Labor market impacts of AI: A new measure and early evidence • Hacker News Board

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

#381

Post by Madmallard » Fri, Mar 06, 2026, 1:34 PM UTC

sheeshkebab wrote: post #374

Madmallard wrote: post #349

Earlier quoted context omitted.

2. Translating between two different coding languages (migration) I have a game written in XNA 100% of the code is there, including all the physics that I hand-wrote. All the assets are there. I tried to get Gemini and Claude to do it numerous times, always with utter failure of epic proportions with anything that's actually detailed. 1 - my transition from the lobby screen into gameplay? 0% replicated on all attempt…

In those situations you basically need to guide llm to do it properly. It rarely one shots complex problems like this, especially in non web dev, but could make it faster than doing it manually.

Oh believe me I broke it down super finely, down to single files and even single functions in some places

It still is completely and utterly hopeless

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

#382

Post by Madmallard » Fri, Mar 06, 2026, 1:35 PM UTC

KronisLV wrote: post #351

Madmallard wrote: post #349

Earlier quoted context omitted.

2. Translating between two different coding languages (migration) I have a game written in XNA 100% of the code is there, including all the physics that I hand-wrote. All the assets are there. I tried to get Gemini and Claude to do it numerous times, always with utter failure of epic proportions with anything that's actually detailed. 1 - my transition from the lobby screen into gameplay? 0% replicated on all attempt…

I crave to see people saying "Here's the repo btw: ..." and others trying out porting it over, just so we see all of the ways how AI fails (and how each model does) and maybe in the middle there a few ways to improve its odds. Until it eventually gets included in training data, a bit like how LLMs are oddly good at making SVGs of pelicans on bicycles nowadays. And then, maybe someone slightly crazy comes along and tr…

I'm sure someone who regularly programs games in the destination language I want who also has worked with XNA in the past as a game developer could port it in a week or something yeah

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

#383

Post by spacecadet » Fri, Mar 06, 2026, 1:39 PM UTC

m_ke wrote: post #377

vb7132 wrote: post #347

I was at a big tech for last 10 years, quit my job last month - I feel 50x more productive outside than inside. Here is my take on AI's impact on productivity: First let's review what are LLMs objectively good at: 1. Writing boiler plate code 2. Translating between two different coding languages (migration) 3. Learning new things: Summarizing knowledge, explaining concepts 4. Documentation, menial tasks At a big tech…

having been an early employee and founder of a few startups and then working at a few larger companies, most people who only ever worked at FAANG have no idea how much more productive tiny teams with ownership are.

This. Hell even a company that is 100 people or more. Ive seen companies just grind to snails pace around 80-90 people and then still scale to 400-500 and then it's impossible to really do anything meaningful. I have tried to test for this in interviews over the years but ultimately I just end up disappointed. At this point I don't even look, just work in small independently organized groups or coops.

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

#384

Post by zombot » Fri, Mar 06, 2026, 1:39 PM UTC

Never trust a statistic you haven't forged yourself.

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

#385

Post by demorro » Fri, Mar 06, 2026, 1:40 PM UTC

tasuki wrote: post #362

eucyclos wrote: post #200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, I gotta make a video walkthrough. Its basically a goal tracker combined with an ad filter - write what you want out of life and block ads, it replaces them with ads that actually align with your long term goals instead of distracting from them. The tokens let you add ads to the network, though you also get some for using the goal tracker.

No, you don't need a video walkthrough. You need that damn web page to explain – in plain language – what this is and what it's good for.

They can't, they never did the work to discover what it's good for because they skipped over implementation and concept validation.

This concept will never work outside of their own head. People continue to think producing something is the hard part my word.

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

#386

Post by pixl97 » Fri, Mar 06, 2026, 1:44 PM UTC

nitwit005 wrote: post #71

pixl97 wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Between 2004 and 2008 I did many things in computing as a company that offered my services, one of these was information gathering automation. It almost never immediately lead to decreases in employment. The systems had a to be in place for a while, people had to get used to them, people had to stop making common mistakes with them. Then the 2008 crash happened and those people were gone in a blink of an eye and neve…

I'm afraid I can't find the connection between this and what I wrote.

Layoffs are very rarely directly correlated with a new technology coming into place. As much as businesses say they are forward looking and looking to increase profits, they'll commonly remain conservative until they are forced by external conditions, say a recession.

