AI engineers report burnout, rushed rollouts as 'rat race' to stay competitive
cnbc.com
cnbc.com
Why don't people feel empowered to say no to this sort of thing? Is the market for engineers so bad that we have to tolerate these things out of fear?
That's not how you create great things anyway, that's just what naive 20yr olds think hard work looks like. Rushing things, not taking breaks, or ever disconnecting your brain vs creating a consistent high output rhythm over a long period by getting into the zone, and only slamming for legit emergencies.
Tech needs to be unionized.
It shouldn’t be systematically. But when I did a start-up, this was an opening that let us displace—in one case, put out of business—the competition: identifying the moments where working unconventionally creates asymmetric value.
Also, we’re talking about AI engineers. If you’re being paid seven figures and refusing to ever work weekends you should seek out a lifestyle role. (And to be clear, I have a tonne of respect for people who make that choice. You’re just not going to command a multi-million dollar comp package.)
if you have stock then you will be rewarded for your weekend work, otherwise you're a chump for working weekends absent an emergency like downtime or going out of business.
"Let's go look at the board. Which of these other high priority items in flight would you like to deprioritize? By the way, our back of the envelop discovery session shows this requested feature to be six tasks, which historical TEAM velocity indicates will be done much later than your requested deadline. Also our metrics for other past weekend heroics indicate that we're going to see a 20-50% decline in productivity for the next two weeks, so we should expect the following work to be late."
At least in my experience it's the best way to make stakeholders stare at the reality of what they're asking.
Of course, its also a great indicator for people who aren't willing to look at reality. I don't know what the solution to that is, but there are a lot of reasonable people out there when you find a good way for them to understand the forces involved.
A single person saying “no” just means they will find the next person to do it. In return, person that said “no” will face consequences. Impossible to complete work. Slightly more hostile work environment. “Evidence” the management will use to create PIP. PIP will probably be work that cannot be completed within timeline.
Shit like this wouldn’t fly in a union.
Personally, I wouldn’t give 2 shits. I would love to see the face of the douchebag that asked me this and I just left that person on unread.
In this market, AI engineers get hired easily. With recent ruling on non-compete clauses, this makes it much more easier to move between firms.
There's obviously still enthusiasm for machine learning things, but you've definitely lost the "wow" factor for most people. Better to actually build the iPhone 3GS first, as it were.
Maybe once part 4 or 5 roll around it will be “stable”
Damn son of a bitch is ghosting me.
That is why I like movements like Apple, who don't compete. They simply add a feature that another competitor has to their to do list and set up a game plan for 2-3 years to implement.
I also like this about Google whose products are so massive that in order to make substantial improvements, they would need to do an entire restructuring for the long game.
both of these initiatives are the long-game plays. And so is the effort. why can't the same be happening in stuff like telecom, and AI? Don't worry about small time attrition of users. Worry about the long game.
There is always the option to just quit and ask for maybe 50% more at next company struggling desperately with same stuff.
There is a ton of much more ordinary software engineering work that goes into building this stuff. The people being talked about in this article could just be frontend or backend engineers who were working on a product listing page this time last year.
“Fuck you, pay me”
Not sure why this is so hard. Makes it even difficult when you have bendy co-workers.
You are basically saying "Pffft. First world problems." Which is always a flippant dismissal of someone's actual problem, and you're doing it in HN of all places. A website by YCombinator, which is more or less the tip of the spear of the first world.
AI is making even more established companies behave like early startups. shifting deadlines, building things to appease investors and fight for funding, learn how to fly the plane while building the engine, having to set your own boundaries, etc.
It’s always strange for me to hear anecdotes from “not-early-startup” folks complaining about not knowing how to set boundaries or needing learning to be spoonfed to them when they’re exposed to an early-startup-like environment.
I always wonder if they’re in the majority or I am.
https://www.makeartwithpython.com/blog/what-is-happening-wit...
tldr; too much capital necessary for wide participation, secrecy and paranoia is a key part of building a moat, and questionable training data. the high salaries just add to the pressure.
How is it possible to proof that the end user is not an investor? The human is going to be just the end user's slave because their goals are sometimes diametrically opposite (cold calls, engagement etc)