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

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

#361

Post by andrekandre »

autoexec wrote: post #180
xp84 wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even as a very happy NVDA shareholder I agree with you. It's comical that managers are being so naïve as to think that you can crap out a dashboard of "tokens consumed per week" and get any useful signal at all from it, beyond learning who's not using AI. Incompetent use of a coding agent, or just general shenanigans, can burn tokens all day but it's not going to get tickets done. Just looking at the work output - ho…

> It's comical that managers are being so naïve as to think that you can crap out a dashboard of "tokens consumed per week" and get any useful signal at all from it, beyond learning who's not using AI. If some guy decides to spend a bunch of money bringing AI tools into the company things might get very uncomfortable for him if they're seeing zero return on that investment. He's sure not going to get recognition and…

  > things might get very uncomfortable for him if they're seeing zero return on that investment. 

  > If on the other hand, he can put some numbers in a spreadsheet or powerpoint showing that employees are using AI all the time and profits are up again this quarter
thats exactly what i see first-hand; no actual measure of dollars in vs dollars out, just x number of employees are generating y number of pr's with z% ai code + this quarter we made a profit = ai productivity boost...

total brainrot

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

#362

Post by cgio »

dyauspitr wrote: post #285
dtnewman wrote: post #261

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Only problem with this is that outcome metrics are still jira storypoints. Burning huge number of token while not improving the velocity is going to get you fired.

Next feature is creating stories. Double burn.

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

#363

Post by andrekandre »

autoexec wrote: post #229
ijidak wrote: post #209

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's worth reflecting on why it's so hard to convince hold outs to discover how AI might help them I have. My conclusion is... humans are deeply irrational when it comes to rapid change. Egg or olive oil prices spike, humans out an entire government. The rate of immigration spikes, humans throw them into camps and break useful treaties. Most of the resistance I've observed amongst engineers is resistance to change…

> Most of the resistance I've observed amongst engineers is resistance to change generally. Most engineers I've known are enthusiastic when given the opportunity to play around with a new toy. What they don't like is anything being forced on them. There's nothing irrational about that. They've often invested a lot of time into optimizing their workflows. I've also found that if something actually makes their work eas…

  > What they don't like is anything being forced on them
raises hand (n=1), i'm fine to use it when i need it, but the derangement by management about it is a total put-off and unnecessary (and in the end counter-productive)

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

#364

Post by [deleted] »

onion2k wrote: post #6

I'd bet that the goal is for people to 'game' it though. By pushing people to use AI more they'll try it, experiment with it, 'waste' time on it ... and from that they'll learn about it. That's the end goal. They're using tokens for pointless stuff right now in order to figure out use cases where it helps. You can't do that without also learning where it doesn't help. My company is doing the same thing.

[deleted]

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

#365

Post by [deleted] »

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

[deleted]

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

#366

Post by Skidaddle »

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 might be an ROI calculation, e.g. some people will waste tokens, but if it means someone else feels empowered to make something awesome or impactful, it will have been worth it.

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

#367

Post by andrekandre »

xp84 wrote: post #175
quikoa wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can't tell if this comment is sarcasm or not. If you let AI run commands you don't understand (especially in production) you may end up with some nasty surprises.

With a comment like that, it's no wonder you're dramatically below our minimum guidance for tokens consumed. If AI breaks production this way, you just tell AI to fix it! And look, now you've consumed tokens twice. Think on that and I'll see you at the end-of-year performance review.

  > If AI breaks production this way, you just tell AI to fix it! And look, now you've consumed tokens twice. Think on that and I'll see you at the end-of-year performance review.
it reminds me of using something like gdp as a measure where spending more money == good even if its at the cost of actually less productivity (more middlemen taking out rents, for example)

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

#368

Post by andrekandre »

CaptainTaboo wrote: post #86
jordanb wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've been noticing how our economy keeps getting more Soviet as it becomes more top-down. We basically have central planning now with all the pathologies inherent in that system, but unlike the soviets we just have a bunch of guys who happened to get rich or bribe the right people running our GOSPLAN.

Things definitely feel 'Soviet' at my company. AI usage has been mandated by upper management (despite the fact that it doesn't really make sense or solve any problems in my particular job). They literally call it an "AI revolution." If you dare question the wisdom of the company's 'AI-First' policy, it's like you risk being singled out as a "counter-revolutionary."

  > They literally call it an "AI revolution."
they are calling it "the ai era" around these parts lol... "coding in the ai era" it sounds so big and meaningful, but actually its just vapid.

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

#369

Post by paradox460 »

autoexec wrote: post #229
ijidak wrote: post #209

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's worth reflecting on why it's so hard to convince hold outs to discover how AI might help them I have. My conclusion is... humans are deeply irrational when it comes to rapid change. Egg or olive oil prices spike, humans out an entire government. The rate of immigration spikes, humans throw them into camps and break useful treaties. Most of the resistance I've observed amongst engineers is resistance to change…

> Most of the resistance I've observed amongst engineers is resistance to change generally. Most engineers I've known are enthusiastic when given the opportunity to play around with a new toy. What they don't like is anything being forced on them. There's nothing irrational about that. They've often invested a lot of time into optimizing their workflows. I've also found that if something actually makes their work eas…

Exactly this

>Here's a new editor we made

Cool, looks interesting, I'd love to use it more

>We're forcing you to use it

I hate it

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

#370

Post by andrekandre »

lmkg wrote: post #29
pjc50 wrote: post #21

Lots of people reporting their "I had to use up my tokens, so I burned them on worthless stuff" stories. Incredible thing to do in a climate emergency. Push harder guys, maybe we can hit 3C warming? This reminds me of the story of how the USSR nearly made whales extinct to meet a quota for whale meat that nobody wanted to eat.

This is why we're clear-cutting forests to build new data centers? Not even for "real" productivity gains, but just for the sake of using the tokens.

  > just for the sake of using the tokens
capital requires growth, forests be damned
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