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

Workers are spending over 6 hours a week botsitting AI, fueling job frustration

businessinsider.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

101–110 of 233 posts

Re: Workers are spending over 6 hours a week botsitting AI, fueling job frustration

#101

Post by alex_suzuki »

jmuguy wrote: post #68
thewebguyd wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Writing code by hand is just more fun. This is something that I don't see discussed a lot in these conversations, but its true for a ton of folks. I didn't end up with a career in tech because I wanted to tell a bot to do the fun part of my job for me, leaving me only with the boring tedious parts. I didn't sign up to be a full time code reviewer, and I certainly never wanted to be a manager, yet alone a manager of…

Yeah its hard to deny just the raw throughput from the AI. Like it really is doing work in hours that would take me days. But those times when I had to drop down into a repl and play around with the output of a method. Or try different ways of doing what anyone else would think is boring, like array manipulation - that's a lot of what I actually LIKE to do. A big part of me just hopes I can hang in there for another.…

> another... decade, or two

I’m rooting for two! :-)

Re: Workers are spending over 6 hours a week botsitting AI, fueling job frustration

#102

Post by erikerikson »

krapp wrote: post #70
banannaise wrote: post #39

This really hit home for me: In some cases, workers are also being asked to automate the parts of their jobs they enjoy most, Hinds said on the podcast, pointing to customer-service employees who enjoy building relationships but are increasingly expected to supervise AI agents instead. "That's what gives you joy and meaning at work," she said. "That is very dangerous." What's a 20% productivity gain if I constantly f…

Most people don't have the luxury of finding joy and meaning in their work. You aren't hired to have fun, you're hired to create value and wealth for your employer. Just do what literally everyone else does and grind through it until you get a pension and hope it's enough to let you die with a bit of dignity.

Here in stupid town we stab ourselves with knives. It hurts and we get infections but everybody does it. We don't even remember why we do it any more but we do so you have to as well.

The real problem is the amount of value that gets left on the table.

Also, mental health is just as much a part of health and well-being as the physical.

Re: Workers are spending over 6 hours a week botsitting AI, fueling job frustration

#103

Post by rob74 »

_verandaguy wrote: post #97
graphime wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

Driving everyone's QoL to be as bad as possible will lead to increasing enshittiffication in the entire market. Consumers will be spoiled for choice between deeply mediocre options. Besides, what's the point of adopting new technologies if it's not to increase the quality of life? If everyone just exists in service of the product development lifecycle, who and what are the products actually for?

In my experience, for every customer support agent that really wants to help people and cares about their problems, there are at least ten who don't even read what you wrote and answer with prefabricated blocks of text that have little to do with what you asked. If AI customer support actually tries to understand what I ask of it and help me, and there are still (motivated) humans available for the more tricky cases that AI can't handle, that might be a win...

Re: Workers are spending over 6 hours a week botsitting AI, fueling job frustration

#104

Post by tedious-coder »

graphime wrote: post #91
banannaise wrote: post #39

This really hit home for me: In some cases, workers are also being asked to automate the parts of their jobs they enjoy most, Hinds said on the podcast, pointing to customer-service employees who enjoy building relationships but are increasingly expected to supervise AI agents instead. "That's what gives you joy and meaning at work," she said. "That is very dangerous." What's a 20% productivity gain if I constantly f…

[flagged]

This poster wasn’t claiming they were entitled. What kind of question is this?

Re: Workers are spending over 6 hours a week botsitting AI, fueling job frustration

#105

Post by tarkin2 »

I theorise that many social ills come from workers having less pride in their skills and achievements, and a greater sense of social alienation, due to automation.

If you spend countless hours at work, and you partially define yourself by your work, and you realise you are easily replaceable then I cannot imagine this comes without mass social malaise that manifests itself elsewhere.

When you know you're essentially babysitting the workhorse to ensure it doesn't go off the rails, I can't see job satisfaction, and the social consequences of such, increasing.

Re: Workers are spending over 6 hours a week botsitting AI, fueling job frustration

#106

Post by StefanBatory »

banannaise wrote: post #39

This really hit home for me: In some cases, workers are also being asked to automate the parts of their jobs they enjoy most, Hinds said on the podcast, pointing to customer-service employees who enjoy building relationships but are increasingly expected to supervise AI agents instead. "That's what gives you joy and meaning at work," she said. "That is very dangerous." What's a 20% productivity gain if I constantly f…

> That's going to give back the productivity gain and more, while also decreasing my quality of life.

Unfortunately though, what does that matter? Your employer does not care how do you feel. You are paid to bring them benefits, they aren't running a charity. If you do feel down, that is your issue and you shouldn't let that influence how you work.

Just to be clear, I don't like that either. But it is what it is.

Re: Workers are spending over 6 hours a week botsitting AI, fueling job frustration

#107

Post by jofla_net »

Ifkaluva wrote: post #44
parpfish wrote: post #24

i've seen a number of articles claiming things like "devs self report they'er +x% more productive with AI, but actually they're -y% LESS efficient!". and i think that this is explanation for why. as a boss (or researcher) i'm going to measure productivity based on amount of output per hour that i'm paying you; as a workers, i'm going to measure productivity based on amount of output relative to the amount of effort i…

> so what may be happening is that bosses see that output is at 80% (productivity down!) but workers see that they can give that 80% output with 40% effort (productivity up!). So why is it that the bosses are the ones that are so enthusiastic about adoption?

Well the obvious is that, monkey-see-monkey-do, and they don't want to miss out. But the insidious externality is that they are the most likely ones (and higher ups) to be invested in nvidia and others, so when they push you to use, it creates a viscous cycle.

Re: Workers are spending over 6 hours a week botsitting AI, fueling job frustration

#109

Post by lubujackson »

threetonesun wrote: post #96
kqr wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is an important point. My light-bulb moment was when I talked to a product owner in a previous job, and I expressed surprise around an expensive planned change, because it didn't seem that valuable to our customers. He said, "Almost half of what we do is not that valuable to our customers, but it's valuable to him, and her, and him", pointing through the conference-room window at my fellow programmers, "and that…

Do the engineers not derive enjoyment in their jobs from making the customer experience better? This does track with what I've experience in my career, where we've gone from everything being to better the user experience to tech companies sort of trying to out-do each other in their technical solutions while the software continuously gets worse and more antagonistic.

This is the danger of isolating engineering from customers, or even internal customer-interfacing employees.

If all they see is code, they will get satisfaction from tidy code, not user happiness. One good thing about AI is it elevates product engineers because they more directly bridge the customer-product-code divide.

Re: Workers are spending over 6 hours a week botsitting AI, fueling job frustration

#110

Post by jameshart »

kqr wrote: post #88
banannaise wrote: post #39

This really hit home for me: In some cases, workers are also being asked to automate the parts of their jobs they enjoy most, Hinds said on the podcast, pointing to customer-service employees who enjoy building relationships but are increasingly expected to supervise AI agents instead. "That's what gives you joy and meaning at work," she said. "That is very dangerous." What's a 20% productivity gain if I constantly f…

This is an important point. My light-bulb moment was when I talked to a product owner in a previous job, and I expressed surprise around an expensive planned change, because it didn't seem that valuable to our customers. He said, "Almost half of what we do is not that valuable to our customers, but it's valuable to him, and her, and him", pointing through the conference-room window at my fellow programmers, "and that…

I mean if half of what you do isn’t delivering customer value maybe you don’t need to have as many good engineers on the team as you do.
Post reply on HN