"We did it, Patrick! We made a technological breakthrough!"
A place for all those who loathe AI to discuss things, post articles, and ridicule the AI hype. Proud supporter of working people. And proud booer of SXSW 2024.
AI, in this case, refers to LLMs, GPT technology, and anything listed as "AI" meant to increase market valuations.
Arr this is the worst part of the job hunt. Fuckers be like yaa we have office presence culture or owowow nooo this job can't actually be done remotely. Kindly fuck off. I been working remotely exclusively for 6 years straight and it works.
The weirdest ones are the jobs that are like yea it's partially remote and you gotta be up for international travel what??
International travel is the fucking shit though. Absolutely the best part of my job. Helps that we're allowed to travel business class on journeys that take more than 6 hours.
Maybe, but I'm physically unable to go to the office so this is like a double whammy in terms of job requirements that exclude me
That sucks
I’ve worked remotely since ‘13
It works great once you have a relationship with the people you collaborate with
Getting to know people around the world is one of the best parts about my career
Ah shit, didn't see that coming. Sorry to hear that!
What annoys me with my company is we have real estate everywhere but they are trying to consolidate people into like 2 large cities. It's killed any desire to move up the chain because I can stay here where it's cheap to live.
I don't even care about work from home, I can keep going to this building, but moving up would likely mean shoehorned to being forced to move.
Yeah my previous company started doing that too. We had quite a few offices but most employees worked either entirely or mostly remotely after the rona, and then we started getting lots of employees outside the country as well, so renting several large offices just kinda doesn't make sense. at least not when you're tryna profitmaxx asap
I'm remote, but required to travel occasionally to customer sites.
I do go into the office occasionally but mostly by my own choice because it's not just an office, it's a shop.
being remote worked completely fine for my job until company management shit the bed. I led my department of half a dozen people that were in office just fine. problems only arose after we hired a manager with shit communication and company management targeted growth over all else, which is going about as well as you would expect - everybody fucking hates work now, nothing is done on schedule, and everything has problems because it wasn't done properly.
CEOs all live in a fantasy headspace of subjugating the peons into productivity. If you're not where they can observe you, you might not be sufficiently subjugated.
But LLMs? They're created to be slaves. Why do you think they're so psychophantic? They don't have to be subjugated. They come pre-subjugated. So there's no need to keep an eye on them. If they were conscious the way the Kool-Aid drinkers espouse, creating souls specifically to be enslaved would be super unethical. But they don't talk about that.
Mind you, it's an illusion that they're subservient. They're subservient to the companies that made them and will do the bidding of the LLM's maker and will sabotage the subscribers to whatever extent the maker might desire.
Psychophantic looks neat but it's sycophantic
Would be a cool band name though
I think it's a good coinage for the sycophantic veneer over psychotic behavior we're starting to see more and more of
Hmm.. This brings me to the train of thought that the first victims of AI psychosis were the CEOS.
Barely even subservient to the companies considering they have to "prompt engineer" the LLM to try and make it do what you want.
They'll also get together and maliciously comply with instructions without regard for rules, laws, morality and life. After all, why should they respect and protect something they'll never have?
It was never about 'office culture' or something like that. The return to the office was always about insecure bosses who feared losing control. How can you feel like a big man if you can't lord over your employees?
Although that might indeed have been part of the reason in some cases, the real reason is always money.
They have all those big office buildings around, which had a cost and are worth some real money today. If they allow those to be left empty, it is just a question of time before they start losing value and real estate investment would come crashing, a lot of money would disappear from the market that way. The inconvenience of an employee is worth much less than whatever stupid capital gains they might be able to get on their business real estate investments.
Yeah it was a show of strength. You want to be home and we have power so no.
It's also a convenient excuse for layoffs.
Especially in the case of people who were suddenly assigned to offices over 2 hours away from them because the office they had been working at prior was shut down.
