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Comment by mmmBacon | Hacker News Reader

I am personally paying $200/month for the ChatGPT pro version. It’s the best investment I’ve made in my career in a long time. It’s like having 2-3 direct reports. The alternatives provided by my companies are too slow and aren’t anywhere as good. If people start using it anywhere near how I’m using it, there will be profound changes to the workplace in the coming 3 years.

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I have a senior that talks like this. Does everything through AI now. Barely writes anything himself. Has 5x'd his productivity. Like having his own team. Thing is his work is awful. The people who review his PRs have to spend 5x the time looking at his work. He's been pushed off to another team thank god. Not saying there aren't advantages and uses for AI. but if what you are saying were true (like having 2-3 reports) and it was a great benefit, there would be way more examples out there I could look at.

And then people turn around and hand-wave that away by saying: But youre assuming that the development of LLMs stop and they wont be able to address that problem.

Like Okay, it sounds like a valid point. The issue is the hand waving and the fact it is not grounded in reality.

I took GP's comment to say that, even if LLMs get massively better in the next six months (which they will), the colleagues still have to wade through the slop during the review this week.

So while one person is getting a 5x increase in productivity, one or two get a corresponding 5x decrease.

Why would we expect LLMs to get “massively better” in the next 6 months instead of the incremental improvement we have seen to date?

LLMs didn't get massively better in the last 6 months, and most probably won't get this better in the next 6 months either.

I disagree. Couldn’t do what I’m doing with GPT-4 but I can with 5.

The assumption that it will just keep getting better is a big one. Maybe they will. Maybe they wont. If they get better I'll stop complaining. Right now I just don't think they are at the level people claim.

I run a team. So for me this is like having 2-3 extra people to just do some exploratory work and prototyping. Having actual people to do this is a luxury I don’t have and can’t justify currently.

I can’t just copy-paste what comes out. But I have to say I’m able to get substantially more done as it saves me a lot of grunt work. You do have to learn how to use it like any other tool. I have found that it’s helped me sharpen a lot of my own skills in multiple areas and improved my understanding of systems I’m working on. I am able to learn new things much faster because it has a real-time feedback mechanism.

I can’t speak to your direct report but I’d be concerned about falling behind as a leader if you aren’t using it in the course of your regular work.

What are you doing with it?

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