[pmg101]

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 the noise and build things.

[funimpoded]

> 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?

That’s exactly the reason LLMs and friends are so dangerous to companies, and it’s so hard for them to resist using them in useless/counter-productive ways. They’re excellent at faking signs of effort and work that companies can hardly help but reward, absent any actual way to measure manager effectiveness (and approximately nobody knows how to measure that, in the wild). This takes the form of gilding and padding on a lot of communication, none of which adds actual value but it does cost money directly and indirectly (time wasted sorting out which parts of a document are intentional and meaningful, and which are plausible but irrelevant LLM inventions, for instance)

[wartywhoa23]

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?

[pmg101]

Yes!

[grvdrm]

I often think that executive level work is about changing the executive team and writing memos about changing the executive team. Then there’s a different team with different members and they begin the cycle again. Repeat over and over again.

The number of times I’ve seen a HTML memo sent from the assistant of the executive that says “from the desk of…” with babble about new leadership.

[jimbokun]

The rest of the work is inventing new ways to increase their compensation.

[eproxus]

Things have probably always been like that, agree. I often try to see AI as a catalyst, that accelerates what already is.

In a good culture, with high competence and trust this can yield increased output (to some degree at least) and in a bad culture it will accelerate and expedite the dominating traits instead.

[jappgar]

Yes but now it gives slackers a way to imitate and inundate the builders.

[jimbokun]

Yes and this is why small startups can often beat them .

[pmg101]

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?