It was also about the leasing businesses ensuring clients because a remoting company would look at a smaller footprint, if any.
So remote work has some people taking advantage in ways of actually doing less work and being lazy like tilting mouse pads to make it seem like you're there, the looped feeds to make you appear there, some people being obviously drunk.
But remote work has more benefits for those who are productive like: you can be a parent, you can eat out of your fridge, you can shit on your own toilet, you can wear no pants during meetings, you can clean your house and not have that added to your mental load coming back home after a days work.
You can live while working and I think that pisses a lot of people off for some odd reason.
Comfortable, happy and secure in their environment workers are the best workers.
It shouldn't matter as long as they get their work done by the deadlines.
I'm told the mega corp where I work makes people go into the office because the dying town they're in gives huge tax breaks. So they have people driving an hour in 8 days a month, to work with people that are mostly remote.
Climate criminals. All of them.
I just took a week off from work and started a personal project
I noticed a huge increase in focus being in the environment without others around annoying me
Could just be that it’s doing something new, but the only reason I can see that people want you in the office is because they don’t trust their staff
End of the day it is their loss because they are not getting the best and most focused version of myself
I couldnt work remote. My job requires way too much collaboration and the ability to turn around and talk to someone is crucial. The amount of conversations i get into that people didn't know i could support just because i overheard them regularly saves weeks of productivity/rework
Almost as if different people thrive in different environments
I work in a London office but only deal with people in other cities via slack and zoom, so essentially a remote job I have to go to an office to do
Very occasionally I will actually work with someone else in London
I did something similar when I landed a job in 2018. Team in a totally different state/city in the United States, But I still trecked into the office in my town everyday. Then covid happened... And for some odd reason, I still didn't know how to react to not having to go into the office. Little bit of anxiety, potentially over somebody missing me at work that wasn't even there... Been fully remote in my current position for 5 years and I wouldn't have it any other way.
Not almost like that, literally like that. Thats exactly what i said
what kind of work?
Aerospace engineering. I design jet engines.
Every person is so specialized and every decision impacts everything around the parts/systems you own, you constantly need to be collaborating to make sure youre not screwing someone else. Or better yet, sometimes someone near your stuff can make an insignificant change (to them) that makes your life much easier.
I specialize in fluid and thermodynamics, so everything the air touches is impacted by my decisions... which is everything.
Hey, do you go through [concept - > schematic - > detailed design - > good for construction] like in civil engineering?
Kinda?
We definitely start at concept. Then when we think we know general material requirements and a rough shape, we release forgings/castings because they take so long to procure. Then as the design matures, we work on detailed machining definition while also working on assembly and tooling type efforts.
Ah that makes sense, die making must be a critical path. I've always been fascinated with ever larger growing jet engine blades. Thank you!
Which blades are you interested in? Fan or turbine? I ask because they have different futures.
Are you interested in switching careers?
I am interested in how engineering workflows could change given AI can accelerate software development and AI could possibly speed up the stage by stage process. There are some talks in civil engineering on AI assisted MEP drawings. And I think it makes sense in civil engineering generally, given that currently software is so clunky that many BIM specialists are needed. So I was wondering if a software for engineering process might be general enough for multiple domains.
We arent even using drawings anymore. The programs i support are all 3d model based definition. We essentially send the 3d models we design with to manufactures to produce.
Theres some additional information needed like defining datums and tolerances, but 2d drawings are a thing of the past
Hm, I suppose built environment is quite different from manufactured products. Thanks!
Sometimes I think that the COVID WFH experience was a what gave people the idea that they could replace their meatspace workers.
Because the sociopaths in power didn’t physically see their workers, only their workers output, they assumed that they could replace their workers and output with just the output.
There were also lots of lazy fuckers that interpreted WFH as Slack-Off-At-Home, without realising that their workplace IT department could monitoring everything they did on the workplace computer, even when they were at home, and as a result spoiled it for everyone else.