Hacker News Reader

Comment by mjr00 | Hacker News Reader

> I wonder also how much of a driver new programmer productivity tools like copilot and ChatGPT are factoring into this. If your top 10% productivity workers just got a 30%+ productivity boost, that means you can easily shed the bottom 20% productive workers and still be ahead of the game.

I can confidently say that this factors in 0%. Layoffs were happening in the industry even before the LLM craze.

And a 30% overall productivity boost for a "top" developer is a massive overestimate. Your best developers aren't spending their days writing boilerplate unit tests.

View on HN

Second this. From using LLM within my daily IC workflow, its not that developers are getting a productivity boost, its that our job became more enjoyable. I didn't even realize how much frustration builds up over time while relying on google search for things such as that one obscure api method i forgot the name of. I have to dig and dig... Somehow using GPT in its place has brought a noticeable bump to my quality of life. Most of my dev colleagues share this sentiment. Impact on the tech economy from this? Unknown.

I would imagine that if your job is more enjoyable, you're getting a productivity boost.

Unless you're suggesting that using an llm is just as efficient as not, but is somehow more fun?

Possibly, but why assume that developers are passing on that increased productivity without expecting a relative pay increase?

Why would they get a pay increase? Everyone can use LLMs.

everyone looking for any reason when its obviously a massive recession due to govt. spending

Massive government spending? Sure. But "massive recession"? Really?

Recession = two quarters of negative growth. We've had a lot more. I'm not playing with the kafkaesque political redefinitions and find them pretty pathetic actually.

The economy has been growing in 2023 though

https://tradingeconomics.com/united-states/gdp-growth

consolidated economic activity has been growing massively, while Main Street continues to fail. how is this "us" or "we" .. investors here tell one side of a story.. look at the cities where people live.

They aren't "kafkaesque political redefinitions". You are just choosing to use an overly simple definition because it supports your argument. The NBER determines recession based on a sophisticated methodology. One that considers the holistic status of the economy. This whole "two quarters of negative growth" is unga bunga economics

So then it's not a recession solely according to NBER - and this departs from their characterizations for the last 60 years before this last election cycle.

"A recession is a significant, widespread, and prolonged downturn in economic activity. A common rule of thumb is that two consecutive quarters of negative gross domestic product (GDP) growth mean recession, although more complex formulas are also used."

- [investopedia]("https://www.investopedia.com/terms/r/recession.asp#:~:text=W....")

They've been playing games with the numbers but it's true, we're looking at a depression not a recession as it's going to last much longer. US debt t GDP ratio > 120% which by IMF definition means the US is in an economic death spiral. By 2028 the payments we make on all that money they printed (at our expense) will only go to the interest and no longer the principal. After that the death spiral becomes irreversible with US insolvency by 2042. Historically, inside the next ten years is when we have a depression/massive austerity for everyone, war, and/or a new monetary system. Which if you ask me is more stupid and irresponsible than a balanced budget amendment and single line item spending bills. Social Security will be insolvent in 10 years, too, and I've also heard the medicare liabilities ae being hidden because they paint an even darker picture about how far gone things are.

We've known this for a while BTW, I first learned about the timeline in 2014 watching the budget committee hearing on CSPAN. They showed the slide with the timeline yet no one talked about it. Austerity back then was scheduled to start by 2020 but we got stimulus, like they were steering into driving off the cliff.

This guy wrote and updated his book on the topic. https://www.amazon.com/COMING-COLLAPSE-AMERICA-BALANCE-FEDER...

It's monetary policy tightening (effective rate 0% -> ~5%), not government spending. There is no recession, just normalization (zero interest rate policy, or ZIRP, was an abnormality). Unemployment is close to lowest levels in history because of structural demographics. When money gets more expensive, you must perform, adapt, or die as a business. Cashflow is king, and profits juiced from government stimulus mentioned is simply evaporating as the Fed drains money out of the system.

