‘Overemployed’ Hustlers Exploit ChatGPT to Take on Even More Full-Time Jobs | Hacker News Reader

‘Overemployed’ Hustlers Exploit ChatGPT to Take on Even More Full-Time Jobs

vice.com

55 pointsnradov42 comments

I'd be very very curious to follow the life of all these "chatgpt does 80% of my work" people.

Unless you code to-do list and sudoku html "apps" all day I doubt it's anywhere close to true

The reporter did at least some verification. Some of the subjects might be exaggerating a little but I think the story is mostly true. Some of them aren't writing code, they're using ChatGPT to write rough drafts of other content like emails and marketing plans, then doing some editing.

I strongly feel like this LLM hype should have revealed the bullshit job phenomenon [1] to the world. Instead nobody questions their bullshit reality, and assumes that if a program can perform in bullshit, it is as conscious as a person.

[1]: Graeber https://www.atlasofplaces.com/essays/on-the-phenomenon-of-bu...

Maybe LLMs can reduce the work week at least. 30 hours, 20 hours even?

It is shocking to me that people spend so little time thinking about the matter that they believe this would be a good thing.

Oh but they have.[0]

Would you like to share why you feel that it would be a bad thing for people to have more free time? Do you think that the current levels of free time that people have is optimal? Why or why not?

[0] https://harpers.org/archive/1932/10/in-praise-of-idleness/

I'm already working part time, happier than ever. I can't imagine a single scenario in which going from 40 to 30 hours work week would be negative, neither individually nor collectively.

At the end of the day how much work can be reduced doesn't matter as long as the people that we end up are the type that would bring the universe to an early heat death just so they could say they had one more dollar than another person.

Not solving greed before creating AI might be humanities final mistake.

lmao, this is what economists, industrials and politicians told us since the 40s

Meanwhile we work more hours and retire later than back then. It's never been about reducing the working hours, and probably won't be for a long while

And not only that but the jobs that were once fulfilling and stable are now absolutely miserable and everything but stable, we lost the meaning of work

I think it's incredibly naive to think that an increase in your productivity will result in a reduction of hours worked, especially at the same pay.

No, you'll just be given more work to do. If it takes you 20 hours/week to finish what took you 40 hours/week last year, you'll just be given double the work to complete and at the same salary/wage.

Make no mistake, the prime benefactor of increased automation won't be the workers, it'll be the owners.

Alternatively, Graeber's whole thesis is bullshit: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/09500170211015...

Graeber's claim about bullshit jobs can be trivially dismissed. If there were actually many bullshit jobs in some profitable company then eventually a competitor with fewer bullshit jobs and thus lower costs would come in and eat their lunch. While middle managers in some organizations do engage in empire building to inflate their own importance, senior executives generally don't hesitate to cut costs by laying off unproductive employees. Their own bonuses and equity values depend on this.

There are certainly some bullshit jobs, especially in the public sector and non-profit space. But they are a tiny minority.

Naïve dismissal. People, businesses, economies are not rational agents. And competitors eat companies' lunches all the time.

Ah, famously easy to measure knowledge worker productivity!

Bullshit Jobs isn’t about people doing nothing all day.

So what? I never claimed that it was.

If anyone wants us to believe that bullshit jobs are common then they need to explain why senior executives who are generally ruthless in conducting layoffs would choose to keep many employees who aren't contributing to profit margins. The number of bullshit jobs is more than zero, but as an economic concept it's just totally implausible on a large scale. This is one of those "just so" stories: it sounds truthy but when you dig in there's little hard data or reproducible experiments.

Again, it’s not about not contributing to the organization. You should read the book.

> There are certainly some bullshit jobs, especially in the public sector and non-profit space.

I don't think you understand the definition of a "public service"

This article seems to describe people unable to find meaning in their job, unable to understand why they exist. There is a big difference between "my job is meaningless", as in, "I am unable to find meaning in my job", and "my job is pointless and shouldn't exist".

The way "bullshit jobs" are described covers both actually pointless jobs, and people that don't understand why their job exist.

Not all jobs are as intellectually demanding as software engineering.

Yup - one has to keep in mind that if they're bullshitting their various "employers", they're probably doing the same to our hapless journalist as well.

The idea of multiplying the number of stakeholders I deal with by 2-4 gives me chills, even with help. The psychic toll of dealing will all these micro tasks while also being deceitful all day long is not worth the FIRE.

When you can generate close to a million usd a year, keeping it up for 5 formative years doesn't seem that bad. You can coast for the rest of your life on very little work afterwards.

What about the "being deceitful" part? Not an issue for you?

