidence, impactful sentences and dramatic negative parallelism. At some point you just start to skim it and reverse engineer the simple original prompt which is "write an article about how people don't speak up because it can hurt their career, use real world examples".

I just realized what the "AI summarize" feature is for. This kinda turd. I'd never wanted to use it, because either I wanted the joy of reading whatever it was - or needed the details in full because it's documentation. Now, finally, a use. Manmade horrors of daily life.

Re: Nobody Pushed Back: Why Engineers Stay Silent Until It's Too Late

#22

Post by renyicircle »

automatic6131 wrote: post #21
renyicircle wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed, I can't read articles anymore with that Claudish stench of confidence, impactful sentences and dramatic negative parallelism. At some point you just start to skim it and reverse engineer the simple original prompt which is "write an article about how people don't speak up because it can hurt their career, use real world examples".

I just realized what the "AI summarize" feature is for. This kinda turd. I'd never wanted to use it, because either I wanted the joy of reading whatever it was - or needed the details in full because it's documentation. Now, finally, a use. Manmade horrors of daily life.

Remember sharing simple thoughts between each other? Now you can do the same thing but with two AIs in between, one that produces words out of an idea and one that collapses them back. This is the way of the future.

Re: Nobody Pushed Back: Why Engineers Stay Silent Until It's Too Late

#23

Post by scandox »

One of the problems I've encountered is that the people who do speak up, by their very nature, don't do so in a way that has a chance of being heard. Even the phrase "speak up" suggests the failure that is coming. Getting decisions changed is a diplomatic manoeuvre that requires understanding how to frame the issues in a way that is meaningful to the decision maker. It's compromising and complex. Engineers need someone on their side who can perform that role.

Re: Nobody Pushed Back: Why Engineers Stay Silent Until It's Too Late

#25

Post by binary132 »

automatic6131 wrote: post #21
renyicircle wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed, I can't read articles anymore with that Claudish stench of confidence, impactful sentences and dramatic negative parallelism. At some point you just start to skim it and reverse engineer the simple original prompt which is "write an article about how people don't speak up because it can hurt their career, use real world examples".

I just realized what the "AI summarize" feature is for. This kinda turd. I'd never wanted to use it, because either I wanted the joy of reading whatever it was - or needed the details in full because it's documentation. Now, finally, a use. Manmade horrors of daily life.

Actually you don’t need an AI slop generator for processing AI slop when the headline is right there and you have more than two brain cells (presuming of course you are not a bot.)

Re: Nobody Pushed Back: Why Engineers Stay Silent Until It's Too Late

#26

Post by basedrum »

Engineers are conditioned to find problems, it's why we have the saying "don't let the perfect be the enemy of the good". It's paralysing. Often we raise problems outside of our lane, and that drives people nuts. This article is suggesting that we never raise issues, I've only ever seen the opposite, where we cannot keep our haranguing to ourselves and we fail to know when making a point makes sense or how to make our point and move on

Re: Nobody Pushed Back: Why Engineers Stay Silent Until It's Too Late

#27

Post by joshua_amaju »

automatic6131 wrote: post #21
renyicircle wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed, I can't read articles anymore with that Claudish stench of confidence, impactful sentences and dramatic negative parallelism. At some point you just start to skim it and reverse engineer the simple original prompt which is "write an article about how people don't speak up because it can hurt their career, use real world examples".

I just realized what the "AI summarize" feature is for. This kinda turd. I'd never wanted to use it, because either I wanted the joy of reading whatever it was - or needed the details in full because it's documentation. Now, finally, a use. Manmade horrors of daily life.

We're really in a bad place when you need AI to give you the human version of AI generated content written by a human.

Re: Nobody Pushed Back: Why Engineers Stay Silent Until It's Too Late

#28

Post by Eddy_Viscosity2 »

scandox wrote: post #23

One of the problems I've encountered is that the people who do speak up, by their very nature, don't do so in a way that has a chance of being heard. Even the phrase "speak up" suggests the failure that is coming. Getting decisions changed is a diplomatic manoeuvre that requires understanding how to frame the issues in a way that is meaningful to the decision maker. It's compromising and complex. Engineers need someo…

This is very true. It not just what you say, but how, and to whom.

There's also the reflexive push-back from managers (at many levels) because problems increase costs and extend deadlines. The managers therefore, as the Sinclair saying goes, find it difficult to understand something, when their salary depends upon them not understanding.

Re: Nobody Pushed Back: Why Engineers Stay Silent Until It's Too Late

#29

Post by zeafoamrun »

joshua_amaju wrote: post #27
automatic6131 wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I just realized what the "AI summarize" feature is for. This kinda turd. I'd never wanted to use it, because either I wanted the joy of reading whatever it was - or needed the details in full because it's documentation. Now, finally, a use. Manmade horrors of daily life.

We're really in a bad place when you need AI to give you the human version of AI generated content written by a human.

It's really sad. It's made me determined not to put any AI written posts on my website. I sling enough AI generated code at work already.

Re: Nobody Pushed Back: Why Engineers Stay Silent Until It's Too Late

#30

Post by danaris »

elnatro wrote: post #3

It’s not wise to be against the direction of an executive. You will be labeled combative, misaligned, or even uncooperative. It’s not worth it. Unless you have a strong political ally, it can be career suicide in your company.

Well, this is one of the major sources of the problem, isn't it? Executives who can't accept someone disagreeing with their Glorious Vision, like they're prophets or geniuses whose thoughts we mere mortals could never possibly understand or equal?

We've accepted the idea that being at the top of the org chart means you're treated as a petty king for far too long. Not only is it terrible for the people under them, it's also straight-up bad leadership: it's guaranteed to lead to worse results than being able to graciously accept feedback, even if you don't actually change anything because of it 95% of the time.

Post reply on HN