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

Create value for others and don’t worry about the returns

geohot.github.io

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

361–370 of 496 posts

Re: Create value for others and don’t worry about the returns

#361

Post by zozbot234 »

sarchertech wrote: post #328
WJW wrote: post #316

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why not become a skilled craftsman and make a much better wage than in food service or retail? Every western country I've ever been in seems to have everlasting shortages of skilled plumbers, electricians and welders and prices have risen to match.

The skilled trades are better than unskilled work. Better than retail or food service, but they certainly aren’t a replacement for white collar jobs. The median salaries for skilled trades aren’t great. You can make good money if you are willing to work a ton of overtime, or if you can manage to get one of the very limited union spots in the right city. Or if you become a business owner (and accept the corresponding…

> Let’s say AI comes along and forces 25% of the white collar workers out of a job

Yeah, this is not going to happen. New job positions will open up instead, and white collar workers will be well placed to fill them since supervising an AI agent swarm is not that different from supervising the work of other humans - which is what white collar workers do as their job.

Re: Create value for others and don’t worry about the returns

#362

Post by cardanome »

keiferski wrote: post #318

As is often the case, the title is a bit misleading and implies a universality that I don’t think the author intended. He is specifically talking about AI, and saying (in my understanding) that you shouldn’t worry too much about whether your specific thing will be overwritten by AI, as long as you focus on actually creating true, real value with your work. I agree with that completely and can see it happening in my o…

The problem is that with generative AI, I have no means of protecting my work from being stolen.

It does not matter what license I put up. It doesn't even matter if I make it publicly available or not. LLMs have been trained on pirated material, they don't even have the decency to buy a copy. Even if I show my project to no one and just have a private repo on Github the code might still be used to train LLMs.

Your GPL licensed library? Yeah, we used claude to rewrite it and released it under MIT.

Now that wouldn't be so bad. One could argue copyright has long held back progress in certain areas. The problem is, the rules only apply one way. The rent seeking oligarchs of the tech industry can steal everything but I can't.

They can just eat the cost of a lawsuit, I can't. They can just decide to make a special deal with Disney to use their copyrighted material, I can't.

Sure the days of free markets capitalism are long gone. A few monopolists controlling the market has long been the norm. But AI makes it even worse. So much worse.

Re: Create value for others and don’t worry about the returns

#363

Post by DangitBobby »

zelphirkalt wrote: post #126
root_user wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That’s fine. New opportunities to provide value will emerge. If software becomes oversupplied, fewer people will enter that field and move to other areas where value is needed. If you only want to add value in the software space, then yes, it may be a problem.

If now only everyone who is talented at crafting software (or any other job that might be replaced), but who is out of a job could magically be as talented at something else, and enjoy doing that other work, then we would have no problem. But one issue is, that often significant time goes into becoming good at what one does. Switching has a very high personal cost in terms of time and having no income for a prolonged…

Even worse, people are not the same as when they were younger. They may have less ability to learn. Almost certainly they have lower internal motivation and enthusiasm, since their career of choice was just taken from them. Job retraining programs are probably a big hint here. They have a poor track record.

Re: Create value for others and don’t worry about the returns

#364

Post by froglets »

jatari wrote: post #309
zozbot234 wrote: post #280

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> They may not know that this dude was an anti-masker (with nuance) for example. Why are we supposed to care about that? There was a time when "masks do not work" was very much the conventional wisdom.

There was literally never a time where mainstream medical advice was "masks do nothing".

Public health recommendations aren’t medical advice though. The advice agencies give is given to everyone and so has to take things like supply chains and the economy into consideration before making recommendations.

Re: Create value for others and don’t worry about the returns

#365

Post by tolerance »

keiferski wrote: post #318

As is often the case, the title is a bit misleading and implies a universality that I don’t think the author intended. He is specifically talking about AI, and saying (in my understanding) that you shouldn’t worry too much about whether your specific thing will be overwritten by AI, as long as you focus on actually creating true, real value with your work. I agree with that completely and can see it happening in my o…

I think that the friction lies somewhere in between what you’re observing and what ~safety1st addresses below.

