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OpenClaw is changing my life

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Re: OpenClaw is changing my life

#241

Post by TSiege »

mancerayder wrote: post #206
i-blis wrote: post #165

I have always failed to understand the obsessive dream of many engineers to become managers. It seems not to have to do merely with an increase in revenue. Is it really to escape from "getting bogged down in the specifics" and being able to "focus on the higher-level, abstract work", to quote OP's words? I thought naively that engineering always has been about dealing with the specifics and the joy of problem solving…

Don't you get bored with spending many years learning and becoming advanced or an expert in a system paradigm (like different hosting systems), a programming language (i.e. Perl), or a framework (pick your JS framework), only to have it completely obsoleted a few years later? And then in a job interview, when you try to sell yourself on your wisdom as expert on thing X, new to Y, they dismiss you because the 25 year…

> Do you enjoy brick laying and calculating angles around doorways? You're the engineer. Do you want to be the architect hiring engineers, working with project managers, and assessing the budget while worrying about approvals?

These are inherently different levels of power. I'm not sure how your example is supposed to be the opposite when you compare someone laying bricks to someone making hiring and firing decisions about groups of people. Your scenario is fundamentally a power imbalance

Re: OpenClaw is changing my life

#242

Post by mylifeandtimes »

mancerayder wrote: post #206
i-blis wrote: post #165

I have always failed to understand the obsessive dream of many engineers to become managers. It seems not to have to do merely with an increase in revenue. Is it really to escape from "getting bogged down in the specifics" and being able to "focus on the higher-level, abstract work", to quote OP's words? I thought naively that engineering always has been about dealing with the specifics and the joy of problem solving…

Don't you get bored with spending many years learning and becoming advanced or an expert in a system paradigm (like different hosting systems), a programming language (i.e. Perl), or a framework (pick your JS framework), only to have it completely obsoleted a few years later? And then in a job interview, when you try to sell yourself on your wisdom as expert on thing X, new to Y, they dismiss you because the 25 year…

> only to have it completely obsoleted a few years later?

That sure beats having it completely obsoleted a few weeks later, which sometimes feels like the situation with AI

Re: OpenClaw is changing my life

#243

Post by glaslong »

mancerayder wrote: post #237
glaslong wrote: post #227

Earlier quoted context omitted.

N=1 but I do love constantly learning new things, and building small, purposeful, tailored products with small groups of people. I've gone back and forth across the lead and management lines many times now, and it is career limiting in many many ways. But it's too fulfilling to give up. And I swear there is magic in what small, expert groups are able to produce that laps large org on the regular.

isn't that more a question of company size and industry (i.e. less regulated than healthcare and financial services) than whether management is good or bad? I don't see why it contradicts my little rant above. Of course I also prefer small, nimble teams with lots of autonomy, with individuals who thrive being delegated only extremely broad tasks. The only part where I think there's a difference is the constantly lear…

I don't really think management is good or bad, just different, and not really for me. The management career ladder though I do feel goes higher in large organizations than small.

For myself it is the hands-on work I find most fulfilling unfortunately. I have some sort of brain worm that makes me want to practice all the new things at home/weekend if work isn't letting me. I'm sure it'll burn me out at some point, but to paraphrase a famous creep: I keep getting older, my brainworm stays the same age.

Re: OpenClaw is changing my life

#244

Post by athrowaway3z »

dmvdoug wrote: post #238
spoaceman7777 wrote: post #164

This was incredibly vague and a waste of time. What type of code? What types of tools? What sort of configuration? What messaging app? What projects? It answers none of these questions.

Yeah, i’ve gone to the point where I will just stop reading AI posts after a paragraph or two if there are no specifics. The “it works!” / “no it doesn’t” genre is saturated with generality. Show, don’t tell, or I will default to believing you don’t have anything to show at all.

That was very vague, but I kinda get where they're coming from.

I'm now using pi (the thing openclaw is built on) and within a few days i build a tmux plugin and semaphore plugin^1, and it has automated the way _I_ used to use Claude.

The things I disagree with OP is: The usefulness of persistent memory beyond a single line in AGENTS.md "If the user says 'next time' update your AGENTS.md", the use of long-running loops, or the idea that everything can be resolved via chat - might be true for simple projects, but any original work needs me to design the 'right' approach ~5% of the time.

That's not a lot, but AI lets you create load-bearing tech-debt within hours, at which point you're stuck with a lot of shit and you dont know how far it got smeared.

[1]: https://github.com/offline-ant

Re: OpenClaw is changing my life

#245

Post by justonceokay »

mancerayder wrote: post #235
justonceokay wrote: post #231

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How will the widget get built if we don’t have someone stack ranking us?

Since when do your line managers choose to stack rank? Do you know what stank ranking even is and where it comes from? If you have to rate your group from 1 to 5, each individual, and you rate them all 4s and 5s, they crack down and force you to select a 2 and a 3 and only have one 5. Now, would you prefer a CFO, CTO or even a project manager be the one to do it? It's a weird comment.

Weirder that you think software couldn’t get built without a CFO. The GP comment was noting that management is an outcome of capital wanting more control, not because many layers of middle managers is a naturally optimal way to complete software projects

Re: OpenClaw is changing my life

#248

Post by direwolf20 »

mancerayder wrote: post #235
justonceokay wrote: post #231

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How will the widget get built if we don’t have someone stack ranking us?

Since when do your line managers choose to stack rank? Do you know what stank ranking even is and where it comes from? If you have to rate your group from 1 to 5, each individual, and you rate them all 4s and 5s, they crack down and force you to select a 2 and a 3 and only have one 5. Now, would you prefer a CFO, CTO or even a project manager be the one to do it? It's a weird comment.

Weirder that you think every group has a 2 and exactly one 5. You don't see the problem with that?

Re: OpenClaw is changing my life

#249

Post by chamomeal »

i-blis wrote: post #165

I have always failed to understand the obsessive dream of many engineers to become managers. It seems not to have to do merely with an increase in revenue. Is it really to escape from "getting bogged down in the specifics" and being able to "focus on the higher-level, abstract work", to quote OP's words? I thought naively that engineering always has been about dealing with the specifics and the joy of problem solving…

On a similar note, I have never heard the phrase “higher level abstractions” abstractions so much. Everywhere I look, higher level abstractions. It’s becoming one of those phrases I have an instant reaction to. The word “abstraction” used to mean something, man…

Re: OpenClaw is changing my life

#250

Post by neya »

i-blis wrote: post #165

I have always failed to understand the obsessive dream of many engineers to become managers. It seems not to have to do merely with an increase in revenue. Is it really to escape from "getting bogged down in the specifics" and being able to "focus on the higher-level, abstract work", to quote OP's words? I thought naively that engineering always has been about dealing with the specifics and the joy of problem solving…

As an engineer, I can never actually let a system write code on behalf of me with the level of complacency I've accumulated over the years. I always have opinionated design decisions, variable naming practices. It's memorable, relatable, repeatable across N projects. Sure, you can argue that you can feed all this into the context, but I've found most models to hallucinate and make things unnecessarily opaque and complex. And then, I eventually have to spend time cleaning up all that mess. OP claims they can tell the model over the phone what to do and it does it. Good for OP, but I've never personally had that level of success with my own product development workflow. It sounds too good to be true if this level of autonomy is even possible today without the AI fucking something up.
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