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The New AI Superpowers: Focus and Followthrough

rickmanelius.com

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Re: The New AI Superpowers: Focus and Followthrough

#41

Post by resonious »

dominotw wrote: post #33
cgearhart wrote: post #23

This seems very related to a trend I’m seeing as my company goes all in on AI: everyone thinks that every problem is “a couple hours” with AI now, and they all want zero external dependencies because they can move faster alone. As a result, we’re now in an even worse “yet-another-…” age where everyone has built approximately the same (but somehow incompatible) versions of all the same beginner-level software, and (ir…

problem is that no one knows what to build and there are way too many ppl employed

This is huge... At least from what I've seen, many companies (even if they don't know it) are largely sloppy R&D shops. Most people are on projects that are highly speculative and unlikely to generate revenue. But it often isn't framed that way. Everyone believes their project is the obvious way forward.

Re: The New AI Superpowers: Focus and Followthrough

#42

Post by goldlimetea »

cgearhart wrote: post #23

This seems very related to a trend I’m seeing as my company goes all in on AI: everyone thinks that every problem is “a couple hours” with AI now, and they all want zero external dependencies because they can move faster alone. As a result, we’re now in an even worse “yet-another-…” age where everyone has built approximately the same (but somehow incompatible) versions of all the same beginner-level software, and (ir…

[dead]

Re: The New AI Superpowers: Focus and Followthrough

#43

Post by georgemcbay »

tomrod wrote: post #30
NateEag wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Pick a website you like, and tell claude to use it for inspiration. I believe you misspelled "rip it off." I guess I shouldn't be surprised that people are using the tools built by ripping off the collective creative works of humanity to rip off individual things, too.

Steve Jobs said something about good and great artists.

> Steve Jobs said something about good and great artists.

Picasso said that, Jobs quoted it (and to his credit, gave attribution... which I doubt is happening with all of these claude-cloned designs).

Re: The New AI Superpowers: Focus and Followthrough

#44

Post by NateEag »

__MatrixMan__ wrote: post #28
NateEag wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Pick a website you like, and tell claude to use it for inspiration. I believe you misspelled "rip it off." I guess I shouldn't be surprised that people are using the tools built by ripping off the collective creative works of humanity to rip off individual things, too.

When other people emulate your behavior because they appreciate the results you got, we used to call that leadership. Something has gone awry that we now call it a ripoff.

Emulating your _behavior_ is completely different from imitating your _output_.

Re: The New AI Superpowers: Focus and Followthrough

#45

Post by taosx »

I will never believe the premise of 100x boost from AI, why are we still pushing this narative? Yes, AI is amazing in small, constrained, focused pieces of code but the code is nowhere fit for production and the last 10% needed to ship shows that the 90% that's already been done by AI is absolutely trash. Hacks on top of hacks.

Is no one trying to ship polished things to customers anymore, will each of us have a hacky, bugged version of the same thing with different quirks?

--

My first ever software project even before I worked as a swe had less bugs and frictions than all recent projects where AI was used. Some people like mitchellh seem to know what they are doing (I have not taken a look at ghostty's codebase as it's in zig) so I sometimes get the feeling I'm holding it wrong but in the end everyone around me seems to have similar problems with shipping.

Re: The New AI Superpowers: Focus and Followthrough

#46

Post by esseph »

stavros wrote: post #18
PunchyHamster wrote: post #6

> So logically, if AI can help us complete tasks 2-100x faster than before, we should be UNDERWORKED and experiencing ZERO burnout, right? No. you got lied to by AI bros. 100x times the code (that if you burn enough tokens that you could actually hire someone to go thru your ideas and make them...) is not 100x times the productivity

That's not the reason, the reason is that you get paid for eight hours, and that's how much you'll work, regardless of the number of tasks you complete in those hours.

Ah, you're not on salary in the US, I take it.

Re: The New AI Superpowers: Focus and Followthrough

#47

Post by ehnto »

oblio wrote: post #39
tayo42 wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> they’re also pushing for org-level mandates to require everyone else to use their solution. That's how you get promotions when you don't do anything valuable lol ok done with the cynicism

Not cynicism, incentives. Everything is shaped by incentives. We make movies about heroes and martyrs because they're 0.001% of us.

No disagreement here, the incentives for software have always sucked. People complain constantly about how everything is enshittefied, that's just corporate incentives manifested.

Re: The New AI Superpowers: Focus and Followthrough

#48

Post by bluefirebrand »

esseph wrote: post #46
stavros wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's not the reason, the reason is that you get paid for eight hours, and that's how much you'll work, regardless of the number of tasks you complete in those hours.

Ah, you're not on salary in the US, I take it.

I dunno about in the US, but being on salary in Canada I bet I've averaged well over 40 hours a week in my career. I know the usual trope is people on salary work as little as possible but it's not true for me. And that's not a flex. I'd much prefer to work less, but deadlines are deadlines and they're always calibrated to cost me my evenings and weekends, not cause the customer any delays

Re: The New AI Superpowers: Focus and Followthrough

#49

Post by esseph »

bluefirebrand wrote: post #48
esseph wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ah, you're not on salary in the US, I take it.

I dunno about in the US, but being on salary in Canada I bet I've averaged well over 40 hours a week in my career. I know the usual trope is people on salary work as little as possible but it's not true for me. And that's not a flex. I'd much prefer to work less, but deadlines are deadlines and they're always calibrated to cost me my evenings and weekends, not cause the customer any delays

> I know the usual trope is people on salary work as little as possible but it's not true for me.

Yeah. It hasn't been that way for 25y or more in the US. Lots of 60-80h weeks.

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