I've definitely seen this, I have a theory as to how this kind of thing actually would affect AI predictions since people seem to only focus on the pure-productivity enhancing effects of AI and discounting the fact that a large portion of work was never productive to begin with...

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47347983

I agree, the irony is thick for better or for worse

It’s hard to evaluate or even define “fake” work from any kind of data-driven perspective since you can always take the stance that it accomplishes some unobservable goal and is therefore done for a good reason. I think a lot of people don’t believe it exists for this reason, but as basically anyone that’s worked a corporate middle manager job knows, it definitely does it exist.

Exactly. Sorry I didn't reply to this earlier, because it's dead on. there's an old paper from a professor that Harvard gave tenure to before realizing that he was an actual communist lmao titled "What do bosses do?" (https://elearning.unite.it/pluginfile.php/356459/mod_resourc...) Spoiler: not much.

There's lots of real invisible work that isn't measured for actual good reasons. But 100-1000x that work is just bullshit and is distributed throughout middle management. I think you're right. I think AI is gonna pull that out in weird ways, exposing it in one place, amplifying it in another.

Seems like you’re part of the group of companies that is actually trying to do real, actual work, so yeah… seems like AI is going to help you and do things that weren’t done before. My point is that a LOT of “work” is not like this in large, mostly white collar organizations where productivity is difficult to evaluate.

Lol. Is this an AI post?

I'm sorry.

I do agree with your post. It looks like HR is already impacted a lot by many people applying to many jobs through AI. Imagine filtering through 1000s of AI job applications to find the human who tries their best to sound professional.

I guess in their defense, they are attempting to do something albeit in a way that makes things worse for everyone else.

In either case you can hire people to build and ship. But should the CTO also be one of those people?

If you're starting out and you're just two dudes, why wouldn't the CTO be a builder? If the CTO is just managing, who exactly would he be managing the first year?

Sorry, I didn't mean to imply that I was talking about an early stage startup. If anything, I mean a 50+ person company. I agree if it's 2 people, you probably want someone to be shipping stuff all the time.

In consulting "AI" firms, do you think engineering is more necessary than the actual AI part? To me, it seems that in those situations, knowing when and where to apply certain models could actually solve a lot of business problems for a client.