Watching AI drive Microsoft employees insane • Hacker News Board

Re: Watching AI drive Microsoft employees insane

#541

Post by vrighter » Thu, May 22, 2025, 10:24 AM UTC

diggan wrote: post #169

yubblegum wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This field (SE - when I started out back in late 80s) was enjoyable. Now it has become toxic, from the interview process, to imitating "big tech" songs and dances by small fry companies, and now this. Is there any joy left in being a professional software developer?

> This field (SE - when I started out back in late 80s) was enjoyable. Now it has become toxic I feel the same way today, but I got started around 2012 professionally. I wonder how much of this is just our fading optimism after seeing how shit really works behind the scenes, and how much the industry itself is responsible for it. I know we're not the only two people feeling this way either, but it seems all of us hav…

I started coding at a young age, but entered the professional world in 2012, just like you. I feel the same. I just can't come to grips with the fact that the goal is not to write good software anymore, but to get something, anything out the door on which we can then sell by marketing it based on stuff it doesn't do yet (but it will, we promise!) so that we can make more money and fake making something "new" again (putting a textbox and a button, and hooking it up to an LLM api). Software is nowadays assumed to not work properly. And we're not allowed to fix it anymore!

Re: Watching AI drive Microsoft employees insane

#542

Post by vrighter » Thu, May 22, 2025, 10:35 AM UTC

raydev wrote: post #474

stickfigure wrote: post #267

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's pretty obviously a failed experiment. Why keep repeating it? Try again in another 3 months. The answer is probably that the Copilot team is using the rest of the engineering organization as testers. Great for the Copilot team, frustrating for everyone else.

> It's pretty obviously a failed experiment For it to be "failed" it would have to also be finished/completed. They are likely continuously making tweaks, this thing was just released.

"This thing has just released"

"It would have to be finished/completed"

Do you honestly not see a problem with those two statements in such close proximity? Is it finished or is it released? The former is supposed to be a prerequisite for the latter.

Re: Watching AI drive Microsoft employees insane

#543

Post by diggan » Thu, May 22, 2025, 11:21 AM UTC

simonw wrote: post #426

diggan wrote: post #211

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you're saying something is less secure because the users might suffer from "severe exhaustion", then I know that there aren't any proper arguments for migrating to it. Thanks for confirming I can continue using OTP without feeling like I might be missing something :)

Passkeys genuinely do protect against severe exhaustion attacks.

Yeah, but they genuinely also prevent you from moving away from companies in the process of enshittification, since the whole export/import thing seemingly hasn't been figured out or even less been deployed yet.

Besides, if you ignore security alarm-bells going off when exhausted, I'm not sure what solution can 100% protect you.

Re: Watching AI drive Microsoft employees insane

#544

Post by n144q » Thu, May 22, 2025, 11:38 AM UTC

square_usual wrote: post #421

daveguy wrote: post #368

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I hope he writes a personal essay about the experience after he leaves Microsoft. Not that he will leave anytime soon, but the first hand accounts of how they are talking about these systems internally are going to be even more entertaining than the wtf PRs.

This comment thread is incredible. It's like fanfiction of a real person. Of course this engineer I respect shares my opinion. Not only that, he's obviously going to quit because of this. And then he'll write a blog post I'll get to enjoy. Anyway, this is his public, stated opinion on this: https://github.com/dotnet/runtime/pull/115762#issuecomment-2...

Of course that is what he says publicly. Can you imagine him saying anything different on this already very heated PR comment section? Those would be quoted in a headline in a news article the next second.

