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Everyone in Seattle hates AI

jonready.com

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Re: Everyone in Seattle hates AI

#511

Post by cube00 »

brokencode wrote: post #427
decimalenough wrote: post #253

While everybody else is ranting about AI, I'll rant about something else: trip planning apps. There have been literally thousands of attempts at this and AFAICT precisely zero have ever gotten any traction. There are two intractable problems in this space. 1) A third party app simply cannot compete with Google Maps on coverage, accuracy and being up to date. Yes, there are APIs you can use to access this, but they're…

I use and pay for Wanderlog. Idk how their business is doing, but I love it as a user. They use an embedded Google Maps viewer for locations, so there is no problem for coverage.

> They use an embedded Google Maps viewer for locations

If they become popular they'll have to move to OSM, Google's steep charging for their Maps API at high usage that has brought companies to their knees is well known [1].

[1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35089776

Re: Everyone in Seattle hates AI

#512

Post by satisfice »

Negative? You mean realistic. You mean “refuse to tell lies.”

Just stop lying about AI. Thank you.

The author’s AI app looks like something that drains all the fun and challenge out of travel planning.

Re: Everyone in Seattle hates AI

#513

Post by BurningFrog »

torginus wrote: post #500
josephg wrote: post #421

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well yeah. And because when an expert looks at the code chatgpt produces, the flaws are more obvious. It programs with the skill of the median programmer on GitHub. For beginners and people who do cookie cutter work, this can be incredible because it writes the same or better code they could write, fast and for free. But for experts, the code it produces is consistently worse than what we can do. At best my pride dem…

In my experience (with ChatGPT 5.1 as of late) is that the AI follows a problem->solution internal logic and doesn't think and try to structure its code. If you ask for an endpoint to a CRUD API, it'll make one. If you ask for 5, it'll repeat the same code 5 times and modify it for the use case. A dev wouldn't do this, they would try to figure out the common parts of code, pull them out into helpers, and try to make…

Bad code is only really bad if it needs to be maintained.

If your AI reliably generates working code from a detailed prompt, the prompt is now the source that needs to be maintained. There is no important reason to even look at the generated code

Re: Everyone in Seattle hates AI

#514

Post by charles_f »

keeda wrote: post #338

As I've said before: AI mandates, like RTO mandates, are just another way to "quiet fire" people, or at least "quiet renegotiate" their employment. That said, AI resistance is real too. We see it on this forum. It's understandable because the hype is all about replacing people, which will naturally make them defensive, whereas the narrative should be about amplifying them. A well-intentioned AI mandate would either c…

> AI mandates, like RTO mandates, are just another way to "quiet fire" people

That's a recurring argument, and I don't believe it, especially in large tech companies. They have no problem doing multiple large non-quiet lay-offs, why would they need moustache-twirling level schemes to get people to quit.

I don't believe companies to be well intentioned, but the simplest explanation is often the best:

1. RTO are probably driven by people in power who either like to be in the office, believe being in the office is the most efficient way to work (be that it's true or not), or have financial stakes in having people occupy said offices.

2. "AI" mandate is probably driven by people in power who either do see value in AI, think it's the most efficient way to work (be that it's true or not), have FOMO on AI, or have financial stakes in having people use it.

Re: Everyone in Seattle hates AI

#515

Post by [deleted] »

rr808 wrote: post #205

There has always been a lot of Microsoft hate, but now its a whole new level. Windows now really sucks, My new laptop is all Linux for the first time ever. I dont see why this company is still so valuable. Most people only use a browser now and some ios apps, there is no need for Windows or Microsoft (and of course Azure is never anyone's first choice). Steam makes the gamers happy to leave too.

[deleted]

Re: Everyone in Seattle hates AI

#516

Post by ch_fr »

I have some trouble reconciling the conclusion of this article with everything else it described. How is "Clearly my coworker just wasn't believing hard enough in AI, and it harms everyone!" the conclusion the author comes to?

It might just be an ESL issue on my end, but I seriously feel some huge dissonance between the explanations of "how the tech was made the main KPI, used to justify layoffs and forced in a way that hinders productivity", and the conclusion that seems to say "the real issue with those people complaining is that they just don't believe in AI".

