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Labor market impacts of AI: A new measure and early evidence

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Re: Labor market impacts of AI: A new measure and early evidence

#291

Post by thesamethrowawa »

laserlight wrote: post #285
jpollock wrote: post #244

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Are you able to share your prompts to Claude Code? I assume not, they are probably not saved - but this genuinely surprised me, it seems like exactly the type of task an LLM would excel at (no pun intended!). What model were you using OOI?

Re: Labor market impacts of AI: A new measure and early evidence

#292

Post by hobofan »

oytis wrote: post #283
throwaw12 wrote: post #276

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

> Tech companies are in the business of nurturing teams knowledgeable in things

It pains the anti-capitalist fibers in my body to say this, but no they are not. At the maximum the value is in organizational knowledge and existing assets (= source code, documentation), so that people with the least knowledge possible can make changes. In software companies in general, technical excellence and knowledge is not strongly correlated with economic success as long as you clear a certain bar (that's not that high). In comparison, in hardware/engineering companies, that's a lot more correlated.

In the concrete example of a legacy codebase we have here, there is even less value in trying to build up knowledge in the company, as it has already been decided that the system is to be discarded anyways.

Re: Labor market impacts of AI: A new measure and early evidence

#293

Post by shinycode »

laserlight wrote: post #285
jpollock wrote: post #244

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

The exact same prompt ? Everything depends on the prompt and it’s different tools. These days the quality and what’s build around the prompt matters as much as the code. We can’t feed generic query.

Re: Labor market impacts of AI: A new measure and early evidence

#294

Post by RA_Fisher »

yoyohello13 wrote: post #179
throwaw12 wrote: post #154

People 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…

Does that extra work bring in more revenue? I think that’s the key question.

Re: Labor market impacts of AI: A new measure and early evidence

#295

Post by ragebol »

jakobnissen wrote: post #191
chii wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Doesn't make sense to stop hiring juniors. If AI increases productivity, and juniors are cheaper to hire, but is just as able to hand off tasks to ai as a senior, then it makes more sense to hire more juniors to get them working with an AI as soon as possible. This produces output faster, for which more revenue could be derived. So the only limiting factor is the possibility of not deriving more revenue - which is no…

Juniors are not as capable of delegating to AI as seniors are. Delegation to AI requires code review, catching the AI when it doesn’t follow good engineering practices, and catching the AI in semantic mistakes due to the AIs lack of broader context. Those things are all hard for juniors.

Isn't that the point, to be able to learn that.

The craft changes with all these AI helpers, so the juniors have to also catch up/change with it. Or there won't b any seniors in due time.

Re: Labor market impacts of AI: A new measure and early evidence

#296

Post by laserlight »

thesamethrowawa wrote: post #291
laserlight wrote: post #285

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Are you able to share your prompts to Claude Code? I assume not, they are probably not saved - but this genuinely surprised me, it seems like exactly the type of task an LLM would excel at (no pun intended!). What model were you using OOI?

> this genuinely surprised me

Me too. After listening to all the claims about Claude Code's productivity benefits, I was surprised to get the result I got.

I'm not able to share details of my work. I was using Claude Opus 4.5, if I recall correctly.

Re: Labor market impacts of AI: A new measure and early evidence

#297

Post by raphaelj »

RA_Fisher wrote: post #294
yoyohello13 wrote: post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Does that extra work bring in more revenue? I think that’s the key question.

Companies that do not reduce their workforce might outcompete you.

It might not be about bringing more revenues but retaining market share.

Re: Labor market impacts of AI: A new measure and early evidence

#298

Post by tripledry »

joe_mamba wrote: post #279
tripledry wrote: post #277

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Something I've been thinking about lately is if there is value in understanding the systems we produce and if we expected to? If I can just vibe and shrug when someone asks why production is down globally then I'm sure the amount of features I can push out increases, but if I am still expected to understand and fix the systems I generate, I'm not convinced it's actually faster to vibe and then try to understand what'…

>if I can just vibe and shrug when someone asks why production is down globally You're pretty high up in the development, decision and value-addition chain, if YOU are the responsible go-to person for these questions. AI has no impact on your position.

Naa, I'm just a programmer. Experience may vary depending on company and country, for me this has been true from tiny startups to global corporations.

Tangential, I don't even know what "responsible" in the corporate world means anymore, it seems to me no one is really responsible for anything. But the one thing that's almost certain is that I will fix the damn thing if I made it go boom.

Re: Labor market impacts of AI: A new measure and early evidence

#300

Post by ChrisMarshallNY »

Mengkudulangsat wrote: post #156
ChrisMarshallNY wrote: post #82

I'm working on a project right now, that is heavily informed by AI. I wouldn't even try it, if I didn't have the help. It's a big job. However, I can't imagine vibe-coders actually shipping anything. I really have to ride herd on the output from the LLM. Sometimes, the error is PEBCAK, because I erred, when I prompted, and that can lead to very subtle issues. I no longer review every line, but I also have not yet got…

> However, I can't imagine vibe-coders actually shipping anything. I'm a vibe-coder, and I've shipped lots! The key is to vibe-code apps that has a single user (me). Haven't coded anything for 15 years prior to January too.

I suspect we have different definitions of “ship.”

I am usually my principal customer, but I tend to release publicly.

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