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The ‘white-collar bloodbath’ is all part of the AI hype machine

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Re: The ‘white-collar bloodbath’ is all part of the AI hype machine

#491

Post by hooverd »

ivape wrote: post #466
nradov wrote: post #464

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's silly. You still need a way to track and prioritize tasks even if you use voice input. Jira may be replaced with something better, built around an LLM from the ground up. But the basic project management requirements will never go away.

Yes, that's quite easy. I say "Hey reorganize the tasks like-so, prioritize this, like so", and if I really need to, I can go ahead and hook up some function calls but I suspect this will be unnecessary with a few more LLM iterations (if even that). You can keep running from how powerful these LLMs are, but I'll just sit and wait for the business/startup apocalypse (which is coming). Jira will not be replaced by some…

What sort of assurances can I get from that weekend project? I think we're going to build even more obscene towers of complexity as nobody knows how anything works anymore, because they choose not to.

Re: The ‘white-collar bloodbath’ is all part of the AI hype machine

#492

Post by godelski »

leflambeur wrote: post #477
godelski wrote: post #472

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the tune is "be leaner". Seems like they're happy to start cutting limbs to lose weight. It's hard to keep cutting fat if you've been aggressively cutting fat for so long. If the last CEO did their job there shouldn't be much fat left

yet this will continue until it grounds to a halt. It's amazing and cringy the level of parroting performed by executives. Independent thought is very rare amongst business "leaders".

Let's make the laptops thinner. This way we can clean the oil off of the keyboard, putting it on the screen.

At this point I'm not sure it's lack of independent thought so much as lack of thought. I'm even beginning to question if people even use the products they work on. Shouldn't there be more pressure from engineers at this point? Is it yes men from top to bottom? Even CEOs seem to be yes men in response to share holders but that's like being a yes man to the wind.

When I bring this stuff up I'm called negative, a perfectionist, or told I'm out of touch with customers and or understand "value". Idk, maybe they're right. But I'm an engineer. My job is to find problems and fix them. I'm not negative, I'm trying to make the product better. And they're right, I don't understand value. I'm an engineer, it's not my job to make up a number about how valuable some bug fix is or isn't. What is this, "Whose Line Is It Anyways?" If you want made up dollar values go ask the business monkeys, I'm a code monkey

Re: The ‘white-collar bloodbath’ is all part of the AI hype machine

#493

Post by californical »

financltravsty wrote: post #439
esperent wrote: post #424

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's cause there are still bottlenecks How do you know this? What are the bottlenecks?

[flagged]

I feel like one of us must be in a bit of our own bubble.

The company that I work for is currently innovating very fast (not LLM related), creating so much value for other companies that they have never gotten from any other business.. I know this because when they switch to our company, they tell us how much better our software product is compared to anything they've ever used. It has tons of features that no other company has. That's all I can say without doxxing too much.

I feel like it's unimaginative to say:

> What more tech is there to sell besides LLM integrations?

I have like 7 startup ideas written down in my notes app for software products that I wish I had in my life, but don't have time to work on, and can't find anything that exists for it. There is so much left to create

Re: The ‘white-collar bloodbath’ is all part of the AI hype machine

#494

Post by topspin »

ImaCake wrote: post #484
topspin wrote: post #475

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"shouldn't it be painfully obvious in companies' output?" No. The bottleneck isn't intellectual productivity. The bottleneck is a legion of other things; regulation, IP law, marketing, etc. The executive email writers and meeting attenders have a swarm of business considerations ricocheting around in their heads in eternal battle with each other. It takes a lot of supposedly brilliant thinking to safely monetize all…

Maybe this means that LLMs are ultimately good for small buisness. If large buisness is constrained by being large and LLMs are equally accesible to 5 people or 100 then surely what we will see is increased productivity in small companies?

My direct experience has been that even very small tech businesses contend with IP issues as well. And they don't have the means to either risk or deliberately instigate a fight.

