I know kids avoiding many high paying careers because of ai right now, and artists just giving up everywhere i look. Thanks, ai
Labor market impacts of AI: A new measure and early evidence
281–290 of 584 posts
Re: Labor market impacts of AI: A new measure and early evidence
#282Has this been peer-reviewed?
Re: Labor market impacts of AI: A new measure and early evidence
#283Earlier quoted context omitted.
> I have stopped writing code, occasionally I jump into the changes proposed by LLM and make manual edits if it is feasible, otherwise I revert changes and ask it to generate again but based on my learnings from the past rejected output Isn't it a very inefficient way to learn things? Like, normally, you would learn how things work and then write the code, refining your knowledge while you are writing. Now you don't…
> Isn't it a very inefficient way to learn things? It is. But there are 2 things: 1. Do I want to learn that? (if I am coming back to this topic again in 5 months, knowledge accumulates, but there is a temptation to finish the thing quickly, because it is so boring to swim in huge legacy codebase) 2. How long it takes to grasp it and implement the solution? If I can complete it with AI in 2 days vs on my own in 2 wee…
I don't know where it goes, but it sounds pretty dumb for the companies involved too. Tech companies are in the business of nurturing teams knowledgeable in things so they can build something that gives them an advantage over competition. If there is no knowledge being built, there is no advantage and no tech business.
Re: Labor market impacts of AI: A new measure and early evidence
#284Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm currently a product manager (was a software engineer and technical architect before), so i already lost the feeling of ownership of code. But just like when you're doing product management with a team of software engineers, testers, and UXers, with AI you can still feel ownership of the feature or capability you're shipping. So from my perspective, nothing changes regarding ownership.
> So from my perspective, nothing changes regarding ownership. The engineer who worked with you took ownership of the code! Have you forgotten this?
No, that’s why I wrote “from my perspective”. I started long ago writing 6502 and 68000 assembly, later c and even later Java. Every step you lose ownership of the underlying layer. This is just another step. “But it’s non deterministic!”, yes so are developers. We need QA regardless who or what write the lines of code.
Re: Labor market impacts of AI: A new measure and early evidence
#285People who are saying they're not seeing productivity boost, can you please share where is it failing? Because, I am terrified by the output I am getting while working on huge legacy codebases, it works. I described one of my workflow changes here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47271168 but in general compared to old way of working I am saving half of the steps consistently, whether its researching the codebas…
The last time I tried AI, I tested it with a stopwatch. The group used feature flags... if (a) { // new code } else { // old code } void testOff() { disableFlag(a); // test it still works } void testOn() { enableFlag(a); // test it still works } However, as with any cleanup, it doesn't happen. We have thousands of these things lying around taking up space. I thought "I can give this to the AI, it won't get bored or c…
I did my own experiment with Claude Code vs Cursor tab completion. The task was to convert an Excel file to a structured format. Nothing fancy at all.
Claude Code took 4 hours, with multiple prompts. At the end, it started to break the previous fixes in favor of new features. The code was spaghetti. There was no way I could fix it myself or steer Claude Code into fixing it the right way. Either it was a dead-end or a dice roll with every prompt.
Then I implemented my own version with Cursor tab completion. It took the same amount of time, 4 hours. The code had a clear object-oriented architecture, with a structure for evolution. Adding a new feature didn't require any prompts at all.
As a result, Claude Code was worse in terms of productivity: the same amount of time, worse quality output, no possibility of (or at best very high cost of) code evolution.
Re: Labor market impacts of AI: A new measure and early evidence
#286People who are saying they're not seeing productivity boost, can you please share where is it failing? Because, I am terrified by the output I am getting while working on huge legacy codebases, it works. I described one of my workflow changes here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47271168 but in general compared to old way of working I am saving half of the steps consistently, whether its researching the codebas…
The companies laying off people have no vision. My company is a successful not for profit and we are hiring like crazy. It’s not a software company, but we have always effectively unlimited work. Why would anyone downsize because work is getting done faster? Just do more work, get more done, get better than the competition, get better at delivering your vision. We put profits back in the community and actually make l…
Yes, it's the lump of labor fallacy.
Doesn't exclude the possibility of short term distribution, though.
Re: Labor market impacts of AI: A new measure and early evidence
#287People who are saying they're not seeing productivity boost, can you please share where is it failing? Because, I am terrified by the output I am getting while working on huge legacy codebases, it works. I described one of my workflow changes here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47271168 but in general compared to old way of working I am saving half of the steps consistently, whether its researching the codebas…
> my job is easier now, I do less.
> I am terrified about what's coming.
God I hope I never ever have to work with you
Re: Labor market impacts of AI: A new measure and early evidence
#288People who are saying they're not seeing productivity boost, can you please share where is it failing? Because, I am terrified by the output I am getting while working on huge legacy codebases, it works. I described one of my workflow changes here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47271168 but in general compared to old way of working I am saving half of the steps consistently, whether its researching the codebas…
"it works" is a very low standard when it comes to software engineering. Why are we not holding AI generated code to the same standards as we hold our peers during code reviews?
I have never heard anyone say "it works" as a positive thing when reviewing code..
Yes, there is a productivity boost but you can't tell me there is no decrease in quality
Re: Labor market impacts of AI: A new measure and early evidence
#289People who are saying they're not seeing productivity boost, can you please share where is it failing? Because, I am terrified by the output I am getting while working on huge legacy codebases, it works. I described one of my workflow changes here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47271168 but in general compared to old way of working I am saving half of the steps consistently, whether its researching the codebas…
Meanwhile gemini tells me my go code doesn't compile (it does)
Gaslight me by telling me I must be a time traveler because I use go 1.26 but the latest version actually is 1.24
And tell me I can't use wg.Go() because this function does not exist (it does)
Re: Labor market impacts of AI: A new measure and early evidence
#290People who are saying they're not seeing productivity boost, can you please share where is it failing? Because, I am terrified by the output I am getting while working on huge legacy codebases, it works. I described one of my workflow changes here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47271168 but in general compared to old way of working I am saving half of the steps consistently, whether its researching the codebas…
The companies laying off people have no vision. My company is a successful not for profit and we are hiring like crazy. It’s not a software company, but we have always effectively unlimited work. Why would anyone downsize because work is getting done faster? Just do more work, get more done, get better than the competition, get better at delivering your vision. We put profits back in the community and actually make l…
The problem becomes if you are a service like Youtube, where you already have capture almost the entire customer base.