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Appearing productive in the workplace

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Re: Appearing productive in the workplace

#541

Post by gcanyon »

watwut wrote: post #493
abvdasker wrote: post #309

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This paragraph hit home with me as well. I work at a large tech company that's a household name and the practice of using AI to pad out design documents has become totally out of control over the last 4 or 5 months. Writing documentation is arduous and a little painful, which as it turns out is a good thing as it incentivizes the writer to be as succinct as possible. Why the fuck should I -- along with five other eng…

What I find particularly irritating is that you can actually prompt the fcking AI to be short. > Writing documentation is arduous and a little painful, which as it turns out is a good thing as it incentivizes the writer to be as succinct as possible. It takes more effort to be brief, even for humans. Good documentation writers were always brief.

Simply saying "be concise" isn't enough. I often have Claude write first drafts for me (which, for the record, I review completely and rewrite as needed before publishing) and even when told to be concise, there are times when what comes out is unusably long and wordy.

Re: Appearing productive in the workplace

#542

Post by zkmon »

tovej wrote: post #464
zkmon wrote: post #405

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If profit is not the root goal, only hobbies exist, not work or any business. Quality is a means for profit, never the root goal. People pretend that quality and performance are the root goals, because they don't want say the fact that those two are the means for profit. Even for opensource, the quality and performance are desirable aspects only because success of that opensource is directly tied to it's usage in pro…

You have it backwards. Why is profit a goal? It's nolever a goal in and of itself, it can only ever be an instrumental goal. "With profits, we can achieve ". If profit is the main goal of all economic activity, then we are doomed to destroy humanity and the environment.

Profit is the main goal of all economic activity. Economy is an activity of making and moving money around, which is only possible if you make profit.

Re: Appearing productive in the workplace

#543

Post by mistersquid »

jorisw wrote: post #450

Having trouble understanding the final line: > Also, those that claimed this article is ironically a casualty of it’s own complaint are 100% right, Kudos. Why would the article be a casualty of its own complaint?

> > Also, those that claimed this article is ironically a casualty of it’s own complaint are 100% right, Kudos.

> Why would the article be a casualty of its own complaint?

The "Disclaimer" section was added after the initial publication according to the Wayback Machine.[0]

[0] https://web.archive.org/web/20260506162056/https://nooneshap...

Re: Appearing productive in the workplace

#544

Post by tim-projects »

I thought this was a good article because it directly addresses a lot of the paper shuffling jobs that modern big business has.

But it missed the opportunity to discuss how things need to change because of the disruption of AI, instead trying to find a way back to paper shuffling.

The writer could have explored ideas on how to manage quality using AI.

Re: Appearing productive in the workplace

#545

Post by buran77 »

stavros wrote: post #534
buran77 wrote: post #533

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The bash one-liner might be hyperbolic but with the advent of AI everything is artificially longer, stuffier, more complex and convoluted for no reason other than because the AI allows this increase in volume with little to no extra effort. It used to be the proverbial one-liner with zero documentation because that was the best ratio of effort to results. Now the effort is on the AI and the results look more impressi…

Sure, I agree, but now longer/stuffier things cost half as much as shorter things. In most cases, that cost isn't worth it.

The AI output probably does the job just as well, maybe cheaper. But I'm talking about appearances and the impression the work leaves. Eventually bosses and colleagues will stop seeing "output volume" as a signal of being productive. It won't look special anymore, it won't give anyone an edge. People who can use their brain to come up with solutions might be held in higher regard than "prompt experts".

Let's wait one generation. Right now the best results are from putting AI in the hands of capable experts. Will a person trained entirely with an AI crutch ever reach the same level? We'll see.

Re: Appearing productive in the workplace

#546

Post by drabiega »

dmacj wrote: post #462
wcfrobert wrote: post #42

> "Requirements documents that were once a page are now twelve. Status updates that were once three sentences are now bulleted summaries of bulleted summaries. Retrospective notes, post-incident reports, design memos, kickoff decks: every artifact that can be elongated is, by people who do not read what they produce, for readers who do not read what they receive." Great article. The "elongation" of workplace artifact…

> The "elongation" of workplace artifacts resonated with me on such deep level Well put. I generally skip AI-generated PR descriptions for this reason as they tend to miss the forest for the trees. Sometimes a large change can be explained by a short yet information-rich description ("migrate to use X instead of Y", "Implement F using pattern P") that only a human could and should write.

Hah, lately I've had one particular coworker demanding in code reviews that I provide more 'detailed' MR descriptions. (All of his are clearly AI generated.)

Re: Appearing productive in the workplace

#547

Post by [deleted] »

kakacik wrote: post #423
noduerme wrote: post #421

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Companies that don't fall under that rubric are established and have actual money on the line if their software shits the bed. Software that handles actual logistics and transactions can't be treated to lots of LLM updates without some serious problems arising. Startups and B2B ones especially have always been cheap, cut corners, screwed up and apologized later, and most importantly just created hype and fluff to get…

Most of the software engineering field ain't no startups, however distorted the most vocal representation on HN could be. Neither are they code sweat shops churing one quick templated eshop/company site after another (knew some people in that space, even 20 years ago 1 individual churned out easily 2-3 full sites in a week depending on complexity). Typical companies, this includes banks btw, see these llms as product…

[deleted]

Re: Appearing productive in the workplace

#548

Post by [deleted] »

Animats wrote: post #215

The OP has an amusing side point - LLMs have automated sucking up to management. There is a large market for that. His main point, though, is this: I have a colleague ... who spent two months earlier this year building a system that should have been designed by someone with formal training in data architecture. He used the tools well, by the standards by which use of the tools is currently measured. He produced a gre…

[deleted]

Re: Appearing productive in the workplace

#549

Post by npodbielski »

saghm wrote: post #470
npodbielski wrote: post #393

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Could not you just say to those few: 'you can't because I do not trust you'? You are the manager after all, your job is not to make them feel good but to make them work.

I don't think "some people on the team have privileges and others don't based on the manager's discretion" would be healthy in the long run either. Can you imagine interviewing for a team, asking about the PTO policy, and finding out that it varied like that? It would look pretty indistinguishable from "the people who that manager likes have special treatment" to me. You could hide it from prospective employees, but…

Yeah, I understand but on other hand you can't reward everyone with the same thing for different outcome. This is exactly what is happening with they pay, some people earns more, some less. People complain about it too. Do you think it is toxic too?

We people being people, and being manager when there is no outcome when everyone is happy, this is why I am not going to be manager. I just wanted to know honest opinion about how to solve it from the OP, or even if this is solvable.

Re: Appearing productive in the workplace

#550

Post by jcarrano »

lqet wrote: post #501

> The first is when novices in a field are able to produce work that resembles what their seniors produce [...]. > The second is when people generate artifacts in disciplines they were never trained in. There is a third shape. Experts who have become so reliant / accustomed to AI that it dilutes their previously sharp judgment and, importantly, taste . I am seeing more and more work produced by experts which seems st…

That's honestly a fear of mine, that I might lose the taste for simplicity.
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