The author has a specific issue in mind. Today the author chooses joy and refuses to evoke the woe and worries of the audience thus omitting their concerns; the audience fails to inherit the author’s optimism, likely due to some kind of asymmetry in sociopolitical outlook and status between the two parties.

HN is succumbing to the discordant trends in common discourse found elsewhere online. Demographic changes may have something to do with this.

Re: Create value for others and don’t worry about the returns

#366

Post by francisofascii »

keiferski wrote: post #346
harimau777 wrote: post #336

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That still seems super naive, at least if its extended to software engineering. Companies already treat software engineers like disposable cogs to be burnt out and discarded. I don't see how AI will improve that.

I think if you’re legitimately providing value to the company, you aren’t disposable. If you are but still get canned, then you’re just dealing with irrational management, and that predates AI.

the goalposts for providing value are changing faster than ever

Re: Create value for others and don’t worry about the returns

#367

Post by DangitBobby »

devsda wrote: post #75
ramblerman wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You have a right to perform your prescribed duty, but you are not entitled to the fruits of action. Never consider yourself the cause of the results of your activities, and never be attached to not doing your duty. I have a hard time interpreting that as what geohotz is saying. If anything it seems to promote rent seekers by telling you - stick to your lane and don't complain. I.e. the caste system

> If anything it seems to promote rent seekers by telling you - stick to your lane and don't complain. I.e. the caste system I was wondering if that would come up and HN delivers without fail. Anyway, you are free to interpret it as you see fit. The guidance was for someone who was struggling with a moral dillema on facing relatives in war and undecided over action. It is not a diktat to work or provide unquestion la…

What is the point of a job if not the results? How can you be responsible for your actions but not the consequences of your actions?

Re: Create value for others and don’t worry about the returns

#368

Post by DrewADesign »

keiferski wrote: post #346
harimau777 wrote: post #336

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That still seems super naive, at least if its extended to software engineering. Companies already treat software engineers like disposable cogs to be burnt out and discarded. I don't see how AI will improve that.

I think if you’re legitimately providing value to the company, you aren’t disposable. If you are but still get canned, then you’re just dealing with irrational management, and that predates AI.

The problem isn’t whether or not companies need us— it’s about how many of us they need (demand), and how many of us there are (supply), because that determines our value. Companies pay people what they’ll work for, not based on how much they contribute to the bottom line; in economics, paying more than you have to for anything, including labor, is the irrational path. A steady, high demand for software developers has kept salaries high because that’s the only way they could get capable people to work for them.

The higher-end of markets aren’t immune to this. As the demand for lower-level workers drops, people will upskill trying to move up rather than get lopped off. Since there are fewer positions the further up the hierarchy you get, you don’t need a huge increase in supply to affect demand. That’s when you start seeing the most experienced, highest-earning people getting shit-canned because someone is willing to do a good-enough version of their role for 2/3 their sizable salary.

This can all happen without a single entire role being completely automated out of existence.

Re: Create value for others and don’t worry about the returns

#369

Post by UncleMeat »

wizzwizz4 wrote: post #307
giwook wrote: post #296

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Conventional for whom?

I might be misremembering, but I think the WHO claimed this at some point? It was obvious nonsense, and did not comfort me as I watched an avoidable catastrophe become, day by day, an unavoidable one; politicians caring more about pacifying the populace with platitudes than about taking measures to render SARS-CoV-2 extinct in the wild – measures which would have been several orders of magnitude cheaper than the exte…

There was an extremely brief period where public health advice discouraged the general population from masking. This was because there was a huge undersupply for medical workers and because we hadn't fully figured out whether covid aerosolized mere weeks into the pandemic.

Once we had a bit more information in a rapidly evolving situation public health advice switched to recommending masks and stayed that way for years.

We cannot possibly expect public health advice to get everything right immediately during a once-in-a-century pandemic and this error should definitely not be used as a general "wow public health officials are dumb idiots or engaged in a malicious conspiracy", as this error is often used.

Post reply on HN