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Comment by shermantanktop | Hacker News Reader

So what should we make of the presence of actual hucksters and actual senior execs who are acting like credulous sheep? I see this every day in my world.

At the same time I do appreciate the actual performance and potential future promise of this tech. I have to remind myself that the wolf and sheep show is a side attraction, but for some people it’s clearly the main attraction.

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Why should we even?

The problem with everything today is not only that it’s hype-centric, but that that carries away those who were otherwise reasonable. AI isn’t any special in this regard, it’s just “crypto” of this decade.

I see this trend everywhere, in tech, socio, markets. Everything is way too fake, screamy and blown out of proportion.

The wolves/sheep thing was to indicate how moralizing and infantalizing serves as a substitute for actually explaining what the problem is, because surely, it's not that the prose machine isn't doing circuit design.

I'm sure you see it, I'd just love for someone to pause their internal passion play long enough to explain what they're seeing. Because I refuse to infantalize, I refuse to believe it's just grumbling because its not 100% accurate 100% of the time, and doesn't do 100% of everything.

I am literally right now explaining to a senior exec why some PR hype numbers about developer productivity from genAI are not comparable to internal numbers, because he is hoping to say to his bosses that we’re doing better than others. This is a smart, accomplished person, but he can read the tea leaves.

The problem with hype is that it can become a pathological form of social proof.

I see, I'm sorry that's happening :/ I was lucky enough to transition from college dropout waiter to tech startup on the back of the iPad, 6 years in, sold it and ended up at still-good 2016 Google. Left in 2023 because of some absolutely mindnumbingly banal-ly evil middle management. I'm honestly worried about myself because I cannot. stand. that. crap., Google was relatively okay, and doubt I could ever work for someone else again. it was s t u n n i n g to see how easily people slip into confirmation bias when it involves pay / looking good.

fwiw if someone's really into Google minutae: I'm not so sure it is relatively okay anymore, it's kinda freaky how many posts there are on Blind along the lines of "wow I left X for here, assumed i'd at least be okay, but I am deeply unhappy. its much worse than average-white-collar job I left"

Are there any write ups of the newly evil Google experience I can read about? When did things shift for you in the 2016 - 2023 timeframe?

No, my way of dealing with it is to whine on HN/twitter occasionally and otherwise don't say anything publicly. Feel free to reach out at jpohhhh@gmail, excuse the overly familiar invitation, paying it forward because I would have found talking about that sort of thing f a s c i n a t i n g.

in general id recommend Ian Hickson's blog post on leaving. I can't remember the exact quote that hit hard, something like decisions moved from being X to Y to Z to being for peoples own benefit.

I'd also add there was some odd corrupting effects from CS turning into something an aimless Ivy Leaguer would do if they didn't feel like finance.

I’ll play along. The thing that’s annoying me lately is that session details leaking between chats has been enabled as a “feature”, which is quickly making ChatGPT more like the search engine and social media echo chambers that I think lots of us want to escape. It’s also harmful for the already slim chances of having reproducible / deterministic results, which is bad since we’re using these things for code generation as well as rewriting emails and essays or whatever.

Why? Is this naive engineering refusing to acknowledge the same old design flaws? Nefarious management fast tracking enshittification? Or do users actually want their write-a-naughty-limerick goofs to get mixed up with their serious effort to fast track circuit design? I wouldn’t want to appear cynical but one of these explanations just makes more sense than the others!

The core tech such as it is is fine, great even. But it’s not hard to see many different ways that it’s already spiraling out of control.

(thank you!) 100% cosign. It breaks my. goddamn. heart. that [REDACTED], the consummate boring boneheaded SV lackey is [REDACTED] of [REDACTED], and can't think outside 6 week sprints and never finishes launching. This is technology that should be freeing us from random opaque algorithmic oppression and enabling us to take charge if we want. I left Google to do the opposite, and I'm honestly stunned that it's a year later and there's nothing on the market that challenges that. Buncha me-too nonsense doing all the shit I hate from the 2010s: bulk up on cash, buy users, do the recurring revenue thing and hope x > y, which inevitably, it won't be.

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