Im your CEO. I see you and the rest of your peers have doubled your productivity in the last 2 months because of claude. Good job! Now since we don’t really need to go that faster, ill fire half of you so I and my investors friends can make more profit.
Now of course, you may think you are such a good engineer that companies will kill for you… perhaps that’s true now, but its not true for 90% of the engineers out there. And as the pool of engineers gets reduced, the chances of you being not as good as you thought go up. So the real question is: can you (we all) still make a good living by not using llms. You know support each other and fuck the higher ups? No, we cant. Wwe are full of ourselves, full of elitism (this is HN). We are rational folks, we believe in numbers, in data; we know what we deserve. fuck the rest. The ones who win are the higher ups, of course, not us.
I understand and share your concerns but (without thinking I'm such a good engineer that companies will kill for me), I just don't share your conclusion.
To me, it's pretty simple. I have things to do. This makes it easier for me to do those things. Sometimes that means I can do more things, and sometimes it means I can spend less time on my work, and often both.
I have no idea what the future will hold. But to me, it would be very odd to avoid using extremely useful tools for my current work, because of that uncertainty about the future.
That’s fine. Some people cannot (don’t want to) think about the more profound consequences of their actions. No one likes to stop for 10min and think deep about what they are actually doing. The easiest path is always to stay in “robot mode”: my boss pays me $ for my job… therefore I need to satisfy that contract. No time to think”
No, see, this is the disconnect. Whatever happens with this in the future is not due to "the more profound consequences of [my] actions". Whether I choose to take advantage of these useful tools, or not, has absolutely no bearing on the hypothetical future consequences you're suggesting may come to pass.
If you're proposing an organized boycott, I would certainly entertain that proposal. But for me, the bar would be high for both certainty that the hypothetical consequences are likely and bad and that the boycott would have a chance of being effective.
At this particular moment, I'm pretty skeptical on both counts. And I'm flatly against the kind of vibes and guilt tripping driven "boycotts" that you're attempting here.
(And I'm way more bullish on the normal legislative and regulatory processes. I think organized boycotts are something to think about if those processes fail.)
In reality, I think it's more likely that the lay-offs will be when the marginal rate of growth slows down. Once executives see that growth doesn't change much when hiring, they stop hiring, and once they see that growth doesn't decrease much when firing, they start firing.
There's still an opportunity for engineers to eat their bosses lunch and just start their own company. It's never been easier to start a lower cost competitor.
Employment isn't a social law of nature: it's a transaction of money for "units of work", just like the business might have with other vendors. Governments should be making it easier to become a vendor.
It seems like a lot of developers have philosophical disagreements with the direction of AI combined with fear of change and fear that AI makes them less competitive in the job market. I see people regularly boycotting or rejecting AI for a variation of these reasons, and it feels a lot like self-sabotage.
My biggest challenge is to look productive while still having some time and focus left to be a good expert. After all - we are just code reviewers now, and you are a no good reviewer if you never get any shovel time yourself.
The juniors are eliminated and the seniors indulge in cognitive surrender because it feels good.
Some of us still haven't figured out how to hold it right. So on average it doesn't make anything easier. Sometimes it works, and sometimes it just fails. Net effort change for me is about a wash. I know this is different from most peoples' experience, and I don't know I suck at using it. But I'm not generally inclined to use it much as a result.
Here’s a thought: consider the potentially analogous case of performance-enhancing drugs for athletes. The drugs unambiguously make them better at their jobs, but the drugs have severe long-term health costs and wreak havoc on the fairness of the playing field. It’s easy to see why an athlete might choose not to use them, even when others are.
Of course, those negative factors alone are not enough to dissuade people en masse who want to get a leg up on their competitors, so the use of performance-enhancing drugs must be further restricted by institutional bans.
There are rules against using performance enhancing drugs in competitive sports, because ultimately the goal of the sport is entertainment, and the entertainment value increases with a rule based even playing field.
Business is not like this, because the value of what a business does is in its actual output, not in its entertainment value for spectators.
Of course there are other rules (legislative and regulatory) that apply, for other good reasons. But their goal is not to create an entertaining competitive environment, but rather to control externalities of what companies do.
I favor AI regulation, but I also don't think treating it like a performance enhancing drug would be a smart way to regulate it. Higher business productivity is useful to society in a way that breaking home run records is not.
