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Appearing productive in the workplace

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Re: Appearing productive in the workplace

#551

Post by mattmanser »

jdw64 wrote: post #18
switchbak wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Please explain what you would have preferred instead, I'm failing to understand your criticism here.

What I see in this article is a kind of structural isomorphism: it sincerely criticizes AI slop while reproducing the same failure mode it is criticizing. Intentional rhetorical repetition is not necessarily bad. I repeat myself too when I want to make a point stronger. The problem is the context. This is an article that sincerely criticizes the inflation of workplace artifacts. In that context, repetition and expans…

I don't really agree. The author cites studies. Some of the problems they talk about they don't need proof as they're obvious, like people writing huge documents where previously they'd create a paragraph.

Re: Appearing productive in the workplace

#552

Post by jappgar »

pmg101 wrote: post #75
funimpoded wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I increasingly see “AI” as a sort of virus tuned to target management, specifically. Its output is catnip to them, and it’s going to be unavoidable for those who want to look good to superiors and peers (i.e. the #1 priority for managers) even as it adds no actual value whatsoever to what they do. People under them, too, will have to start burning tokens on bullshit to satisfactorily perform competence and “doing wor…

I agree with everything you've said, but don't you think quite a lot of things have also been like this before, just to a lesser degree? I've often had the sense that most of what is done inside companies is a kind of performance of work rather than work itself. Mostly all a big status game between various different factions. All actual value provided by just a few engineers here and there who are able to shut out th…

Yes but now it gives slackers a way to imitate and inundate the builders.

Re: Appearing productive in the workplace

#553

Post by watwut »

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…

> The work itself is always completely immune to any rational criticism, as it checks all the boxes: extensive documentation, scalable, high test coverage, perfect code style, and for texts perfect grammar, non-offensive, seemingly objective. But, for lack of a better word, it simply lacks taste.

"It is overly engineed" is a rational criticism. Likewise, "it is overly verbose, it could have been shorter" and "this could have been a one-liner" are rational criticisms.

Re: Appearing productive in the workplace

#555

Post by franktankbank »

smileysteve wrote: post #117
bonesss wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m an LLM enjoyer who also thinks that ‘er ‘jerbs are safe and, taken to their logical conclusion, most LLM-stroking online around coding reduces to an argument that we should be speaking Haskell to LLMs and also in specs and documentation (just kidding, OCaml is prettier). But also, I do a little business. You’ve hit the real issue, IT management is D-tier and lacks self awareness. “Agile” is effed up as a rule, wh…

This is definitely ¾ of what you pay a mechanic to do; 1 publisher writes a maintenance manual for a car; mechanics all around the globe can use that to work on that specific car. It's the mechanics that don't reference Google or the Haynes manual that are more likely to get it incorrect. As a kicker, mechanics also have a pricing book for the task, they know how many hours a task will take on a certain car (rounded…

> mechanics also have a pricing book for the task, they know how many hours a task will take on a certain car

I do want to point out that this is used to suppress mechanic salary. Certain jobs are absolutely fucked how its time calibrated. Doesn't matter to business owner they can charge $$$ how they want.

Re: Appearing productive in the workplace

#556

Post by bee_rider »

dr_kiszonka wrote: post #176
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…

I work under the assumption that the primary audience of everything I write at work is an AI. Managers will take what I send and have it summarized and evaluated by some chatbot or agent. (Of course, I cannot send them the summary myself.) So like ATS checkers for resumes, I find myself needing an AI checker for my text. Ultimately, we will have AI write everything for another AI to parse, which will be a massive was…

This is the focus of my new startup, which uses a single-layer model to transform bullet points into bullet points. Please invest in IdentityMatrixLLM, LLC, etc.

Re: Appearing productive in the workplace

#557

Post by j_w »

Swizec wrote: post #96
j_w wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, this is seemingly the only effective proxy for "write with some amount of depth." If the word count gets BS'd then it will be obvious when reading the output.

> Yeah, this is seemingly the only effective proxy for "write with some amount of depth." If the word count gets BS'd then it will be obvious when reading the output. My high school professors had a really good solution to this: Minimum word lengths but you have to write the essay in class by hand. You have 2 periods. Some of us still write a lot but having limited time and space (4 pages) really put a hard limit wit…

I spent 2 years (coincidentally the same teacher for two years) in high school where once a week the only thing done that period was to write an essay (by hand) on some topic/prompt given immediately before beginning.

The grading was thorough and harsh. In college I was never graded harder on writing. My writing and comprehension abilities improved dramatically over that period of time.

Re: Appearing productive in the workplace

#558

Post by thfuran »

whazor wrote: post #536
Octoth0rpe wrote: post #513

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> An over-engineered solution (complete with CLI, storage backend, documentation, unit tests) for a trivial problem which that person would've solved by an elegant bash one-liner only 3 years ago. Importantly, I think AI companies are motivated towards the overengineered solutions as they increase the buyer's token spend. I'm not sure how we can create incentives that optimize for finding the 'right' solution, which…

I think the model space is too competitive. People will switch if another model is significantly better.

There are only a few frontier models, and aren’t they all operating under the same incentives?

Re: Appearing productive in the workplace

#559

Post by franktankbank »

spaniard89277 wrote: post #204
towers wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The forcing of competent engineers to vibe code is something I’ll never understand. Also, I’ve heard rewriting people’s vibe coded efforts being a substantial issue, everything that engineers do nowadays seems to be code review.

Guys just go and ride it. It's their money. They decided to do this. They think you guys are stupid. Suck. Them. Dry. Or say goodbay, which is what I did on my previous role when the BS started to get obvious. Now I do LLM-assisted coding on my own terms. I decide what to do, review output and push back agains overengineered BS. But I'm a lucky one, as far as I can see. --- NO-ONE is going to be able to understand th…

You will lose every time. The bar is being lowered to the ground so far that any human can do better, guess where thats cheap as fuck?

Tech in America can't implode soon enough.

Re: Appearing productive in the workplace

#560

Post by bluGill »

vasco wrote: post #379
kccqzy wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah and for much of the HN crowd, we aspire to have better tastes than the average. So if the supervised learning uses average human trainers it will most likely be seen as having poor taste for much of HN.

Speak for yourself my taste is average and I aspire for it to remain so.

I aspire to improve the average. Which I can do either by being much better than average, or by improving everyone else just a little.
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