This is, if AI is going to cause job losses it will feel very small for some time, then it will happen suddenly all at once with little to no time to properly react.

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

#387

Post by eucyclos » Fri, Mar 06, 2026, 1:45 PM UTC

tasuki wrote: post #362

eucyclos wrote: post #200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, I gotta make a video walkthrough. Its basically a goal tracker combined with an ad filter - write what you want out of life and block ads, it replaces them with ads that actually align with your long term goals instead of distracting from them. The tokens let you add ads to the network, though you also get some for using the goal tracker.

No, you don't need a video walkthrough. You need that damn web page to explain – in plain language – what this is and what it's good for.

Would the above explanation be better? The website is there because stripe needs a landing page and the text is there because I'm trying to communicate the aspiration the instantiation I can always explain in detail if someone wants to hear how that would work.

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

#388

Post by hombre_fatal » Fri, Mar 06, 2026, 1:47 PM UTC

bandrami wrote: post #161

hombre_fatal wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How would you know if all software written in the last six months shipped X% faster and was Y% better? Why would you think you have your finger on the pulse of general software trends like that when you use the same, what, dozen apps every week? Just looking at my own productivity, as mere sideprojects this month , I've shipped my own terminal app (replaced iTerm2), btrfs+luks NAS system manager, overhauled my macOS…

Right, I'm sympathetic to the idea that LLMs facilitate the creation of software that people previously weren't willing to pay for, but then kind of by definition that's not going to have a big topline economic impact.

Why did you add that "weren't willing to pay for" condition?

Most of the software I replaced was software I was paying for (iStat Menus, Wispr Flow, Synology/Unraid). That I was paying for a project I could trivially take on with AI was one of the main incentives to do it.

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

#389

Post by sgc » Fri, Mar 06, 2026, 1:48 PM UTC

demorro wrote: post #363

sgc wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Imagine if your grandma had wheels! She'd be a bicycle. I always took this to be a sharp jab saying the entire village is riding your grandma, giving it a very aggressive undertone. It's pretty funny nonetheless. Too early to say what AI brings to the efficiency table I think. In some major things I do it's a 1000x speed up. In others it is more a different way of approaching a problem than a speed up. In yet other…

1000x is ridiculous. What are you doing where that level of improvement is measurable. That means you are doing things that would have taken you a year of full-time work in less than half a day now. EDIT: Retracted, I think the example given below is reasonably valid.

I understand, but the improvement is actually more than that. It is not directly programming, but look at this page [1] for example. I spent years handcrafting parallel texts of English and Greek and had managed to put just under 400 books online. With AI, I managed to translate and put in parallel 1500 more books very quickly. At least 2/3 of those have never been translated into English, ever. That means I have done what the entire history of English-speaking scholars has never managed to do. And the quality is good enough that I have already had publishers contacting me to use the translations. There are a couple other areas where I am getting similar speed ups, but of course this is not the norm.

[1] https://catholiclibrary.org/library/browse/

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

#390

Post by joe_mamba » Fri, Mar 06, 2026, 1:49 PM UTC

SideburnsOfDoom wrote: post #369

joe_mamba wrote: post #280

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Just year ago, client told me to delete integration tests, because "they ran too long"! Why are you surprised customers don't like spending money on the items that don't add business value. Add to that QA, documentation, security audits, etc. They want to ship stuff that brings in customers and revenue day one, everything else is a cost.

> integration tests, QA etc ... the items that don't add business value They absolutely do add value / prevent loss, but you need some understanding in order to see that. Not seeing it is a marker of not understanding.

>They absolutely do add value

Not to the non-technical bean counters. When they allocate money they want to see you prove how that extra money translates to an immediate ROI, and it's difficult to prove that in an Excel sheet exactly what the ROI will be without making stuff up on vibes and feels.

Like at one German company i was at ~15 years ago, all the devs wanted a second 19" monitor on our workstations for increased productivity, and the bean counters wouldn't approve that because they wanted proof of how that expense across hundreds of people will increase our productivity and by how much %, to see if that would offset the cost.

This is how these people think. If you don't bring hard numbers on how much their "line will go up", they won't give you money.

I know this is difficult to understand from the PoV of SV Americans where gazillions of dollars just fall from the sky at their tech companies.