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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

#311

Post by truetraveller »

mirsadm wrote: post #310
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…

I have an app which is fairly popular. This release cycle I used Claude Code and codex to implement all the changes / features. It definitely let me move much quicker than before. However now that it's in the beta stage the amount of issues and bugs is insane. I reviewed a lot of the code that went in as well. I suspect the bug fixing stage is going to take longer than the initial implementation. There are so many is…

Thanks for the insight!

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

#312

Post by truetraveller »

staticassertion wrote: post #248
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…

When it comes to novel work, LLMs become "fast typers" for me and little more. They accelerate testing phases but that's it. The bar for novelty isn't very high either - "make this specific system scale in a way that others won't" isn't a thing an LLM can ever do on its own, though it can be an aid. LLMs also are quite bad for security. They can find simple bugs, but they don't find the really interesting ones that l…

This is basically my take as well!

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

#313

Post by mikkupikku »

salawat wrote: post #180
aurareturn wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I totally get tech CEOs who threaten to fire their devs who do not embrace AI tools. I'm not a tech CEO but people who are anti-LLM for programming have no place on my team.

And you are paying for their tokens on top of their salary, right? Right?

"Bring your own tools" is not exactly novel in the workplace. Maybe so for office workers, but not more generally. Anyway, these particular tools are cheap enough that it hardly even matters who is expected to pay for them.

The $20 a month tier in particular is a trivial expense, on par with businesses that expect their workers to wear steel toed shoes. Some may give workers a little stipend to buy those boots, some not. Either way, it doesn't really matter.

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

#314

Post by mikkupikku »

KronisLV wrote: post #256
aurareturn wrote: post #225

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If they really want to cut cost, fire the worst dev on the team and use that money to give everyone a Codex subscription.

Or better yet, fire the managers or bean counters that think decreasing everyone’s productivity is good for long term savings. I’m reminded of https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2000/08/09/the-joel-test-12-s...

Fire the middle management, HR, and etc that have been enthusiastically using AI to do their jobs for the past two or three years already. 90% of them can be replaced by an agent with access to an email account.

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

#315

Post by bdangubic »

staticassertion wrote: post #250
asadm wrote: post #249

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think your analysis is a bit outdated these days or you may be holding it wrong. I am doing novel work with codex but it does need some prompting ie. exploring possibilities from current codebase, adding papers to prompt etc. For security, I think I generally start a new thread before committing to review from security pov.

You can do novel work with an LLM. You can. The LLM can't. It can be an aid - exploring papers, gathering information, helping to validate, etc. It can't do the actual novel part, fundamentally it is limited to what it is trained on. If you are relying on the LLM and context, then unless your context is a secret your competitor is only ever one prompt behind you. If you're willing to pursue true novelty, you need a h…

of course you need a human but do not need nearly as many humans as there are currently in the labor force

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

#316

Post by forgotlastlogin »

hdgvhicv wrote: post #229
aurareturn wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can do a lot with just $20 Codex CLI subscription. Tokens are cheap compared to the $20k we're paying for a dev each month.

Amazes me that people pay 20k a month for a dev rather than paying 2k a month for one in Poland or 1k a month for one from India There’s obviously a benefit of paying higher rates for US programmers, but does that benefit change when llms are thrown into the mix

2k in Poland you say...

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

#317

Post by mirsadm »

20k wrote: post #247
hombre_fatal wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd claim the opposite. Better models design better software, and quickly better software than what most software developers were writing. Just yesterday I asked Opus 4.6 what I could do to make an old macOS AppKit project more testable, too lazy to even encumber the question with my own preferences like I usually do, and it pitched a refactor into Elm architecture. And then it did the refactor while I took a piss. T…

And now you have no idea how any of the code works AI writes bad software by virtue of it being written by the AI, not you. No actual team member understands what's going on with the code. You can't interrogate the AI for its decision making. It doesn't understand the architecture its built. There's nobody you can ask about why anything is built the way it is - it just exists Its interesting watching people forget th…

My own observation is that the initial boost to productivity results in massive crippling technical debt.

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

#318

Post by maplethorpe »

mirsadm wrote: post #310
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…

I have an app which is fairly popular. This release cycle I used Claude Code and codex to implement all the changes / features. It definitely let me move much quicker than before. However now that it's in the beta stage the amount of issues and bugs is insane. I reviewed a lot of the code that went in as well. I suspect the bug fixing stage is going to take longer than the initial implementation. There are so many is…

Rather than trying to fix the bugs yourself, have you tried asking Claude to fix them for you?

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

#319

Post by mikkupikku »

bob1029 wrote: post #267

> Claude is extensively used for coding, Computer Programmers are at the top, with 75% coverage I think there are some advantages to being first. It's time to re-evaluate strategies if we've been operating under the assumption that this is going to be a bubble, or otherwise largely bullshit. It definitely works. Not everywhere all the time, but often enough to be "scary" now. Some of my prior dismissals like "text 2…

It is a bubble. It also works. Remember the Dotcom bubble, the internet did work but that doesn't mean there wasn't also a real bubble.

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

#320

Post by mirsadm »

maplethorpe wrote: post #318
mirsadm wrote: post #310

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have an app which is fairly popular. This release cycle I used Claude Code and codex to implement all the changes / features. It definitely let me move much quicker than before. However now that it's in the beta stage the amount of issues and bugs is insane. I reviewed a lot of the code that went in as well. I suspect the bug fixing stage is going to take longer than the initial implementation. There are so many is…

Rather than trying to fix the bugs yourself, have you tried asking Claude to fix them for you?

I have already been doing this. I could keep doing it but I'm not going to. I want to be able to understand my own code because that is what let's me make sound higher level decisions.
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