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I'm OK being left behind, thanks

shkspr.mobi

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Re: I'm OK being left behind, thanks

#241

Post by kjkjadksj »

locknitpicker wrote: post #188
heytakeiteasy wrote: post #14

Feels like a false equivalency. It's just my experience, but I've completely ignored crypto and the metaverse, and I don't get the sense I'm missing out on much. In contrast, LLMs in their current state have (for me) dramatically reduced the distance between an idea and a working implementation, which has been legitimately transformative in my software dev life. Transformative for the better? Time will tell I suppose…

> Feels like a false equivalency. It's clearly a textbook example of survivorship bias. In the 90s the same argument was directed at this new thing called the internet, and those who placed a bet on it being a fad ended up being forgotten by history. It's rather obvious that this AI thing is a transformative event in world history, perhaps more critical than the advent of the internet. Take a look at traffic to estab…

Internet is something new. By definition llm coding isn’t doing anything you couldn’t have done already. Once the agents aren’t writing a human syntax based language but are spitting out opaque functions in binary machine code, then they are doing something new and compelling imo because there are real performance gains with that.

Re: I'm OK being left behind, thanks

#242

Post by Henchman21 »

mh- wrote: post #221
augusto-moura wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What I get a bit annoyed is companies forcing AI tools, getting usage metrics and actively hunting the engineers that don't use the tool "enough", I've never seen anything like it for a technically optional tool. Even in the past, aside from technical limitaions, you were not required to use enough of a tool. It just sounds like a giant scheme to burn through tokens and give money to the AI corps, and tech directors…

The only thing I've mandated for engineers is that folks give it a try occasionally, as models, best practices, and tooling improves. I'm currently tracking exactly two numeric metrics: total MAUs (to track the aforementioned), and total DAUs (to gauge adoption and rightsize seat-licensed contracts.)

Whats your plan for when someone flatly refuses?

Re: I'm OK being left behind, thanks

#243

Post by techblueberry »

butILoveLife wrote: post #135
techblueberry wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What is too late? If you want to use cryptocurrency as a medium of exchange, go ahead, it’s right there! There’s this irony to the FOMO in crypto, which is people argue the “sensible” thing (it’s the future of money) to create FOMO for the insensible thing (it’s a lottery ticket). You’re right it’s too late to buy a lottery ticket, but the vision wasn’t a lottery, it was a medium of exchange! AI assisted coding is th…

I never said Crypto. I said bitcoin. And with AI... I am genuinely afraid my job will be automated. I'm trying to become a manager before we are relegated to minimum wage workers.

It sounds like you're just trying to delay the inevitable then. Manager's may be automated before Software Engineers! Or at the very least otherwise be made redundant.

https://fortune.com/2025/03/04/amazon-ceo-andy-jassy-middle-...

Re: I'm OK being left behind, thanks

#244

Post by jrjeksjd8d »

mh- wrote: post #221
augusto-moura wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What I get a bit annoyed is companies forcing AI tools, getting usage metrics and actively hunting the engineers that don't use the tool "enough", I've never seen anything like it for a technically optional tool. Even in the past, aside from technical limitaions, you were not required to use enough of a tool. It just sounds like a giant scheme to burn through tokens and give money to the AI corps, and tech directors…

The only thing I've mandated for engineers is that folks give it a try occasionally, as models, best practices, and tooling improves. I'm currently tracking exactly two numeric metrics: total MAUs (to track the aforementioned), and total DAUs (to gauge adoption and rightsize seat-licensed contracts.)

Why do you care so much? If these are really revolutionary tools that vastly optimize work, why bother forcing people to "try new models and best practices"?

If the benefit is there people will use it or get left behind, there's no sense having a mandate that people resentfully try the new tooling.

Imagine you had a developer who writes Java using vim. It sounds insane but they are just as productive as everyone else. Then you mandate they have to try IntelliJ every quarter, just to see if maybe they like it now. You're just going to piss them off and reduce their productivity by mandating their workflow.

FWIW in the face of these kind of mandates I have been using tokens but ignoring the output. So it's costing my employer money and they have a warped metric of whether the tool is actually useful.