To whom? Your employer? Perhaps if you work in a country that values your employment more and your employer is fair with their wages, then maybe your loyalty is warranted. I don't really think that is the case in the USA. Executives are on multiple boards all the time and they juggle different organizations daily. If the C-Suite can be overemployed then why not you? The U.S is downright predatory with at-will employment and salaried vs. hourly pay along with a retirement plan that amounts to a glorified investment account. I take more personal issue with that than moonlighting a second job.

Never mind the morality issues (which you don't seem to care about, or are happy to relativize with some form of "everything is messed up in the USA anyway, so it doesn't matter" argument). The bottom line is that in all probability (at least it is so in every such contract I've ever seen), it's very clearly against the language your Employment Agreement to have undeclared, outside engagements with other employers. There's also almost certainly language in there about "devoting one's full attention and focus" to the role, as well as a certain number of hours per week.

If the C-Suite can be overemployed then why not you?

Because (as with everything else about them) their contracts are different. Even so, they are absolutely required to declare these affiliations. Just as you are.

To whom? Your employer?

Also to your co-workers and future employers.

And to anyone close to you in your life - who you'd be pretty much forcing to keep up your little wall of secrecy.

"So where does s/he work?" "Umm..."

High Unemployment Rate Linked To One Man With 42,000 Jobs https://youtu.be/UlRNyiMFTsw

I'm pretty sure this isn't real. Isn't the CEO of Oracle a lawnmower?

I don’t quite believe these stories but the obvious conclusion is to start your own consulting company where you are not limited by employment contracts…

Exactly. Why be sneaky when you could go the tried and true consulting -> productized consulting -> product route without worrying about losing your reputation?

I'm sure there are a lot of companies where hiring people is (perhaps inexplicably) much harder than taking in consultants. I think some of these people are taking advantage of situations where employers are wrongly preferring employees to consultants.

Also perhaps hiring standards have just become too crazy. Most tech companies make us jump through so many hoops that only the top lets say 1% make it through. Well that same 1% can probably also make it through every other company's hoops too. So theoretically they can get as many jobs as they want.

But companies don't want to hire the top 25% or middle 25% they leave these hoops to filter average candidates out

most large companies only go through specific companies for traditional software development roles.

…and watch as SW consulting engagements go from $50,000 to $50. I fear we’re racing to commoditize ourselves. Will we look back at the hiring frenzy of 2021 as the peak?

the labor market has always been a race to the bottom. I think the last 20-30 years has been an exception.

all commodity markets are a race to the bottom. In the labor market if you have too specialized of skills you risk not finding employment but if you generalize it's a race to the bottom. There's been a massive amount of capital that's entered the market through the fed in the last 20 years which has driven up asset prices allowing for a lot of money to be spent on "building" web 2.0. also trading with china has allowed a lot of manufacturing to get done at really low cost. managing all that capital and moving of goods has created a bubble in automating paper pushing.

A lot of job descriptions are basically data processing manually I.e. take data from one software and compile them in excel sheet. I recall automating 30hrs per week of efforts completely over the course of an year, just to scratch my itch.

It goes without saying that my automation produced correct results and in seconds. And do not need another manual check.

As a software engineer, chatgpt can’t completely replace my job. But anyone who doesn’t write code is a fair game.

Well.. Consultants are held to a higher standard than employees. As an outside consultant working 40 hours, I want to see the work that you did in 40 hours towards the end that I directed.

As an employee, there are emails, trainings, staff meetings, backlogged items, and a million other things that can take up your time. A manager comes to understand your output and sets his expectations accordingly. If you already have another full time job, you do what is asked of you but never more, they expect that from your line of work.

Additionally, as a consulting company you rarely have 'Active Clients' for years and years paying you to do full time work. It's a cycle with outside consultants and you always have to be 'Selling' outside of whatever retainer you charge.

Having two jobs provides a sense of 'stability' that consulting doesn't. But underneath is always the unstability of the 'if the employer found out'.

My friend was working two full time jobs and a couple of hickups caused him to miss a staff meeting for company A. So, he decided to fess up about his other employment at company B. Since he did it kind of akwardly ("Asking for a one-on-one with his manager and saying he had something to tell him"), the manager expected the worst. Come to find out the manager was relieved when he told him, becaause he though he was going to quit! Fresh on the success of Company A accepting his dual employement, he decided to tell company B. Company B fired him and threatened to sue him.

At many (most?) companies in US, it's easier to get approval for an additional employee costing $90k/year forever, than to spend a one-off $50k on a consulting project.

New job-title: "AI Overseer"

This tech could lead to is all living more wonderful and thoughtful lives with the extra time it would gift us.

But no. We will most likely fight over the few remaining jobs as the owners of the AI take the rewards.

Sad. But hopefully it does not happen.

The medium is the message?

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