Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by theideaofcoffee 23 days ago
This is going to just run up against the insanity that is tokenmaxxing every moment of the day. When people are incentivized (upon pain of firing) to get the LLM to vomit out as much as possible, they're hardly going to stop and ponder if schlepping the slop over the wall is acceptable if the alternative is a pink slip.

Which is going to win?
2 comments
thinkingemote 23 days ago
We employees need to remember that most software projects fail. So the work we produce should have lower value than we give it.

We also need to be motivated to stay in our jobs.

Most developers like their projects and value their work. But the chances are that it's for nothing.

Many developers know they work on bad products (gambling industry, military, surveillance, whatever) and so it's here that they focus on their technologies, tools and frameworks rather than the work they produce.

"Agentic engineering" for example.

Id be curious to see what and how Googlers are doing with their 20% time.

link
soulofmischief 23 days ago
The 20% policy at Google is effectively dead.
link
AnimalMuppet 23 days ago
If tokenmaxxing wins in your company, your company is going to lose. There's an external reality out there, outside your company, and your company has to produce things that actually work out there. Hallucinated AI slop does not help you do that. It leads you to unworkable plans, and if the plans produce, they produce unsellable products.

If you're an employee in that situation, push back if you can. If you can't, put your resume on the street. (But that may not work, these days. If it doesn't, all I can say is ride it out as best you can, and try to maintain both your job and your sanity. How? I don't know.)

link