And they are generating the longer version with AI, that you are then using AI to summarize. This is not adding value for anyone except people whose function is to look busy, and people trying to avoid their busy work.
Yes, I don't find AI generated documents are useful, they just add a ton of fluff. but it's removable fluff at least was my point.
Absolutely, and exactly my point. This boils down to wasteful make-work again.
> "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…
it was only after I had to manage others that I realized the logic for a lot of these simplistic metrics and rules. they are in place to hold accountable the worst performers. a simple example is when i introduced flexible work hours. it was fine with most people, but there are always a few members that abuse the system. they stretch it to the very limit to what can be interpreted as "flexible". as a manager it posed…
Any system is going to have a free rider problem. I genuinely believe that if we stopped trying to force a large chunk of the population to look like they're busy when they have zero intrinsic desire to do anything well and will continually cut corners wherever they can, we'd reach a productivity golden age where there would be enough surplus for them to fuck off and be lazy out of the critical path. The stumbling block here is always the perception of unfairness, and it's a big one, but for anyone that really cares about their work or its quality, do you really want to always have to work with people who will only do the bare minimum to survive? Hopefully you aren't cold enough to want them to starve, but should they be forced to participate and drag everyone else down just to prove some kind of innate moral ethic? I wish that we as a society could approach this pragmatically instead of moralizing under a veneer of pragmatism.
I watched a video of some (unemployed) programmer lamenting over the current job situation market. He had been coding for a good while, but had recently been laid off. The vid was mainly concerning the searching and interview process, but it also did highlight something I find somewhat true and important: Right now we're in a gold rush. Companies, that be established ones or startups, are in a frenzy to transform or…
Conway's Law still holds true. Software applications will resemble the communication structure of the companies that build them. If the companies are comprised of 90% overly verbose bullshit, so too will be the fragile slop monstrosities that they build.
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…
It's a pretty valid option, to be fair - but the downside is stagnating technically, and also emotionally. If you're that checked out at work, it's going to be hard to turn yourself back on again at another job.
This is not an AI problem this is a “move fast and break things” philosophical problem that has always been lurking in the low-risk, high-reward SaaS industry. It’s just been fed steroids.
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…
Counter-question: if quite a lot of things have also been like this before to a lesser degree, should we not oppose efforts to make everything like this to a greater degree ?
> 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…
I agree completely with your sentiment. The word I use to describe it is “quality”! Most people don’t produce quality work or take pride in it, even beyond the tech industry. I believe the tool of AI is exasperating an underlying problem
I posted a comment very similar in spirit - we’ve adopted “perfect is the enemy of good” as the operative maxim instead of maximizing accountability and now we may need to flip as AI does that first part quickly enough.
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 and this is why small startups can often beat them .
I really used to think this. Those old incumbents, I used to think. Such slow old dinosaurs! A crack team of just me and a few friends could eat their lunch for sure, and soon they'll be gone.
And yet, here we are.
Of course, some things get disrupted, sometimes. But I'd hardly say all the bloat has been competed out, would you?
AI accelerated two groups of folks. Beginners/naive and experts. This article only talks about beginners digging a hole for themselves. Doesn't mention the speedup that experts get. I'm my post 12 years as a corporate trainer, I've worked with lots of companies, teaching how to code, collaborate, and what makes code good. I've also used AI a lot and can use it to quickly write code better than 95% of software enginee…
Did you read the article? Ctrl+F "experts". It's right there in paragraph 6, complete with a citation from a NBER study (directly contradicting your anecdotal evidence). You don't agree with the author's position, that's fine. But this is a weird lie.
I agree completely with your sentiment. The word I use to describe it is “quality”! Most people don’t produce quality work or take pride in it, even beyond the tech industry. I believe the tool of AI is exasperating an underlying problem
I find LLMs make me doubt my own ability to produce quality now. I used to jump in and just write code so eagerly, letting it get messy but discovering the shape of the problem in the process. But AI can produce beautiful, complete, syntactically perfect code on the first pass that makes my code look juvenile. I mean, it might be wrong for other reasons, but it makes me feel like I'm programming with crayons next to…
I find that I have this problem too. I hate to admit it, but I feel as though it’s the natural progression of the “tab pause” problem, where after writing a stem you wait to see what the autocomplete will say, even though you know exactly what you want to type. It’s like even using AI for confirmation rewires how you think anyway.