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I'm OK being left behind, thanks

shkspr.mobi

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Re: I'm OK being left behind, thanks

#461

Post by mablopoule »

SoftTalker wrote: post #292
another-dave wrote: post #110

On the otherhand, when Cloud Computing started to come in, I knew a bunch of sysadmins. Some were in the "it'll never take off" camp and no doubt they know it now, kicking and screaming. But the curious early adopters were the ones best positioned to be leading the charge on "cloud migration" when the business finally pulled the trigger. Similarly with mobile dev. As a Java dev at the time that Android came along, I…

> Suddenly the job ads were "Android Dev. Must have 3 years experience". So just read up on it and say you do. They don't really need 3 years experience, so you don't really need to have it.

I'm not sure why you're downvoted, but this is the right take IMO. I hate cheating and lying in general, but in any job posting you have to separate what are the actual requirement in term of knowledge versus what can be realistically learned on the job / doing a prototype in a weekend.

Of course don't fraud by like pretending you're a statistician when you have absolutely no mathematical background, but also don't take at face value the "Must have {x} years of experience in {y} tech" requirement when you know you have the necessary work experience to have a good grasp on it in a few weekend prototypes, and you also know that the job doesn't actually require deep expertise of that particular tech.

I did the same for my first React.js job, and I didn't feel bad because 1) I was honest about it and did not sold myself as a React expert, and 2) I had 10 years of front-end development, and I understood web dev enough to not be baffled by hooks and the difference between shallow copy vs. deep copy of a data structure, so passing technical test was good enough for it.

Re: I'm OK being left behind, thanks

#462

Post by sktrdie »

So? Economy is entertainment. When crypto was hype, billions were made and burned from building whatever entertaining thing around that. Now it's AI's turn. Billions will be made and burned. Economy is just a fun game. Let's have fun. The idea that everything needs to be "useful" is highly subjective. What is truly useful? Is it food? Shelter? Medicine?

Re: I'm OK being left behind, thanks

#463

Post by samiv »

chasd00 wrote: post #446
samiv wrote: post #301

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem is that we don't live in a society where the benefits of new technology benefit all. We're about to pull the rug underneath all knowledge workers. This will disrupt wage earners lives. This will disrupt the economy. You might feel great about when things become cheaper but remember that when things are cheap it's only because costs are low and when costs are low the revenues are low and when revenues are…

> We're about to pull the rug underneath all knowledge workers. This will disrupt wage earners lives. This will disrupt the economy. to tie back to the actually article, if you believe a rug pull is imminent then you got to get off the rug. Idk, you have to make a decision because we're certainly at a fork in the road. There's no guarantee waiting will result in a better outcome nor one saying it will be a worse outc…

Good luck to you and your welding business. Personally I'm getting to a point where I'm just "too old" (and grumpy) to start over, so I guess for me it's going to be a retirement to some LOCO that I can afford.

Re: I'm OK being left behind, thanks

#464

Post by kaffekaka »

mh- wrote: post #391
jrjeksjd8d wrote: post #244

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why do you care so much? If these are really revolutionary tools that vastly optimize work, why bother forcing people to "try new models and best practices"? If the benefit is there people will use it or get left behind, there's no sense having a mandate that people resentfully try the new tooling. Imagine you had a developer who writes Java using vim. It sounds insane but they are just as productive as everyone else…

> FWIW in the face of these kind of mandates I have been using tokens but ignoring the output. So it's costing my employer money and they have a warped metric of whether the tool is actually useful. What you're actually doing here, from my POV, is incentivizing your employer to use more invasive metrics when they tried to stay hands-off and mandate the absolute bare minimum of "uh, give it a shot and see if you think…

I think one side of the issues folks are having is that combined with the mandate to use these tools, there is also an expectation or assumption that the developers will instantly get X% more productive. Like, "you must use this tool and you will be twice as productive".

Where I work there as certainly been that kind of discussions, "we need to use AI for this, because no offense but you are simply not fast enough". And this from people who do not understand software development and has never worked with it. They have only read the online stuff about 20X speeds and FOMO. (And my workplace is generally quite laid back and reasonable. I am sure many other places are much more aggressively steered.)

Re: I'm OK being left behind, thanks

#465

Post by picafrost »

I am increasingly feeling okay with the idea of being left out. The worst parts of working professionally in a software development team have been amplified by LLMs. Ridiculously large PRs, strong opinions doubled down due to being LLM-"confirmed", bigger expectations coming from above, exceptionally unwarranted confidence in the change or approach the LLM has come up with.

I am dying inside when I make a comment and receive a response that has clearly been prompted toward my comment and possibly filtered in the voice of the responder if not copied and pasted directly. Particularly when it's wrong. And it often is wrong because the human using them doesn't know how to ask the right questions.

Fortunately, most of the fundamental technological infrastructure is well in place at this point (networking, operating systems, ...). Low skilled engineers vibe coding features for some fundamentally pointless SaaS is OK with me.

Re: I'm OK being left behind, thanks

#466

Post by skydhash »

mh- wrote: post #415
skydhash wrote: post #406

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is micromanagement. If the job are not being done, the best way is to investigate what current practices are blocking people from doing it (the answer is probably meetings and bad communication). The worst way is to present a tool as a silver bullet for tasks you’re not doing and not accountable for.

Where am I presenting the tool as a silver bullet? You seem to be confusing me with someone else in this thread, or making the mistake of turning this into a polarized conversation of "AI is a panacea" vs "AI is worthless". I engaged in the thread in good faith, and am transparent about what I'm doing and why. I also clarified that part of the job in my org is experimenting with these tools.

The complaint in the thread is that management is forcing AI tooling usage. If part of your job is to experiment with these tools, then like any experiment, the correct way is to share the findings with a report detailing the methodology and findings. But no one is doing that AFAIK. It’s all superlatives.

Re: I'm OK being left behind, thanks

#467

Post by stavros »

plagiarist wrote: post #453
stavros wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm definitely having a blast, but I agree with the author. You're not going to get left behind, the "getting left behind" rhetoric was just cryptocurrency pump-and-dumpers. It's fine to wait and not engage if you don't want to.

I'm not worried about being left behind technologically, but I am worried about being left behind after every company on the planet decides we need N years experience in AI to be employable.

I already have 30 years of experience in LLMs, if you believe my CV, so I'm not worried.

Re: I'm OK being left behind, thanks

#469

Post by bigstrat2003 »

another-dave wrote: post #110

On the otherhand, when Cloud Computing started to come in, I knew a bunch of sysadmins. Some were in the "it'll never take off" camp and no doubt they know it now, kicking and screaming. But the curious early adopters were the ones best positioned to be leading the charge on "cloud migration" when the business finally pulled the trigger. Similarly with mobile dev. As a Java dev at the time that Android came along, I…

> But the curious early adopters were the ones best positioned to be leading the charge on "cloud migration" when the business finally pulled the trigger.

lol no. There's nothing actually different about managing VMs in EC2 versus managing physical servers in a datacenter. It's all the same skills, and anyone who is competent in one can pick up the other with zero adjustment.

Re: I'm OK being left behind, thanks

#470

Post by tracker1 »

I remember working on a few early tools for VRML towards the end of the 90's... It was cool, but far from great... was remembered from the mention of VR in the article.

That said, my only regret with Bitcoin was deleting my early wallets when I realized the coins were only worth $.25 ... if I'd had any inkling what they'd be worth someday, I'd probably have just bought $1000 worth back then and zipped it up until closer to today. I'm truly curious how many bitcoins were similarly deleted from existence.

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