Re: Watching AI drive Microsoft employees insane

#545

Post by whimsicalism » Thu, May 22, 2025, 11:38 AM UTC

xigency wrote: post #527

whimsicalism wrote: post #361

Earlier quoted context omitted.

reactions are fine but cluttering the PR with comments? bad form

I understand your point however no one forced Microsoft to buy GitHub and use it as a Trojan horse for A.I. And for that matter, they have all the power in the world to put gates around their repo's and the repo's comment threads.

they shouldn't have to put gates because third parties can provide valuable contributions, people should not brigade about unrelated politics things they're obsessed with.

your language 'trojan horse' suggests you're too emotionally invested in all of this

Re: Watching AI drive Microsoft employees insane

#546

Post by tremon » Thu, May 22, 2025, 1:42 PM UTC

vrighter wrote: post #542

raydev wrote: post #474

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's pretty obviously a failed experiment For it to be "failed" it would have to also be finished/completed. They are likely continuously making tweaks, this thing was just released.

"This thing has just released" "It would have to be finished/completed" Do you honestly not see a problem with those two statements in such close proximity? Is it finished or is it released? The former is supposed to be a prerequisite for the latter.

What bliss it must be, to never have encountered Microsoft software before.

Re: Watching AI drive Microsoft employees insane

#547

Post by vrighter » Thu, May 22, 2025, 1:56 PM UTC

tremon wrote: post #546

vrighter wrote: post #542

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"This thing has just released" "It would have to be finished/completed" Do you honestly not see a problem with those two statements in such close proximity? Is it finished or is it released? The former is supposed to be a prerequisite for the latter.

What bliss it must be, to never have encountered Microsoft software before.

oh, how I wish you were right... I had to look deep inside some microsoft software, and I think it actually shortened my lifespan

Re: Watching AI drive Microsoft employees insane

#548

Post by raydev » Thu, May 22, 2025, 3:38 PM UTC

vrighter wrote: post #542

raydev wrote: post #474

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's pretty obviously a failed experiment For it to be "failed" it would have to also be finished/completed. They are likely continuously making tweaks, this thing was just released.

"This thing has just released" "It would have to be finished/completed" Do you honestly not see a problem with those two statements in such close proximity? Is it finished or is it released? The former is supposed to be a prerequisite for the latter.

It's unfinished and it's in the public's hands. I don't see these as opposing ideas.

We can debate whether they should have called this an experiment or an alpha or beta or whatever, but that's a different discussion.

The fact that people are using it currently does not make it a failure. When MS shuts it down, or Copilot is wildly unprofitable for multiple quarters, team behind it quits, etc, etc, then we can determine whether it has failed or not.

But if they continue to have paying customers and users are finding some benefits over not having Copilot, and MS continues to improve it (doesn't let it rot), then you'd have to provide some evidence of its failure that isn't "look at Copilot being stupid sometimes". Especially when stupidity is expected of it.

Re: Watching AI drive Microsoft employees insane

#549

Post by xigency » Thu, May 22, 2025, 4:11 PM UTC

whimsicalism wrote: post #545

xigency wrote: post #527

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I understand your point however no one forced Microsoft to buy GitHub and use it as a Trojan horse for A.I. And for that matter, they have all the power in the world to put gates around their repo's and the repo's comment threads.

they shouldn't have to put gates because third parties can provide valuable contributions, people should not brigade about unrelated politics things they're obsessed with. your language 'trojan horse' suggests you're too emotionally invested in all of this

Sure but only because I'm unemployed, in debt, and behind on child support payments.

Re: Watching AI drive Microsoft employees insane

#550

Post by int_19h » Thu, May 22, 2025, 4:46 PM UTC

the-lazy-guy wrote: post #444

sensanaty wrote: post #377

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Didn't M$ just fire like 7000 people, many of which were involved in big important M$ projects? The CPython guys, for example.

Hot take: CPython is not an important project for Microsoft, and it is not lead by them. The faster CPython project had questionable acheivement on top of that. Half of Microsoft (especially server-side) still runs on dotnet. And there are no real contributors outside of microsoft. So it is a vital project.

They also laid off one of the veteran TypeScript developers. TypeScript is definitely an important project for Microsoft, and a lot of code there is written in it.