Re: The ‘white-collar bloodbath’ is all part of the AI hype machine

#495

Post by 0xpgm »

dlivingston wrote: post #170
PeterStuer wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Hiring someone gave my VP more headcount and therefore more clout" Which is the sole reason automation will not make most people obsolete until the VP level themselves are automated.

No, not if the metric by which VPs get clout changes.

It's about to change to doing more with less headcount and higher AI spend

Re: The ‘white-collar bloodbath’ is all part of the AI hype machine

#496

Post by nothercastle »

digitcatphd wrote: post #474
simonsarris wrote: post #465

I think the real white collar bloodbath is that the end of ZIRP was the end of infinite software job postings, and the start of layoffs. I think its easy to now point to AI, but it seems like a canard for the huge thing that already happened. just look at this: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/?g=1JmOr In terms of magnitude the effect of this is just enormous and still being felt, and never recovered to pre-2020 lev…

As of now yes. But we are still in day 0.1 of GenAI. Do you think this will be the case when o3 models are 10x better and 100x cheaper? There will be a turning point but it’s not happened yet.

I think they will be 10-100x cheaper id be really surprised if we even doubled the quality though

Re: The ‘white-collar bloodbath’ is all part of the AI hype machine

#497

Post by 0x5f3759df-i »

bawana wrote: post #175

When are we going to get AI CEOs as a service?

I asked ChatGPT to be a CEO and decide if everyone should work in office 5 days a week:

“ Final Thought (as a CEO):

I wouldn’t force a full return unless data showed a clear business case. Culture, performance, and employee sentiment would all guide the decision. I’d rather lead with transparency, flexibility, and trust than mandates that could backfire.

Would you like a sample policy memo I’d send to employees in this scenario?”

A better, more reasonable CEO than the one I have. So I’m looking forward to AI taking that white collar job especially.

Re: The ‘white-collar bloodbath’ is all part of the AI hype machine

#498

Post by SteveNuts »

topspin wrote: post #475
tdeck wrote: post #416

Maybe someone can help me wrap my head around this in a different way, because here's how I see it. If these tools are really making people so productive, shouldn't it be painfully obvious in companies' output? For example, if these AI coding tools were an amazing productivity boost in the end, we'd expect to see software companies shipping features and fixes faster than ever before. There would be a huge burst in in…

"shouldn't it be painfully obvious in companies' output?" No. The bottleneck isn't intellectual productivity. The bottleneck is a legion of other things; regulation, IP law, marketing, etc. The executive email writers and meeting attenders have a swarm of business considerations ricocheting around in their heads in eternal battle with each other. It takes a lot of supposedly brilliant thinking to safely monetize all…

>A little further on and it'll be writers, actors, etc.

The tech is going to have to be absolutely flawless, otherwise the uncanny-valley nature of AI "actors" in a movie will be as annoying as when the audio and video aren't perfectly synced in a stream. At least that's how I see it..

Re: The ‘white-collar bloodbath’ is all part of the AI hype machine

#499

Post by 0xpgm »

mechagodzilla wrote: post #210
CKMo wrote: post #185

There's definitely a big problem with entry-level jobs being replaced by AI. Why hire an intern or a recent college-grad when they lack both the expertise and experience to do what an AI could probably do? Sure, the AI might require handholding and prompting too, but the AI is either cheaper or actually "smarter" than the young person. In many cases, it's both. I work with some people who I believe have the capacity…

Interns and new grads have always been a net-negative productivity-wise in my experience, it's just that eventually (after a small number of months/years) they turn into extremely productive more-senior employees. And interns and new grads can use AI too. This feels like asking "Why hire junior programmers now that we have compilers? We don't need people to write boring assembly anymore." If AI was genuinely a big pr…

Isn't that every new employee? The first few months you are not expected to be firing on all cylinders as you catch up and adjust to company norms

An intern is much more valuable than AI in the sense that everyone makes micro decisions that contribute to the business. An Intern can remember what they heard in a meeting a month ago or some important water-cooler conversation and incorporate that in their work. AI cannot do that

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