What if people are using LLMs to achieve the same productivity with more cost to the business and less time spent working?
This, to me, feels incredibly plausible.
Get an email? ChatGPT the response. Relax and browse socials for an hour. Repeat.
"My boss thinks I'm using AI to be more productive. In reality, I'm using our ChatGPT subscription to slack off."
That three day report still takes three days, wink wink.
AI can be a tool for 10xers to go 12x, but more likely it's also that AI is the best slack off tool for slackers to go from 0.5x to 0.1x.
And the businesses with AI mandates for employees probably have no idea.
Anecdotally, I've seen it happen to good engineers. Good code turning into flocks of seagulls, stacks of scope 10-deep, variables that go nowhere. Tell me you've seen it too.
Yeah, I think this is why it's more important to shift the question to "is the team/business more productive". If a 0.5xer manager is pushing 0.1x work and a 1xer teammate needs to become a 1.5xer to fix the slop, then we have this phenomenon where the manager can feel way more productive, while the team under him is spending more time just to fix or throw out his slop.
Both their perspectives are technically right. But we'll either have burned out workers or a lagging schedule as a result in the long term. I miss when we thought more long term about projects.
What if people are using LLMs to achieve the same productivity with more cost to the business and less time spent working?
This, to me, feels incredibly plausible.
Get an email? ChatGPT the response. Relax and browse socials for an hour. Repeat.
"My boss thinks I'm using AI to be more productive. In reality, I'm using our ChatGPT subscription to slack off."
That three day report still takes three days, wink wink.
AI can be a tool for 10xers to go 12x, but more likely it's also that AI is the best slack off tool for slackers to go from 0.5x to 0.1x.
And the businesses with AI mandates for employees probably have no idea.
Anecdotally, I've seen it happen to good engineers. Good code turning into flocks of seagulls, stacks of scope 10-deep, variables that go nowhere. Tell me you've seen it too.