I don't understand this article, it seems to explain all the reasons people in Seattle might have grievances, and then completely dismisses those to adopt the usual "you're using it wrong".

Is this article just a way to advertise for Wanderfugl? Because this reads like the usual "Okay your grievances are fine and all, but consider the following: it allows me to make a SaaS really fast!" that I became accustomed to see in HN discussions.

Re: Everyone in Seattle hates AI

#517

Post by ch_fr »

droopybuns wrote: post #345
whoamiopa wrote: post #189

Very new ex-MSFT here. I couldn’t relate more with your friend. That’s exactly what happened. I left Microsoft about 5 weeks ago and it’s been really hard to detox from that culture. AI pushed down everywhere. Sometimes shitty-AI that needed to be proved at all cost because it should live up to the hype. I was in one of such AI-orgs and even there several teams felt the pressure from SLT and a culture drift to a dysf…

Hey man- hang in there. FWIW: I realized this year that there are whole cohorts of management people who have absolutely zero relationship with the words that they speak. Literal tabula rasas who convert their thoughts to new words with no attachment to past statements/goals. Put another way: Liars exist and operate all around you in the top tier of the FAANGS rn.

Reminded me of: https://ludic.mataroa.blog/blog/brainwash-an-executive-today...

Re: Everyone in Seattle hates AI

#518

Post by 3vidence »

CSMastermind wrote: post #223
pkasting wrote: post #40

Ex-Google here; there are many people both current and past-Google that feel the same way as the composite coworker in the linked post. I haven't escaped this mindset myself. I'm convinced there are a small number of places where LLMs make truly effective tools (see: generation of "must be plausible, need not be accurate" data, e.g. concept art or crowd animations in movies), a large number of places where LLMs make…

My friends at Google are some of the most negative about the potential of AI to improve software development. I was always surprised by this and assumed internally at Google would be one of the first places to adopt these.

Googler, opinion is my own.

Working on our mega huge code basis with lots of custom tooling and bleeding edge stuff hasn't been the best for for AI generated code compared to most companies.

I do think AI as a rubber ducky / research assistant type has been overall helpful as a SWE.

Re: Everyone in Seattle hates AI

#519

Post by gigel82 »

dwaltrip wrote: post #153
suprjami wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't see it that way. Tabs, spaces, curly brace placement, Vim, Emacs, VSCode, etc are largely aesthetic choices with some marginal unproven cognitive implications. I find people mostly prefer what they are used to, and if your preference was so superior then how could so many people build fantastic software using the method you don't like? AI isn't like that. AI is a bunch of people telling me this product can do…

You can vibe-code a throwaway UI for investigating some complex data in less than 30 minutes. The code quality doesn't matter, and it will make your life much easier. Rinse and repeat for many "one-off" tasks. It's not going away, you need to learn how to use it. shrugs shoulders

Except when your AI psychosis PM / manager sees your throwaway vibe-coded garbage and demands it gets shipped to customers.

It's infinitely worse when your PM / manager vibe-codes some disgusting garbage, sees that it kind of looks like a real thing that solves about half of the requirements (badly) and demands engineers ship that and "fix the few remaining bugs later".

Re: Everyone in Seattle hates AI

#520

Post by afavour »

mjr00 wrote: post #272
senordevnyc wrote: post #244

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’ve been an engineer for 20 years, for myself, small companies, and big tech, and now working for my own saas company. There are many valid critiques of AI, but “there’s not much there” isn’t one of them. To me, any software engineer who tries an LLM, shrugs and says “huh, that’s interesting” and then “gets back to work” is completely failing at their actual job, which is using technology to solve problems. Maybe AI…

> There are many valid critiques of AI, but “there’s not much there” isn’t one of them. "There's not much there" is a totally valid critique of a lot of the current AI ecosystem. How many startups are simple prompt wrappers on top of ChatGPT? How many AI features in products are just "click here to ask Rovo/Dingo/Kingo/CutesyAnthropomorphizedNameOfAI" text boxes that end up spitting out wrong information? There's cer…

IMO if the market is going to punish anyone it’s the people who, today, find that AI is able to do all their coding for them.

The skeptics are the ones that have tried AI coding agents and come away unimpressed because it can’t do what they do. If you’re proudly proclaiming that AI can replace your work then you’re telling on yourself.

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