Oh right. Along those lines sometimes I do long hand multiplication or division instead of using a calculator. I think it's a valuable skill. If I don't do it, I'll probably forget how.
Yep! But if I were doing my job as an accountant, I would not spend time doing any of that work using long hand division, I would use a spreadsheet. To me, it's a professionalism thing. If I'm doing a job, I should use the best tool (for me) for that job. (edit: I'm absolutely not suggesting that you are unprofessional! It sounds like AI tools are not the best tool for the job, for you. But they are for me, at the moment.) If I'm doing a hobby or personal development in general, then I can use whatever tools I want for that.
It's interesting though, for a long time I said that if I were going to do a personal programming project I was excited about, I would write all the code by hand, because I do really miss doing that, and I also worry about forgetting how to. But now I'm not so sure. I find my daydreaming about personal projects to be a lot more focused on the outcome than the process, lately. More like "wow, I could do so much in an hour or two a day now! think of the possibilities!" than an excitement about writing code and creating pleasant abstractions.
If it really does make your job easier that's great for you, but if it isn't making you more profitable then the company as a whole is wasting money and some people will have to go until your job is about as stressful as before.
I think if companies feel that AI usage turns out to be wasting money, with negative ROI, then certainly nobody has anything to worry about here! Companies will definitely turn off this spigot the moment they think it's a net negative to their bottom line.
The revealed preference is very far in the opposite direction at the moment.
Serious question. I think the reason that there's such a disconnect among AI-for-work users about whether it's a panacea or bullshit accelerator is that different software developers have massively different duties and conceptions about what their job is or should be.
Im your CEO. I see you and the rest of your peers have doubled your productivity in the last 2 months because of claude. Good job! Now since we don’t really need to go that faster, ill fire half of you so I and my investors friends can make more profit.
Now of course, you may think you are such a good engineer that companies will kill for you… perhaps that’s true now, but its not true for 90% of the engineers out there. And as the pool of engineers gets reduced, the chances of you being not as good as you thought go up. So the real question is: can you (we all) still make a good living by not using llms. You know support each other and fuck the higher ups? No, we cant. Wwe are full of ourselves, full of elitism (this is HN). We are rational folks, we believe in numbers, in data; we know what we deserve. fuck the rest. The ones who win are the higher ups, of course, not us.
I understand and share your concerns but (without thinking I'm such a good engineer that companies will kill for me), I just don't share your conclusion.
To me, it's pretty simple. I have things to do. This makes it easier for me to do those things. Sometimes that means I can do more things, and sometimes it means I can spend less time on my work, and often both.
I have no idea what the future will hold. But to me, it would be very odd to avoid using extremely useful tools for my current work, because of that uncertainty about the future.
That’s fine. Some people cannot (don’t want to) think about the more profound consequences of their actions. No one likes to stop for 10min and think deep about what they are actually doing. The easiest path is always to stay in “robot mode”: my boss pays me $ for my job… therefore I need to satisfy that contract. No time to think”
No, see, this is the disconnect. Whatever happens with this in the future is not due to "the more profound consequences of [my] actions". Whether I choose to take advantage of these useful tools, or not, has absolutely no bearing on the hypothetical future consequences you're suggesting may come to pass.
If you're proposing an organized boycott, I would certainly entertain that proposal. But for me, the bar would be high for both certainty that the hypothetical consequences are likely and bad and that the boycott would have a chance of being effective.
At this particular moment, I'm pretty skeptical on both counts. And I'm flatly against the kind of vibes and guilt tripping driven "boycotts" that you're attempting here.
(And I'm way more bullish on the normal legislative and regulatory processes. I think organized boycotts are something to think about if those processes fail.)
> Good job! Now since we don’t really need to go that faster, ill fire half of you so I and my investors friends can make more profit.
Is this a thing? Are there companies out there that don't want to go faster?
The market can sneeze and suddenly there's a wave of hiring freezes, sounds plausible to me.
In reality, I think it's more likely that the lay-offs will be when the marginal rate of growth slows down. Once executives see that growth doesn't change much when hiring, they stop hiring, and once they see that growth doesn't decrease much when firing, they start firing.
There's still an opportunity for engineers to eat their bosses lunch and just start their own company. It's never been easier to start a lower cost competitor.
