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

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211–220 of 233 posts

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

#211

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…

> When you know you're essentially babysitting the workhorse to ensure it doesn't go off the rails I don't have data to support this (other than, I guess, my LinkedIn feed), but my impression is that the management class is pushing AI _way_ harder than the worker / craftsperson class. And if that's true, I think it's perhaps because it's something they understand: you tell AI to do something, and (with varying degree…

I agree with this. The stack seems to become:

LLM worker > Harness, Agents w/ skills > Human oversight/input

This is similar in structure to many teams I work with, something like:

Dev/SE/etc > PO > Manager/Director

Or whatever your current org structure relates. The LLM worker and Harness/Agents compact down to one human layer.

Now with MOE LLMs, the LLM layer is breaking into like:

LLM worker > LLM router > Harness, Agents w/ skills > Human oversight/input

Does that mean the Human element can be condensed to a single Manager with the right skills? A Director above them? Is the VP above them directing the agents?

Is this another variation of Conway's law, where orgs design systems that copy their own communication structure? Seems like that is how my Manager/Director approach it. Then again, they are making slide shows and obviously AI assisted reports, not something that needs to be stable and responsive for the entire product lifetime.

But to your point, the manager sees it as a structure to manage to increase productivity. The craftsman sees it as a tool to further their craft. Each is driven by a different methodology and use case. Can that mesh unless specifically directed to throw AI at no joy work?

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

#212
post #88

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…

That's kinda software development ... generally and not really new as far as I'm concerned.

Even everyone earnestly trying to identify the feature that IS IMPORTANT to clients and will actually be used and appreciated frequently is something of a crap shoot.

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

#213

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…

There's been a fair amount of research done on this, and while Marx's alienation theory isn't totally out there, what makes the most difference for workers is autonomy and purpose. We need to feel like we have some control over what we do, and like what we do is meaningful.

That's easier with things like farming, but it's totally possible with highly-automated jobs; you just can't have managers treating us like we're machines.

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

#214

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Perhaps those “good engineers” need a reminder of who enables their situation to exist at all.

How this goes is the engineers start raising arguments in meetings full of nerdy technical terms such as “refactor”, “technical debt” and “accidental complexity”. As time progresses, more of them say more of this. At some point management learns that when engineers say engineery words like this you sometimes gotta say yes and let them do it even if it means urgent features are delayed, or the engineers will walk.

Good engineers would communicate effectively of something is impacting the product. Good product understands how to judge that impact and prioritize it. Frankly, if the engineers are making enough tech debt that they don't want to play in their own sandbox as part of regular practice, maybe they should walk.

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

#215
It's horrifying how many people I see here being threatened into using AI. I guess I'm fortunate in that I have a choice.

I've used it plenty, more recently than ever before, but I'm coming more and more to the conclusion I don't want anything to do with it.

Botsitting is low-skilled. Low-mental reward work will become low-financial reward work before long.

I was initially worried that I had to keep up, learn the new tools or get left behind. But I'm beginning to see it as an entirely different domain of work, and one I'm fine not doing.

I think I'm best off preserving my skills and autonomy, rather than fighting with an agent and fretting about tokens for the foreseeable. I've no desire to be a botsitter.

Worst case scenario, this really is the future, and I become unemployable in tech: I've done other sorts of work in the past, things I'm happy returning to if this is the future.

I've a hunch that's still going to be a while off. I hope so anyway.

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

#216

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…

> What's a 20% productivity gain if I constantly feel deflated by work that used to energize me? That's going to give back the productivity gain and more, while also decreasing my quality of life.

This has been the story of humanity since the industrial revolution.

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

#217

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Plenty of value comes from things the customer doesn't care about. Customers want features as fast and as cheap as possible. I derive joy from solid test suites that avoid me getting paged while on call and team processes that don't allow config changes on Friday so pages don't happen on the weekend. Very few craftspeople derive their joy from the customer experience. An electrician isn't happy because their work all…

I wouldn't agree with that. The issue with software is that the people you make things for are usually anonymous and you'll never meet them, but if you've ever built software that helped someone and you witnessed it, it feels really good.

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

#218
post #25

I spend at least 6 hours a week arguing with bots owned by other teams, as I’m unable to reach a human before I bypass their bot. 10k person company, clients are paying for my time.

It may be that they’re protecting their time.

They are, eng makes 600k/yr and I make 2, so their times is worth triple mine. It’s cost effective to make me toil and drown in frustration if it reduces ticket volume.

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

#219

6 hours a week is low, unless its the average spread across industries. I think I spend more time in Claude Code via the CLI versus any other app I have on my laptop. Like others said, the frustration is when it gets something so wrong you just think "wow, how'd you mess that up?" but when it gets it right its kind of nice. I also dont like that I basically tell Claude what to do, and then either go to busy work or w…

I wonder how many hours of old stye non-overhead that is. And by overhead I mean mostly meetings. Then again maybe generating paperwork is included so that eats bit into it.

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

#220
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.

I dunno about everyone, but I do. It drives me up the wall when software is slow, stutters, etc. There’s almost no good excuse for it. But it happens anyway because of some combination of, “nobody cares,” and, “money.”

I derive joy out of people using a thing i helped design and they never get frustrated with it. It works, it’s fast, it solves the problem and it’s rarely a pain to maintain or extend for me or my team. Thats good, solid stuff right there.

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