Businesses are attempting to discover how to operate in a macro that makes labor and money more expensive than they've been accustomed to over the last 15-20 years. u/DoughnutHole touches on another important point: businesses and capital are clinging to returns that might no longer be obtainable in this new macro (as we've been papering over reality with cheap credit and financialization for some time). What is going to break first? Who knows, first time we're someplace like this. Everyone is going to fight like hell to defend their piece of the pie (note the broad layoffs and back to hiring shortly after, as well as activist investors demanding trimming labor costs aggressively).

https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/FEDFUNDS (Pick 10Y time scale)

https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/WM2NS

https://www.goldmansachs.com/intelligence/pages/why-the-us-m...

https://fedinprint.org/item/fedkeb/96953 | https://www.kansascityfed.org/Economic%20Bulletin/documents/... ("The labor market has so far shown remarkable resilience to the Federal Reserve’s recent monetary policy tightening. Severe labor shortages in the post-pandemic era have led many employers to hold on to workers and hire less-skilled workers—even though they expect demand for their goods or services to weaken in the future. As a result, unemployment remains low, and labor productivity has declined.")

This might be the most succinct description of where we're at right now, that I've read all year.

Kind of - but it ignores the fact that the tightening was to fight inflation due to insane amounts of government spending. And the government just upped the ante and is spending more. Right now the national debt is growing faster than the economy. Expect everything to get a lot worse.

We've had massive government spending for >20 years now. When looking for explanations for new conditions, look for what has changed, not what hasn't changed.

"I'm not obese because I've been over eating. I've always over eaten" The printing isn't new and neither are the recessions. They're just making them worse.

Good metaphor. One does not get suddenly obese, it happens gradually and steadily and is well correlated with overeating. Your metaphor illustrates my point, not yours.

How's that? If someone says "why am I so overweight?" do you say that it can't be the eating because that hasn't changed?

Yes.

If you've been eating the same for the last 20 years and you've been gradually gaining weight over the last 20 years, then it's your diet.

If you've been eating the same for the last 20 years and you suddenly gain weight, it's likely not your diet, it's something else -- exercise, illness, et cetera.

... no

How do you explain the inflation found in EU countries, even ones with vastly different government spend and national debt profiles?

You're overfocusing on one single component of a fairly complex system. Government spending, COVID impacts (pent up demand, supply chain disruptions), a massive war in Europe impacting multiple crucial raw materials - they all have a part in the stagnation / borderline recession we're seeing. Anyone claiming it's "simple" or due to one single factor either has an agenda or doesn't understand how complex economics are.

I appreciate the kind words and the opportunity to present my analysis.

>There is no recession, just normalization (zero interest rate policy, or ZIRP, was an abnormality).

I mean, both can be true. ZIRP wasn't made over the recessions either. Tech has been in that rush for at least 12 years now. If not longer. You mention 15-20 years after all.

We had at least one recession during your time period. It doesn't preclude another one.

>labor shortages in the post-pandemic era have led many employers to hold on to workers and hire less-skilled workers—even though they expect demand for their goods or services to weaken in the future. As a result, unemployment remains low, and labor productivity has declined."

I see this as a natural consequence to their actions, though. You require "Junior" engineers to have 3+ years of experience, discourage apprenticeships in lieu of short internship stints and headhunting acedemia, and overall try and compartmentalize engineering roles. So no surprise that labor in the Gen Z won't be as skilled as the Gen X that rose entire industries from the ground up. It's due (but not limited to):

- tech being more complex. How many people worked on Google search in 1999? How many work on search alone in 2023, let alone the other 30+ division Google has now.

- top talent more and more seeking out their own business ventures. Same questions as above. More startups and more Ycombinators to fund them. People really want to be or to fund "the next big thing" in a rate not seen since the Dot Com era.

- simply being ubiquitous. You can work in tech without being in a tech company. If you don't like the hustle of FAANG or high frequency trading, there are plenty of places who just need to maintain their website outside of tech. This won't drive growth as much, but it pays the bills.