Employment isn't a social law of nature: it's a transaction of money for "units of work", just like the business might have with other vendors. Governments should be making it easier to become a vendor.
So now your competitors go twice as fast as you. Good luck with that.
It seems like a lot of developers have philosophical disagreements with the direction of AI combined with fear of change and fear that AI makes them less competitive in the job market. I see people regularly boycotting or rejecting AI for a variation of these reasons, and it feels a lot like self-sabotage.
My biggest challenge is to look productive while still having some time and focus left to be a good expert. After all - we are just code reviewers now, and you are a no good reviewer if you never get any shovel time yourself.
The juniors are eliminated and the seniors indulge in cognitive surrender because it feels good.
Some of us still haven't figured out how to hold it right. So on average it doesn't make anything easier. Sometimes it works, and sometimes it just fails. Net effort change for me is about a wash. I know this is different from most peoples' experience, and I don't know I suck at using it. But I'm not generally inclined to use it much as a result.
Yep I understand this. But what I don't understand is, "wow this is incredibly useful! ... but I'm not gonna use it".
There are a lot of potential reasons.
Here’s a thought: consider the potentially analogous case of performance-enhancing drugs for athletes. The drugs unambiguously make them better at their jobs, but the drugs have severe long-term health costs and wreak havoc on the fairness of the playing field. It’s easy to see why an athlete might choose not to use them, even when others are.
Of course, those negative factors alone are not enough to dissuade people en masse who want to get a leg up on their competitors, so the use of performance-enhancing drugs must be further restricted by institutional bans.
There are rules against using performance enhancing drugs in competitive sports, because ultimately the goal of the sport is entertainment, and the entertainment value increases with a rule based even playing field.
Business is not like this, because the value of what a business does is in its actual output, not in its entertainment value for spectators.
Of course there are other rules (legislative and regulatory) that apply, for other good reasons. But their goal is not to create an entertaining competitive environment, but rather to control externalities of what companies do.
I favor AI regulation, but I also don't think treating it like a performance enhancing drug would be a smart way to regulate it. Higher business productivity is useful to society in a way that breaking home run records is not.
It's not actually useful for me. But I still use it anyway.
The total opposite thing :)
Oh right. Along those lines sometimes I do long hand multiplication or division instead of using a calculator. I think it's a valuable skill. If I don't do it, I'll probably forget how.
Yep! But if I were doing my job as an accountant, I would not spend time doing any of that work using long hand division, I would use a spreadsheet. To me, it's a professionalism thing. If I'm doing a job, I should use the best tool (for me) for that job. (edit: I'm absolutely not suggesting that you are unprofessional! It sounds like AI tools are not the best tool for the job, for you. But they are for me, at the moment.) If I'm doing a hobby or personal development in general, then I can use whatever tools I want for that.
It's interesting though, for a long time I said that if I were going to do a personal programming project I was excited about, I would write all the code by hand, because I do really miss doing that, and I also worry about forgetting how to. But now I'm not so sure. I find my daydreaming about personal projects to be a lot more focused on the outcome than the process, lately. More like "wow, I could do so much in an hour or two a day now! think of the possibilities!" than an excitement about writing code and creating pleasant abstractions.
If it really does make your job easier that's great for you, but if it isn't making you more profitable then the company as a whole is wasting money and some people will have to go until your job is about as stressful as before.
I think if companies feel that AI usage turns out to be wasting money, with negative ROI, then certainly nobody has anything to worry about here! Companies will definitely turn off this spigot the moment they think it's a net negative to their bottom line.
The revealed preference is very far in the opposite direction at the moment.
What do you do all day at your job?
Serious question. I think the reason that there's such a disconnect among AI-for-work users about whether it's a panacea or bullshit accelerator is that different software developers have massively different duties and conceptions about what their job is or should be.
1. Communicate with people about what to build, fix, or improve, and about our progress with current ongoing work.
2. Figure out what components already exist and what new things we need to build and how things should be integrated.
3. Actually build the things according to what was figured out in the previous step.
4. Review my own work and other people's work.
5. Release things and make sure they work.
6. Respond to emergent issues in things that have been released.
I find the current generation of AI tooling to be very useful for all of these tasks. Less so for task #1 than the others.
What are other people doing that is different?