Sounds about right. Since we started having to incorporate AI, my work load has increased but my production has stagnated, because I am having a hell of a time getting out of my own way now that I have to wade thru mountains of AI regurgitation. YAY progress!
90 more minutes of gooning
They fired 90% of my co-workers. So the people left are working longer hours to make up for the bad management decisions that assumed AI would magically make the things happen without people.
In reality, much less is getting done and the few people left are either working much harder with AI tools (or not), the rest are checked out looking for another job and don’t appear to be active AI users.
If someone is already using AI at work then it’s already done, the company doesn’t need to hire anyone new if they have their existing employees using AI. They are requiring each employee to work harder using AI so they don’t have to hire anyone else, shutting everyone out, and now we are beginning to see layoffs at various tech/finance companies.
I can anecdotally attest to this. My company has built their product in such a way that it is unusable without AI. There are some things it legitimately expedites, but there are more things that used to take me 10 minutes that now take an hour and a half. And then I have to go validate the output anyway.
My company recently shifted to a new time clock system, which uses AI for basic search functions. Search is also intended to be the primary way users navigate the site. The salesperson’s marketing was “oh it’s so easy, you just describe what you want to do, and the AI takes you there!”
I need to approve my time card each week. The page is literally titled “Time Approval”. But searching for “Time Approval” usually doesn’t yield any results. Sometimes I’ll get lucky if I search for something like “I need to approve my time card for last week” but even that isn’t foolproof. Like it literally can’t find the page I need every week, even when I search for the exact title of the page. And who the fuck wants to type out an entire sentence just for a basic site directory search?
The way to get to the approval page through the UI (by clicking through, without using the AI-powered search function) is like four obscure menus deep. This is something that every employee is expected to do every week, and they buried it like they were planning on making a treasure map. They intentionally made the UI unintuitive, so users would feel compelled to use the AI search. But then the AI search doesn’t fucking work, so I end up having to navigate the unintuitive menus anyways. I ended up just bookmarking the approval page directly in my browser, so I can log in and then use the bookmark to jump straight to that page.
Yup.
My work uses MS Teams and Sharepoint, and MS is dumbing down both products as much as is feasible in order to force people to use CoPilot more. It’s moronic, and I hate discovering changes to the UI that appear to be bugs and then finding out it was deliberate. (Like buttons and scroll bars that are invisible until you hover a cursor over them. Stupid.)
But LLM’s were only ever useful if the validation of their output didn’t outweigh the supposed time saved, and that is rarely the case.
Stupid business practices. Can’t wait for a popping of the bubble.
I’m probably ignorant, as i left the conventional workforce before AI took off… But how does that exactly make you work longer? If the AI isn’t finished by the time the shift is over, then it’s tomorrows problem, no?
Most people in jobs like this aren’t paid hourly, they are salaried and expected to get the job done. Usually the problem isnt necessarily the runtime of an AI, but the inefficiency of a workflow that brought AI into its center.
It’s like walking a child through how to cook a meal. Maybe it’s technically less “work” since they are doing the chopping, measuring, stirring, etc, but it takes longer since you have to take time to be explicit about all your instructions, and correcting mistakes, etc. The difference is a child will eventually learn how to do it themselves, while in practice, and AI probably won’t since it likely relies on inputs that can’t just be piped in (cause if they could, you’d do the job with regular programming).
Most people in jobs like this aren’t paid hourly, they are salaried and expected to get the job done. Usually the problem isnt necessarily the runtime of an AI, but the inefficiency of a workflow that brought AI into its center.
Sure, but if the tools provided/mandated by the employer are inadequate to do the job more efficiently. That should be the employers problem, not the employee’s.
You can’t as management both claim the need for AI out of efficiency, and blame it at the same time for you not getting your job done in time because of it. But then again, how often do you come across competent leadership these days. The lemon can always be squeezed a bit more I guess.
should
sorry, we live in capitalism, hbu?
In a social democracy with workers rights, where if you got unjustifiably fired you can sue them for it. you?
Funny enough some folks use AI agents to do the sueing. It’s one of the aspects companies really don’t like in the use of AI.
Management is not known for being rational in many workplaces.
Why would management even consider that they’re contradicting themselves every 5 minutes? They’re the ones that sign the paychecks, they can be absurd if they want to be. It’s not like there’s every going to be personal consequences anyway, and if the company burns to the ground, they’ve already got their golden parachute worked out.
They don’t have to, just as much as you don’t have to compensate for their shortcomings. Of course that’s easier said then done if you work somewhere with little to no workers protection and fear losing your job. But that still doesn’t make it right.
Of course that’s easier said then done if you work somewhere with little to no workers protection and fear losing your job.
That part. No one said it was right. It’s simply what many of us have to put up with to survive. Building solidarity and unions in the current environment is difficult. Labour power has been set back almost to square one in a lot of places, and if you’ll remember, building it up in the first place, cost a lot of lives and a lot of blood. It’s really hard to be a martyr for the cause, when you know no one is going to step in to support the people who count on you, which is why organizing NGO support networks is so essential. They know that community is what gives us leverage, and that’s why they do everything in their power to make community building seem futile.
We have no churches, because they’ve all been compromised. We have precious few non-corpo social clubs and sports orgs. Unions have been beaten into a bloody mess. We have a handful of charities and volunteer orgs, most of which are dependent on corporate grants donations for survival. I’m not saying it’s hopeless, but we need to be clear where we are to figure out a path forward. We need to build communities of truth and trust beyond their reach if we’re going to push back. Just saying “no” sounds great in principle… but we have to all say “no” together otherwise you’re just lighting yourself on fire, and the machine will not even notice you’re gone.
I know unions and workers rights are basically none existent across the pond. And I can only hope that changes for you guys. But I sure hope if I would get fired for doing as I’m told by management, that I can go to the union and/or judge to get compensation for being unjustly fired.
This shouldn’t really be a discussion imho, but alas here we are.
Also, anecdotally, if it’s anything like my workplace then management is trying to nickel and dime the process so much that they refuse to invest in the people building the tools. They think because they build AI tools that they don’t need actual humans on the team and can just “10x” everything so they’re forced to try to make vast one-size-fits-all tools that are a mile wide and an inch deep
Not to mention all the tools you use on a daily basis that have also adopted AI development causing them to behave erratically. I have been wrestling with the coderabbitai for the last two hours to get a PR finished.
That’s fair, I look longer to mean either more work, or more time spent on a given problem.
That’s what I get for not reading the article
I can too - but at the same time, a lot of the extra time I’m putting in is using the clankers to more quickly address tech debt issues that we have been punting on for literal years (do not get me started on the priorities of my manager and our PM)
You guys will believe anything that suits your head canon. This article and “analysis“ from an AI productivity tool is worthless 🤣
But they said we wouldn’t have to work!
Well yes, that’s why there are layoffs too.
Statistical error caused by mass layoffs?
Or those who value their work know their worth
Or employees using AI to generate their work/content now need to spend equally as much time reviewing their generated work/content.
It’s like being a manager and asking your employee that you know always fucks up to do something. You have two options, get the employee to write it, then you check it after, or you write it yourself and save time on explaining or checking.
How long did they work before they started using AI?
90 minutes less
Math is hard
Maybe re-read the title