There's many factors behind this, but I will emphasize that people requiring top talent need to invest in them. Schools don't have the same goals as employers, and schools as is are becoming more cost prohibitive as is.

https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/FEDFUNDS (Pick 10Y time scale)

The Max timescale is even more interesting. Almost every time one of those gray-shaded recessionary periods begins, it's preceded by a graph segment that looks a lot like the last couple of years.

Even if you agree that there was a recession the US exited it a year ago. The economy has been growing since last August.

This (and other layoffs) are a response to increased interest rates imposed to combat inflation. Companies don't have access to as cheap credit, so they're trying to appease shareholders by cutting costs to improve profitability.

This puts the brakes on the economy and may cause a recession if it goes too far. But the US economy is not currently in recession by any definition.

> Companies don't have access to as cheap credit, so they're trying to appease shareholders by cutting costs to improve profitability.

It's not just profitability and shareholders, although those are good indicators of whether or not you're overspending. If the cost of capital goes up, something has to give to pay for that.

This specifically and undeniably is what is killing unity too. They have always run on free money, they have literally never turned a profit in the history of the company, and with the end of 0% interest rate policy the music is over.

The fact that they borrowed bigtime to buy this adtech company (hence the push for “if you use our ads, no fee increase!”) and are now deeply deeply underwater is forcing the issue, they have gone from losing $100-300m per year to losing $800m-1b per year. But, again, unity has literally never turned a profit in the history of its existence.

The same thing is happening across the industry where the end of free money is putting some boondoggles out of business, burning out the waste that has resulted from 2+ decades of unconstrained tech growth in a ZIRP environment. A correction was inevitable and healthy, excessively cheap money has all kinds of noxious effects on an economy.

The most prominent is xbox - I don't think anyone realized just how bad things have gotten for xbox but the FTC leaks are devastating, they reveal the xbox division has been on the ropes for quite a while. They have been in severe risk of being closed if they can't make gamepass numbers perform, and they've massively undershot the scenarios in which (two or three years ago) Phil Spencer said he'd close the division. It's entirely possible that Starfield is the last straw, and if they don't see a big bump in gamepass subscribers from it (which doesn't seem to have happened) they may spin off the game-studio side and kill xbox, or pivot it into a "nettop" that competes more with appletv and switch pro type hardware.

It’s also resulted in some businesses making some crazy pricing model changes and other things, out of a real or perceived need to get to profitability. The unity change will kill the business, and things like google business spinning off domain registry (you need to use a third party service to get a complete offering on google cloud?) are pound-foolish decisions that will/could have long-term negative consequences.

But the tide is going out and we’re seeing who’s swimming naked, as they say. There were a lot of businesses and projects that were only sustainable with 0% interest money, and companies are rightfully asking if this is worth it if they have to pay 7% or 8% interest. And that's exactly the type of unproductive work that needs to be burned out of the economy.

the xbox stuff I wanted to give more explanation and sourcing/perspectives without bloating the above

PS5 has won the console war, Series X's hardware advantage has been subsumed by upscaling into a meaningless "runs 840p instead of 720p input res" thing that doesn't sell consoles and Sony has actually organically built studios that pump out exclusive content that does draw in customers. Microsoft has largely failed at building that, and instead tried to buy more studios to make their content exclusive (bethesda, tried to buy nintendo and activision, etc).

Microsoft has pretty explicitly pushed all their exclusives to PC as well, meaning Series S and the Gamepass are the only interesting thing they have going. And gamepass simply hasn't been doing the necessary numbers - there was a bump in 2020/2021 from COVID, when silicon shortages meant Series S was the cheapest and most available route to a diversion during the COVID disruptions, and gamepass gave you this ready library. But 2022 and 2023 have been the great Going-Outside and the numbers have gone down not up.

