Hacker News Reader

Comment by oddly | Hacker News Reader

Haha, I genuinely laughed, thanks for this gem.

At the risk of getting too meta, I feel like lots of folks will get the gist of Julius and check out from the article…

…missing the twist.

So as a TLDR, I’ll say that Julius is a peer of the author who is polished but uncomprehending, often spouting convincing-sounding nonsense.

And here in 2024 we not only have folks like that to contend with, but also have polished AI output being forced at us from every direction.

What a world we have ahead of us with Internet-scale automated uncomprehending nonsense

I mean I thought it was a allegory about LLMS right from the start.. way too long winded. Just skipped to the bottom to validate it.

I read the whole thing and never saw any twist. What did I miss?

I missed the twist also. When he said he was surrounded by Juliuses I thought he meant his other colleagues had gotten to their positions by cheating with LLMs to look like Julius.

Re-read the last 7 paragraphs, quoting paragraph[-7]:

> On my side, I tried to forget Julius. But, recently, my boss came to me with a huge smile. He had met the salesperson from a company that had amazed him with its products. Artificial intelligence software that would, I quote, boost our productivity! [emphasis added]

I simply did not follow the transition between these two paragraphs:

> I now have an artificial intelligence software that helps me code. Another that helps me search for information. A third one that summarises and writes my emails. I am not allowed to disable them.

> At every moment, every second, I feel surrounded by Julius. By dozens of Juliuses.

The first paragraph is my situation and I like it, so the second paragraph didn't follow for me. My inner voice had a short mental hitch where I thought "was something missing between those? Should I slow down and stop skimming?" Then my eye jumps to "My boss came to see me. He told me that the team’s productivity was dangerously declining" and I decide "the paragraph before must have been referring to the team members using the AI tools", and I've missed the point of the story.

Julius is the AI.

There might be multiple interpretations. Mine was that the colleague whom management is gaa-gaa about, makes flashy presentations, and seems much smarter and quicker than us, but whose work is usually incorrect and often damaging, is AI.

In Kafka's The Castle, the protagonist is sent two assistants by the local government, and (spoiler alert) they thwart everything he tries to do, and end up killing him.

What I learned from this is that by using an AI, I can have a good career with a salary that is above average.

What most people will miss is that "presentation is important ".

As coders we spend a lot of time And pride on the code. We evaluate our work based on its correctness, elegance, effeciency and so on.

But the way everyone else values it is on how it interacts with the world. We get frustrated when someone with clearly inferior skills perfects the presentation layer.

The solution is not to teach Julius to code. The solution is to understand the importance of what Julius is doing and prioritize adding that to our skillset.

Make no mistake, the 10x programmer doesn't write more code, rather they make their code more useful, more accessible, optimized for usefulness as much as effeciency.

Internalize phrases like "if it's not documented it doesn't exist" and understand that training is more important than creation.

> Make no mistake, the 10x programmer doesn't write more code, rather they make their code more useful, more accessible, optimized for usefulness as much as effeciency.

Nope. Generally they push back on the requirements and make only the part that was needed. 10x programmers are much more like the top comment's "Pete" than the article's "Julius"

Not really. I know it hurts to hear but they are simply better.

The first one I worked with would come in the morning, sit down and code. Then take a lunch break and code some more until late in the evening. He was super prolific, his projects were well structured and followed all necessary conventions. He culled his code mercilessly and rewrote things that were going stale without hesitation. He delivered on time to happy customers.

He wasn't much for chit-chat but was friendly and would explain or help if approached. This was all in a small obscure European company. Now almost three decades later he is in a senior IC position at Arm I believe.

I have tried this, I've solved problems that were deemed impossible and too expensive to solve. And not only did I manage to solve it technically, my solution was convenient and polished enough to be widely adopted across the company. However when I expected this to be recognized, the following things happened:

- Nothing. Other than my colleagues and immediate boss giving me props, nobody even knew something changed.

- When I tried to promote the stuff I did, I realized that most management a two or more levels up had zero clue what we did, and what our actual problems were. I needed to be like those made-for-TV guys where I needed to present a problem and a solution.

- I realized that most managers' mental model of the team is the check engine light model. If the light is on, the guy who makes it go away is a hero, no matter what he does. If it's not, then it's useless, and possibly fraudulent waste.

- I was often accused of being a pushy self-promoter, sleazily taking credit and overrepresenting what I did.

- Once I kind of got good at promoting things, I realized that doing the work is optional. This is probably the starting point for most Juliuses.

- Once I started getting recoginition, I started getting it from the weirdest places. I once got a shout-out from the company higher ups. When I talked to them informally during the christmas party, they admitted they had no idea what I did, or why it was important.

The check engine light model of management. Well put.-

Reply on news.ycombinator.com