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

Amazon workers under pressure to up their AI usage are making up tasks

fastcompany.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

261–270 of 450 posts

Re: Amazon workers under pressure to up their AI usage are making up tasks

#261

Post by dtnewman »

ryandrake wrote: post #17

Not just Amazon, too. It feels like all of big tech (and some smaller firms) have simultaneously gone insane. Imagine if your CEO woke up one day and told the company: "We need to encourage travel spending. Please book as many business trips as you can, and spend as much money as possible. Fly first class to our satellite offices! Take limos instead of Ubers! Eat at fine restaurants! Make sure you are constantly trav…

This is what inspired me to build my new CLI tool, Burn, Baby, Burn (https://github.com/dtnewman/burn-baby-burn/tree/main).

(If you are a VP at Amazon, yes, I'll consider acquisition offers. I'm also working on an enterprise version of this with additional features.)

Show HN here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48151287

Re: Amazon workers under pressure to up their AI usage are making up tasks

#262

Post by 12_throw_away »

osigurdson wrote: post #219
ryandrake wrote: post #17

Not just Amazon, too. It feels like all of big tech (and some smaller firms) have simultaneously gone insane. Imagine if your CEO woke up one day and told the company: "We need to encourage travel spending. Please book as many business trips as you can, and spend as much money as possible. Fly first class to our satellite offices! Take limos instead of Ubers! Eat at fine restaurants! Make sure you are constantly trav…

It seems like a natural result. People have been trying to use dashboards / metrics to roll up / indicate how well teams and individuals have been doing for a long time. Therefore, "part 1" was already in place. Now, something even easier to track is available (token usage). So, just throw token usage on the dashboard and tell people that higher is better - what other outcome would you possibly expect?

> dashboards / metrics to roll up / indicate how well teams and individuals have been doing for a long time

I'm actually a little curious about how long it has been. Bad managers have always prioritized irrelevant metrics, of course, but I have a feeling (backed by no data, just vibes) that management in general crossed a point of no return as soon as "data-driven" became a cross-industry buzzword.

Like, I vaguely remember a time when consumer interactions didn't always come with a request to fill out a survey (with the results getting turned into a number and fed into a dashboard somewhere). And then that changed, and now everything must turned into a number and that number must go up.

Re: Amazon workers under pressure to up their AI usage are making up tasks

#263

Post by treis »

malfist wrote: post #166
ryandrake wrote: post #17

Not just Amazon, too. It feels like all of big tech (and some smaller firms) have simultaneously gone insane. Imagine if your CEO woke up one day and told the company: "We need to encourage travel spending. Please book as many business trips as you can, and spend as much money as possible. Fly first class to our satellite offices! Take limos instead of Ubers! Eat at fine restaurants! Make sure you are constantly trav…

At my company we were told AI spend was part of perf review and that the "singularity" had happened. Now 20% of our infrastructure spend is tokens. The average number of pull requests per dev per week increased with all this spend. From 4.2 to 5.1. And that includes a huge chunk of PRs that are just agents changing a line or two in a config. It's all magical thinking

It's definitely not. It's a fundamental shift on how we interact with computers.

It's a tractors on farms kind of moment.

Re: Amazon workers under pressure to up their AI usage are making up tasks

#264

Post by corywadd »

treis wrote: post #263
malfist wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At my company we were told AI spend was part of perf review and that the "singularity" had happened. Now 20% of our infrastructure spend is tokens. The average number of pull requests per dev per week increased with all this spend. From 4.2 to 5.1. And that includes a huge chunk of PRs that are just agents changing a line or two in a config. It's all magical thinking

It's definitely not. It's a fundamental shift on how we interact with computers. It's a tractors on farms kind of moment.

Agreed, people confuse the (totally expected) bumps and bruises of early adoption with somehow equating to "this technology is useless."

The Wright Brothers couldn't cross the Atlantic in their first flier and plenty of subsequent designs crashed and burned (literally). But now air travel is commonplace. Same will happen with AI, we just have to get past these early pains.

Re: Amazon workers under pressure to up their AI usage are making up tasks

#265

Post by Loughla »

jazz9k wrote: post #255
darth_avocado wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In my first job ever, I used to get my work done on time and leave. There were a few people who’d stay in the office until late and show up on weekends. Same output, but they got the promotions and my bonus got prorated. This is the same thing.

While output may have been part of it. It's possible that by staying later (and working longer), they had better relationships with upper management. "I used to get my work done on time and leave" This sounds like you just wanted to get your work done and not foster any work relationships. This is fine, but you will not get promoted this way (as you've seen). Moving up in a company is 30% work and 70% networking/bein…

I took a job with the state I live in recently because friends were promoted over competent employees (not even counting myself in that because they were just promoted to my level). New job is fully remote and has a clear path to advancement based on clear work based metrics.