In the meantime Series S is also this albatross around their neck - they have a much lower hardware baseline for game compatibility, and can't really push forward to next-gen without losing those subscribers (who are probably not going to "convert" again if it requires a $700 purchase or whatever). like it or not they are trapped by series S and gamepass now, and there is no true next-gen console on the radar (unlike sony), only a refresh.

Another problem is that all those gamepass subscribers are using the "$1/mo for 5 years" crazy promo deals too. Which is another perfect example of crazy VC growth-hacking stuff that is being rightfully burned out.

the FTC leaks are absolutely devastating and reveal a company that is so on the ropes they're looking at closing the xbox division, or pivoting it to nettop style consoles and going after appletv and switch pro (docked) market, perhaps with an upscaling-based ARM console. They are drastically underperforming the scenario in which Phil Spencer said he'd pull the plug. But it sure as fuck isn't going to be running like it currently is, in another 5-10 years, unless they get a whole lot of market traction awfully fast.

I do think it's entirely possible that Starfield was their last shot - big flagship title from a big flagship studio, and if they didn't do the gamepass numbers (and they didn't) this is the final straw. MS has very explicitly avoided weighing in on a true next-gen console and maybe they pivot or kill the division off instead. And this leak is so embarrassing and reveals how much things are so on-fire internally, that the leak itself may push them over the edge too, on top of starfield underperforming this month. This is C-suite level deliberation laid bare.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2tJBC9zXYQ8&t=2511s

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OUPxytMLWzI

But it's stunning to see this (ostensibly) gaming pillar/institution fall apart like this... apparently they were swimming naked too. But I guess that's not surprising, their only real traction was during the XB360/PS3 era and every single other time it's been a money pit they dump cash into in hopes of being profitable next generation... everyone kinda knew it intellectually but without the scales of losses being broken out separately, it's just an abstract point. Now we know: Xbox is losing so much cash they will probably go under shortly.

(which is a great reason to prevent them from acquiring more studios, especially when the goal is obviously to take their content exclusive to combat Sony's organic exclusives. That's anticompetitive to the core.)

Well, they aren't going to in front of the FTC and make themselves look huge and successful and dominating, now, are they.

Phil's entire job is to communicate the idea that they have to acquire third-party studios to keep the business running at all. "If you don't let us buy Activision, then we'll just be forced to fold our tents, and then there will be even LESS competition. You don't want THAT, do you?"

When in reality, Microsoft's attitude toward the Xbox division has always been more like Citizen Kane. "Why, yes, we lost $100 million last year, and we're on track to lose $150 million this year. At this rate, if things don't improve, we might have to shut this place down in... let's see... 12,000 years."

It's a self fulfilling prophecy nothing more and slowly fluctuating back

Adjustment of COVID, low interest rates and Russian war.

A lot of big shops are choking under bureaucracy and process right now, which is the sort of things LLMs are good at.

It's the opposite. LLMs are good after you make your way through the bureaucracy and end up with well defined specs and a ton of boilerplate code & tests to churn out. I'd say most devs are spending 90%+ of their time on the former.

Idk, ChatGPT has been great boost to my efficiency filling out all those "5 min" pre-review alignment standup meeting intake documents. Now it really DOES just take 5 mins!

Standup meeting intake documents?

I think you're doing standups wrong.

Do they need a cover sheet as well? Did you get the memo?

You fix what you can fix.

How does an LLM help when you can't get anyone to sign off on a change, or when QA is understaffed, or when there's too many stakeholders making conflicting and sometimes nonsensical requirements?

That kind of stuff can't be solved by technology.

In short, an LLM helps in creating enough shit disguised as work to keep the people spouting nonsensical requirements busy enough to not dwell on the important parts of the system.

LLMs are phenomenal busywork generators. And as a natural consequence, if you want to stay productive, you should be suspicious of anybody that uses one.

Wait until Atlassian starts adding AI generated tickets.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com