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

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

#531

Post by joquarky »

demorro wrote: post #409
bandrami wrote: post #401

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also I see so much talk about "boilerplate" I can't help but wonder if people just never had decent text editors, or never bothered to customize them at all?

Aye, I know. Don't get me wrong, I knew that the majority of devs have always been worse than useless, but it's been disconcerting to see quite how much value folk are getting out of agents for problems that have been solved for decades. Arguably this solution is "better" because you don't even really need to understand that you have specific problems to have the agent solve them for you, but I fail to see the point…

> the majority of devs have always been worse than useless

I disagree with "always".

This is only the recent wave of brogrammers who care nothing about the quality of the tech and are only in this industry for the gold rush.

They aren't inherently technically minded, they just know how to schmooze their way around and convince decision makers to follow capricious trends over solid practices.

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

#532

Post by sdf2df »

mirsadm wrote: post #310
throwaw12 wrote: post #154

People who are saying they're not seeing productivity boost, can you please share where is it failing? Because, I am terrified by the output I am getting while working on huge legacy codebases, it works. I described one of my workflow changes here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47271168 but in general compared to old way of working I am saving half of the steps consistently, whether its researching the codebas…

I have an app which is fairly popular. This release cycle I used Claude Code and codex to implement all the changes / features. It definitely let me move much quicker than before. However now that it's in the beta stage the amount of issues and bugs is insane. I reviewed a lot of the code that went in as well. I suspect the bug fixing stage is going to take longer than the initial implementation. There are so many is…

"There are so many issues and my mental model of the codebase has severely degraded."

Not only that, the less coding you do in general? Guess what, fixing issues that in the past wouldve been a doddle (muscle memory) become less harder due to atrophy.

Swear most people dont think straight and cant see the obvious.

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

#533

Post by sdf2df »

bobbane wrote: post #505
bubblegumcrisis wrote: post #421

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How did you decide to work at Meta? I'll be honest, just the idea of working there makes me feel like vomiting. For me, they are bizarrely evil. They're not evil like, "we're going to destroy our competition through anti competitive practices," (which they do), but "let's destroy a whole generation of minds." And now with the glasses. I mean, jeeze. Can there be a stronger signal of not caring for others? It's as if…

I told my son I would disown him if he worked for Facebook, for the reasons stated above. Then he took a contracting gig for Meta. His rationalization was that the project was an ill-specified prototype that would never see the light of day - if they wanted to throw money at him for stuff like that, he would accept it. That gig is finished, and he's now thoroughly disillusioned with working for big tech.

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

#534

Post by joquarky »

liuliu wrote: post #27
tl2do wrote: post #20

From my experience as a software engineer, doubling my productivity hasn’t reduced my workload. My output per hour has gone up, but expectations and requirements have gone up just as fast. Software development is effectively endless work, and AI has mostly compressed timelines rather than reduced total demand.

It is not going to reduce your workload. It is going to remove one of your co-workers.

Another way to look at it: the gains that AI provides do not go to the worker, they go to the shareholder.

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

#535

Post by sdf2df »

jpollock wrote: post #244
throwaw12 wrote: post #154

People who are saying they're not seeing productivity boost, can you please share where is it failing? Because, I am terrified by the output I am getting while working on huge legacy codebases, it works. I described one of my workflow changes here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47271168 but in general compared to old way of working I am saving half of the steps consistently, whether its researching the codebas…

The last time I tried AI, I tested it with a stopwatch. The group used feature flags... if (a) { // new code } else { // old code } void testOff() { disableFlag(a); // test it still works } void testOn() { enableFlag(a); // test it still works } However, as with any cleanup, it doesn't happen. We have thousands of these things lying around taking up space. I thought "I can give this to the AI, it won't get bored or c…

[dead]

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

#536

Post by eucyclos »

tasuki wrote: post #518
eucyclos wrote: post #387

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> Would the above explanation be better? No idea. I certainly didn't get it. Goal tracker is one thing, ad blocker is another thing. Why would I want to combine them? And why would I want to see any ads at all? Perhaps I'm just not the target audience...

Maybe not, but you might want to see ads because 1) they fund a huge part of the free internet so you would at least want other people to see them and 2) if they were targeted not at what you're most likely to buy today but at what would most help you achieve goals you'r struggling with, they'd be a constant source of useful information and motivation as you go about your day. Aligning incentives between you and advertisers turns ads from friction to tailwind, and advertisers already want to align with what incentivises you if the alternative is having their ads blocked.

That second point is the part that seems obvious to me but I have a hard time communicating.

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

#537

Post by matheusmoreira »

throwaw12 wrote: post #154

People who are saying they're not seeing productivity boost, can you please share where is it failing? Because, I am terrified by the output I am getting while working on huge legacy codebases, it works. I described one of my workflow changes here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47271168 but in general compared to old way of working I am saving half of the steps consistently, whether its researching the codebas…

Terrifying doesn't quite say it. The situation we're in is either we achieve a post-scarcity society or we'll all die.

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

#538

Post by joquarky »

shimman wrote: post #29
piyh wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's what they're telling us

You should look into the concepts of skepticism, materialism, and cynicism. Maybe don't trust the leadership of where you work, the leadership that sees you as a number and not a human.

The Gervais Principle entirely rewrote how I view workplaces. In fact, the model is fitting even more accurately as society grows more fractious.

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

#539

Post by joquarky »

thewhitetulip wrote: post #324
citrin_ru wrote: post #242

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Shift from quality to velocity started not yesterday but AI only accelerated this shift. Majority of comments here tell how fast Claude can generate code, not how good the result is. Electron is the prefect fit for move fast mindset. It is likely that Claude developers don’t see electron as problem at all.

I understand why they used Electron. But since AI is so amazing they should be using Claude to generate super optimized native software! They do claim that Claude is better than humans and AI is replacing programmers any day now. So why aren't they using their own software to generate a linux optimized package for linux, a Swift software for MacOS and whatever windows uses. That would be the best ad for AI. See, we u…

GenAI currently has substantially more training from web tech than native.

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

#540

Post by tomhow »

izacus wrote: post #525
baxtr wrote: post #481

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You need to be careful with these things. Such exaggerated narratives are the reason people are afraid. during the Industrial Revolution many artisan and skilled trades lost their livelihoods. And yet, while many people did suffer serious short-term hardship and wage collapse, most did not simply remain in lifelong poverty, because over time industrialization created new types of employment and average wages eventual…

[flagged]

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