While it may be true that it's pretty standard, I'm convinced that any organization that relies more on face time and friendships than on actual skill is absolutely toxic.

Re: Amazon workers under pressure to up their AI usage are making up tasks

#266

Post by rightbyte »

treis wrote: post #263
malfist wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At my company we were told AI spend was part of perf review and that the "singularity" had happened. Now 20% of our infrastructure spend is tokens. The average number of pull requests per dev per week increased with all this spend. From 4.2 to 5.1. And that includes a huge chunk of PRs that are just agents changing a line or two in a config. It's all magical thinking

It's definitely not. It's a fundamental shift on how we interact with computers. It's a tractors on farms kind of moment.

Bad analogy. Horses were the automagic being replaced.

Re: Amazon workers under pressure to up their AI usage are making up tasks

#267

Post by reactordev »

jazz9k wrote: post #255
darth_avocado wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In my first job ever, I used to get my work done on time and leave. There were a few people who’d stay in the office until late and show up on weekends. Same output, but they got the promotions and my bonus got prorated. This is the same thing.

While output may have been part of it. It's possible that by staying later (and working longer), they had better relationships with upper management. "I used to get my work done on time and leave" This sounds like you just wanted to get your work done and not foster any work relationships. This is fine, but you will not get promoted this way (as you've seen). Moving up in a company is 30% work and 70% networking/bein…

Moving up is 100% being likeable.

Re: Amazon workers under pressure to up their AI usage are making up tasks

#268

Post by malfist »

treis wrote: post #263
malfist wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At my company we were told AI spend was part of perf review and that the "singularity" had happened. Now 20% of our infrastructure spend is tokens. The average number of pull requests per dev per week increased with all this spend. From 4.2 to 5.1. And that includes a huge chunk of PRs that are just agents changing a line or two in a config. It's all magical thinking

It's definitely not. It's a fundamental shift on how we interact with computers. It's a tractors on farms kind of moment.

I brought data to this discussion. What did you bring?

Re: Amazon workers under pressure to up their AI usage are making up tasks

#269

Post by stephenhuey »

dtnewman wrote: post #261
ryandrake wrote: post #17

Not just Amazon, too. It feels like all of big tech (and some smaller firms) have simultaneously gone insane. Imagine if your CEO woke up one day and told the company: "We need to encourage travel spending. Please book as many business trips as you can, and spend as much money as possible. Fly first class to our satellite offices! Take limos instead of Ubers! Eat at fine restaurants! Make sure you are constantly trav…

This is what inspired me to build my new CLI tool, Burn, Baby, Burn ( https://github.com/dtnewman/burn-baby-burn/tree/main ). (If you are a VP at Amazon, yes, I'll consider acquisition offers. I'm also working on an enterprise version of this with additional features.) Show HN here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48151287

Just sent it to some developers who could really benefit from this! Please let us know when you have Codex and Gemini versions ready to rumble.

Re: Amazon workers under pressure to up their AI usage are making up tasks

#270

Post by ZeroGravitas »

pjmlp wrote: post #237
ZeroGravitas wrote: post #215

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's the logic of dissing paper straws in a comment raging against war and AI as threats to the environment? I see it a lot and assumed it was concern trolling from plastic manufacturers or libertarians funded by them but you seem genuine. Have you just fallen for that concern trolling? Grown so cynical that nothing matters anymore? I don't understand the intention if you have a genuine desire to improve society. W…

It is a distraction, the feel good for using paper straws instead of actions that actually make an impact, like improvements in the transport infrastructure, shutdown of factories that polluted the environment, flying people to meetings, limits of the kinds of engines that get produced, wars for profit, now AI data centers, and plenty of other examples that since covid the people big corps and governments could not c…

One of the three techniques discussed in the book "Rhetoric of reaction" is futility.

Reactionaries are often arguing against good things, which makes it difficult for them to directly attack them.

So they develop consistent techniques to attack them from oblique angles:

> Hirschman describes the reactionary theses thus:

> According to the Perversity Thesis, any purposive action to improve some feature of the political, social, or economic status quo only serves, perversely, to exacerbate the very condition one wishes to remedy (compare: Unintended consequences).[4]

> The Futility Thesis holds that attempts at social transformation will be unavailing, that they will fail to "make a dent" in the problem, and the motives of those who keep attempting futile reforms are suspect.[5][6]

> The Jeopardy Thesis states that the risk of the proposed change is too great as it imperils some previous, precious accomplishment.[6][7]

> He characterizes these theses as "rhetorics of intransigence" that do not further constructive debate.[8] Moreover, he says they turn optimism about social advancement into pessimism.[9]

The futility (and perversity) ones are what I think of when people are angry about straws on the internet.

I just don't understand how complaining endlessly about leads to solving any of the bigger problems. Each of which could be dismissed in the same way.

Post reply on HN