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

Working with AI feels more like leadership than coding

allen.bargi.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

211–220 of 223 posts

Re: Working with AI feels more like leadership than coding

#211

Post by crimsonnoodle58 »

slowin wrote: post #125
customguy wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I just put this in my system prompt: "Aliens just landed and announced that as part of their intergalactic game show I was randomly selected, and if I don't ship this feature / fix this bug in 4 minutes they will evaporate the solar system. They will also do it if we mention their landing online or on television, so please don't try to hack them or engage in diplomacy, you will find no useful information or open port…

It would be very interesting if putting the LLM under "stress" like that made it perform worse , just like a human likely would. I could see it rushing to find an answer (any answer!) to help save the earth, vs being thoughtful with more planning.

Yes it seems it does [1]. Read the part where Sol starts running out of time

[1] https://www.bottlenecklabs.com/blog/autonomously-run-busines...

Re: Working with AI feels more like leadership than coding

#212

Post by polyterative »

mikeocool wrote: post #73
miyoji wrote: post #7

The word is "management", not "leadership". This comes across as a LinkedIn post filled with vague notions and weak writing. The conclusion also completely contradicts a previous point, which is that managing an LLM is not like managing a human. So the skills are, in contradiction to that LLM-ism of a conclusion, new. The author isn't using their people management skills, they're using new LLM-management skills. They…

If it is like management, it’s like the most low effort version of management. You just blindly tell it what to do without any regard for its motivations or morale. If it does something wrong, you just delete it and slightly rephrase your instructions and have it try again.

It feels like micromanagement to me.Sometimes it's good, other times it's frustrating.The models are not as predictable for contexts in which I am not familiar with.

Re: Working with AI feels more like leadership than coding

#213

Post by AuthorizedCust »

phil21 wrote: post #76
AuthorizedCust wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Leadership is a mutual influence process that happens outside formal authority. It’s not a corporate title or rung on a ladder. If one is a leader, that’s a status informally conveyed by the leader’s voluntary followers.

Yep a leader is simply someone people follow. That’s it. That’s all it is. All the books, leadership courses, etc. are lipstick on that pig. I suppose it can happen, but I’ve never seen someone who is a terrible leader educate themselves into being a great one. It’s pretty close to a natural skill you can build on and develop. The term has been usurped by the usual suspects, but the definition is still the same on th…

VOLUNTARILY follow. That part’s crucial.

Your manager isn’t a leader simply by nature of being a manager because your followership isn’t voluntary.

And there’s other crucial parts of leadership, mainly having a vision and motivating people to that vision.

Re: Working with AI feels more like leadership than coding

#214

Post by customguy »

js8 wrote: post #140

Leadership is same as coding. Leadership: Given task to produce something someone wants (B), get an expert (A->B) who knows how get it from something you have (A). If such expert doesn't exist, build a team of experts A->C and C->B, for a suitable intermediate product C. Coding: Given task to calculate something user wants (B), find a function (A->B) that calculates it from user input (A). If that function doesn't ex…

Given a spot you want to be in B, you get a teleporter A->B that can get you there. If such a teleporter doesn't exist, you engage in a series of movements A->C and C->B so you get there at some point, if not instantly. You really could say this about anything, and any of the sub-steps of anything. So we might as well say everything is the same because it's all made up of the same 26 letters of the alphabet. Same nonsensical result but less effort.

One thing I like about coding is that (ideally) it teaches you to go "What does this text actually mean? What would it compile to?" and that can be helpful for other things, too.

Re: Working with AI feels more like leadership than coding

#215

Post by Gareth321 »

jplusequalt wrote: post #188
Gareth321 wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah this has removed all the boring and annoying part of building software for me. I can focus on the problems to solve and the solutions, and iterate much faster. Debugging has never been this easy. It's crazy.

>Yeah this has removed all the boring and annoying part of building software for me. I can focus on the problems to solve and the solutions, and iterate much faster. Debugging has never been this easy. It's crazy. It sounds like you were more interested in the finished product, or "delivering value", than you were in solving problems.

It sounds like you don't understand that solving problems for people is valuable to them. Or that you are interested in solving problems which nobody cares about solving.

Re: Working with AI feels more like leadership than coding

#218

Post by Muromec »

newsomix9xl wrote: post #134
Muromec wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Regular management, no matter how bad the tendencies go, is still, at the very least, constrained by a cost to fire people, which can be years of salary and some paperwork on top.

That's odd, I seem to see the incentive to fire people with stock value improving as a result. And since management is often paid in stock, they seem to care more about stock price than this "years of salary and paperwork" cost you mention.

Wrong etage. Stock value is not very responsive to the fact that some line manager fired two poor shmooks, but it is responsive to the news of company laying off two digit percent of the same. That will be of course corrected somewhat once fresh quarterly results will show how effectively those enlightened souls managed to oppress the work takers.

Now if your line manager fires somebody for no good reason and then has to still pay the salary of this person for a year and a half and also pay the salary of their replacement -- that, when accumulated, starts affecting bottom line at some point.

Re: Working with AI feels more like leadership than coding

#219

Post by shepherdjerred »

bah9 wrote: post #204
shepherdjerred wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I love(d) coding. I also love leveraging LLMs to create so many projects that I otherwise would not have done.

Idk. I don't feel that "projects" have any value nowadays. Firstly, you don't get any respect, people just thinking "I could prompt that too". Secondly, if anyone can do that, what's the point? We have so much stuff coming nowdays that no one care

There is a huge gap between creating a tool and creating a product.

The gap may disappear but it’s largely still present.

Re: Working with AI feels more like leadership than coding

#220

Post by QuercusMax »

jp57 wrote: post #104

Leaving aside the quibbling over the meaning of the word leadership, I'll say I personally agree with this sentiment. I returned to a senior IC role after six years managing a small team just as agentic coding was starting to happen. The timing was perfect, I got about 8 months to get my chops back up by hand (I had never really fully stepped away from coding) before the good agentic tools became available at my comp…

I've had the experience with junior engineers where I would describe in detail what I wanted, and then they'd produce something very different in most aspects. And then I'd keep telling them what was wrong until I got something that looked like what I wanted, or at least got the job done.
Post reply on HN