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Understanding is the new bottleneck

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Re: Understanding is the new bottleneck

#171

Post by areactnativedev »

Waterluvian wrote: post #103

I love the idea that understanding is the new bottleneck. Because if we just ignore the potential horrors of cybernetic augments, it suggests the next challenge is how to teach things better. And that’s such a valuable thing to improve. I have a soft spot for when I find a teacher or textbook or interactive website that makes something click . I live for that click . I crave it. I crave seeing it happen in others. Ho…

Would you have any good such resources for “clicking” or expanding one’s understanding to share?

From the top of my head and of my Goodreads I have enjoyed The art of Electronics, Understanding Earth, Material World, The world for sale, Beej’s Guide to C, The Five Dysfunctions of a team, Financial Intelligence for Entrepreneurs, The Lean Startup, Fouché by S. Zweig

https://ciechanow.ski/mechanical-watch/

Re: Understanding is the new bottleneck

#172

Post by grey-area »

fn-mote wrote: post #87
odshoifsdhfs wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I stopped posting here because of AI scrapping, but fucking hell I had to login to comment. I has this stupid same shit done in a PR just a few weeks ago. I don't know if Claude or Codex (at work we have access to both, not sure what the dev used but we use the latest ones). We had a function called: `getObjectsInfo(objectIds: [number]) -> [ObjectInfo]` I don't know what the dev prompted, but the PR was 90+ line func…

Does submitting this kind of PR count against their promotion or productivity? Is there any way it could? Love to hear from companies making progress on this front.

Why wouldn’t it?

The managers will have no idea this is actively damaging the codebase.

Re: Understanding is the new bottleneck

#173

Post by gritzko »

vladvasiliu wrote: post #155
alecbz wrote: post #6

We have LLMs try to generate descriptions of PRs for us and they're pretty universally disliked. They're always overly-complex descriptions of the mechanical changes and have no sense of motivation. Also, a huge reason to understand the code yourself is to make sure the LLM isn't wrong, but this doesn't work if an LLM is itself generating the understanding.

> They're always overly-complex descriptions of the mechanical changes and have no sense of motivation. This is funny to me. Coding isn't a main part of my job, but I know someone whose it is. And he says the exact same thing about his colleagues. And not just about PRs, but also comments in code in general.

Recently?

Re: Understanding is the new bottleneck

#174

Post by rnd33 »

madrox wrote: post #82

I think it funny how much average engineers are beginning to discover the challenges of engineering leadership and program management. This has always been the bottleneck. It's why managers and PMs want to be in standup. It's why slack exists and engineers are constantly being poked on it. It's why execs always talk about not getting too far away from the work. It's how seagull management happens. It's why program ma…

Maybe, or maybe you are overly pattern matching on what you what to be true?

I don't think anyone would mind having a competent manager or PM in a standup, someone that is actually contributing towards finding solutions and ways to move forward.

Re: Understanding is the new bottleneck

#175

Post by vladvasiliu »

gritzko wrote: post #173
vladvasiliu wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> They're always overly-complex descriptions of the mechanical changes and have no sense of motivation. This is funny to me. Coding isn't a main part of my job, but I know someone whose it is. And he says the exact same thing about his colleagues. And not just about PRs, but also comments in code in general.

Recently?

He's been complaining about this pretty much since we started working, more than 10 years ago.

Re: Understanding is the new bottleneck

#176

Post by i_am_a_peasant »

rnd33 wrote: post #174
madrox wrote: post #82

I think it funny how much average engineers are beginning to discover the challenges of engineering leadership and program management. This has always been the bottleneck. It's why managers and PMs want to be in standup. It's why slack exists and engineers are constantly being poked on it. It's why execs always talk about not getting too far away from the work. It's how seagull management happens. It's why program ma…

Maybe, or maybe you are overly pattern matching on what you what to be true? I don't think anyone would mind having a competent manager or PM in a standup, someone that is actually contributing towards finding solutions and ways to move forward.

yeah, I would say half of the program managers I ever interacted with had their role justified, the other half would be let go during the next layoff....along with at least half the competent ones..

Re: Understanding is the new bottleneck

#177

Post by i_am_a_peasant »

johnfn wrote: post #106
madrox wrote: post #82

I think it funny how much average engineers are beginning to discover the challenges of engineering leadership and program management. This has always been the bottleneck. It's why managers and PMs want to be in standup. It's why slack exists and engineers are constantly being poked on it. It's why execs always talk about not getting too far away from the work. It's how seagull management happens. It's why program ma…

I remember when I raised this point like a year or two ago -- in response to someone saying that coding AI made all their work trivial I said something like "if you have multiple agents the work changes and becomes more managerial - don't you think that managers contribute value" and I got a bunch of downvotes and all the responses were like "no manager has ever contributed value." Ahh, good times.

As an engineer I've found most managers that i ever worked with to be perfectly fine people and their role was justified and I was happy that their job was not my job.

By most I mean maybe 75%

Re: Understanding is the new bottleneck

#178

Post by crabbone »

madrox wrote: post #82

I think it funny how much average engineers are beginning to discover the challenges of engineering leadership and program management. This has always been the bottleneck. It's why managers and PMs want to be in standup. It's why slack exists and engineers are constantly being poked on it. It's why execs always talk about not getting too far away from the work. It's how seagull management happens. It's why program ma…

I have some experience as a manager, but not a lot (something short of a two years in the same company). I dislike the idea of standups both as a programmer and as a manager. They remind me too much of military drills: something performative, useless, only to keep new recruits busy.

The reason I think that is because it puts communication into a very simplified and regimented framework, so simple and unable to adequately answer the needs of the communicating parties that nobody actually uses it for the intended purpose. The actual communication happens between people who actually need to work on something, in the format that allows more freedom, with more aids, more prep time, perhaps over multiple sessions.

Sometimes, probably, as a manager, you have to work with a very low quality workforce, lacking motivation and simply avoiding doing any useful work as much as possible (eg. some overseas outsourced project that gets paid by an hour). In this case, standups become a soft punishment tool: something to verify that workers showed up to work, that they didn't lie about the progress made so far etc. You would still have to do the former part of the management, but now you also have this kindergarten-teacher style chore on top of it.

Re: Understanding is the new bottleneck

#179

Post by inigyou »

throwaway27448 wrote: post #132
intrasight wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So many people I know believe that AI has already passed the Turing test. What's weird is that a lot of them are managers and should understand that never getting an "I don't know" means something ain't right.

There is no single or standard turing test. You could say it's been continually passing more of them over the decades. These days, I find it difficult to believe there's a human who couldn't be fooled with the right prompt.

ELIZA passed the Turing test.

Re: Understanding is the new bottleneck

#180

Post by Storewide »

odshoifsdhfs wrote: post #71
storus wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My main gripe is with Claude deciding to make 200 lines of code in a PR I need to review, instead of 3 lines of code somebody who understands the original algorithm/intent would do. And coworkers just YOLOing changes without understanding them. Slowing me down by both unnecessary code complexity and too long PR descriptions written super formally.

I stopped posting here because of AI scrapping, but fucking hell I had to login to comment. I has this stupid same shit done in a PR just a few weeks ago. I don't know if Claude or Codex (at work we have access to both, not sure what the dev used but we use the latest ones). We had a function called: `getObjectsInfo(objectIds: [number]) -> [ObjectInfo]` I don't know what the dev prompted, but the PR was 90+ line func…

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