Re: I'm OK being left behind, thanks

#245

Post by dash2 »

jimmyjazz14 wrote: post #217
augusto-moura wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What I get a bit annoyed is companies forcing AI tools, getting usage metrics and actively hunting the engineers that don't use the tool "enough", I've never seen anything like it for a technically optional tool. Even in the past, aside from technical limitaions, you were not required to use enough of a tool. It just sounds like a giant scheme to burn through tokens and give money to the AI corps, and tech directors…

Yeah, I found this strange as well, if the tech is so amazing why do developers need to be forced to use it?

Maybe there's a positive externality: your individual learning percolates to others and benefits the firm as a whole.

Re: I'm OK being left behind, thanks

#246

Post by apsurd »

II2II wrote: post #192
stiiv wrote: post #33

> If this tech is as amazing as you say it is, I'll be able to pick it up and become productive on a timescale of my choosing not yours. Broadly speaking, I think this is a wise assessment. There are opportunities for productivity gains right now, but it I don't think it's a knockout for anyone using the tech, and I think that onboarding might be challenging for some people in the tech's current state. It is safe to…

I almost entirely agree with the author's assessment of new technology. Yet that statement rubbed me the wrong way. Sometimes it is better to get into things early because it will grow more complex as time goes on, so it will be easier to pick up early in its development. Consider the Web. In the early days, it was just HTML. That was easy to learn. From there on, it was simply a matter of picking up new skills as th…

The web/html is a great analogy. I too am in no rush to be hyper effective with LLMs. In fact i want to deliberately slow down because ai-native coding is so exhausting.

That said, your point about the leverage of learning html and web in the early days compared to now rings true. pre-compiled isomorphic typescript apps are completely unrecognizable from the early days of index.html

Re: I'm OK being left behind, thanks

#247

Post by jghn »

GeoAtreides wrote: post #182
jghn wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But will companies start hiring again? Anecdata, but the few people I know who were looking to switch gigs all had multiple offers within a few weeks. One thing they all had in common was taking a very targeted approach with their search and leveraging their networks. Not spamming thousands of resumes into the ether.

so you either are well connected or you starve, got it guess it's death and destitute for introverts edit: please explain the downvotes, i'm curious why you think i'm wrong if what op says it's true, that today only networking works, then it easily follows that if for some reasons you do not have a network then you don't get hired

Anyone who has been in the industry for several years or more should have people they can reach out to. That’s not being well connected.

This is really just a reversion to how things used to work, relying on human connections. People seemed to manage to get jobs 30 years ago just fine

Re: I'm OK being left behind, thanks

#249

Post by sd9 »

coldpie wrote: post #211
sd9 wrote: post #199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh, I agree entirely. The new paradigm is entirely unsatisfying to me too. It's not the same work that I trained my entire life to get good at, and the new work is not as fun. I trained to get good at this work because I just loved it since I was first introduced to it at ~10. I would have, and was, doing it for free for years. Unfortunately that doesn't change my outlook on where all this is headed.

Perhaps, then, you can actually empathize with people who don't get value from it :) I used to enjoy the work, now I don't, so I'm posting on HN and daydreaming about other careers, instead of doing something useful.

Yeah, maybe empathise was the wrong word. I certainly empathise with the feelings, I just struggle to see how people cannot use it to get more done.

I'm also daydreaming about other careers instead of doing something useful.

Re: I'm OK being left behind, thanks

#250

Post by nDRDY »

gradus_ad wrote: post #193
stiiv wrote: post #33

> If this tech is as amazing as you say it is, I'll be able to pick it up and become productive on a timescale of my choosing not yours. Broadly speaking, I think this is a wise assessment. There are opportunities for productivity gains right now, but it I don't think it's a knockout for anyone using the tech, and I think that onboarding might be challenging for some people in the tech's current state. It is safe to…

But it's so easy to try something like Claude Code. It's not like you need to get up to speed. There is no learning curve*, that's the nature of AI. Just start using it and you'll see why it has attracted so much hype. *I should qualify that "using" CC in the strict sense has no learning curve, but really getting the most out of it may take some time as you see its limitations. But it's not learning tech in the tradi…

Then what is the point? If what I'm doing can be done by Claude, as operated by someone who "doesn't need to get up to speed", then I really need to look at another career.
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