Your Job Isn't Disappearing. It's Shrinking Around You in Real Time

(newsletter.jantegze.com)

33 points | by hunglee2 2 hours ago

13 comments

  • prng2021 38 minutes ago
    The author gives this example of the problem and incorrect way to leverage AI:

    "Sarah was relieved. She thought she could focus on high-value synthesis work. She’d take the agent’s output and refine it, add strategic insights, make it client-ready."

    Then they propose a long winded solution which is essentially the same exact thing but uses the magical term "orchestrate" a few times to make it sound different.

    • TaupeRanger 19 minutes ago
      Well, the article was written by AI, so I wouldn't expect it to make valid arguments through a long article like this.
    • dccoolgai 31 minutes ago
      In fairness to the author, I think their point was that you take _several_ agents (not just one) and find a way to have them work like a team of 20 people. In the example, Sarah is trying to do the same job she did before, just marginally better.
      • prng2021 15 minutes ago
        Yea I guess that's accurate but they also explained that AI capabilities advance every 6-12 months and managing a team of agents buys you a few years. So their proposed solution and conclusion that it keeps you safe for years makes no sense right now. Multi agent orchestration, with an agent doing the orchestrating, is all the craze nowadays.
      • FrustratedMonky 11 minutes ago
        I agree. But the article then seems to suggest, 'you be the one left standing to orchestrate'. It didn't offer much of a suggestion about the other 20 people that would be gone.

        It seemed to come down to the old 'just work better , faster, cheaper' , but that is dialed up to 11 now.

    • veggieroll 26 minutes ago
      > add strategic insights

      This claim has always been BS in my experience.

  • penetrarthur 49 minutes ago
    God damn it. Can people write interesting articles in NORMAL writing style nowadays? Why is everyone writing in these stupid short "punchline" sentences?
    • bux93 43 minutes ago
      It's exhausting to read.

      I can't quite put my finger on it; obviously the "it's not this. It's that." is part of it, but even without the obvious tells that writing was AI-generated/improved, it's just so tiring to read?

      Maybe a linguist can chime in why all these texts are so samey, cloying and annoying to read? Is it (just) the pacing?

      • nemomarx 37 minutes ago
        I wonder if part of it is that we're mentally trying to get the actual meaning and thoughts out of it. It's inflated like trying to read a bad students essay that's struggling for word count? I wish people would just post their prompts directly.
      • Retr0id 28 minutes ago
        It reminds me of the "overenthusiastic youtuber" presentation style, with jump cuts etc., just in written form. From its prevalence I can only assume that some audiences prefer it - I'd be more interested to know why that is.
    • coffeefirst 34 minutes ago
      Seriously. This is trash. It presents no evidence, contains no original ideas, it’s just written—excuse me, generated—to be as provocative as possible.

      I think I’ll just start flagging these. They’re just a new kind of spam.

    • kykat 48 minutes ago
      Because it's not people doing the writing.
    • subpixel 47 minutes ago
      Because it’s a lead generation machine
    • dude250711 48 minutes ago
      That's ChatGPT for you:

      > The ... isn’t just ... . It’s ... .

      • gchamonlive 41 minutes ago
        This is just myth and faith. Even if all AI wrote like that, it doesn't follow that all writing in that style is by AI, hence the belief in the style. Focus less on the aesthetics, more on the message. After all, for this article to have been written in the form of a sonnet was just a prompt away.
        • dude250711 1 minute ago
          These people do not put in any effort and go for defaults. I see this with images too.
    • gedy 46 minutes ago
      Because they aren't writing, it's vibe blogging or whatever
    • gchamonlive 32 minutes ago
      All of a sudden everybody is a writing style critic. The only question that is pertinent is if the message of the post is relevant.

      Think about it. You wouldn't give someone crap for writing in broken English because there are many really smart people that are non English speakers. So why are we giving crap for people using AI to write better posts? If the idea is relevant, what's the point in criticizing the style?

      A fair question would be "is the idea in the post actually the writer's or was it entirely done by AI"? However how can one actually tell if the idea, not the style is original? You can't. So it's pointless to be angry about style. Focus on the message.

      • coffeefirst 20 minutes ago
        No. I have a lot of respect for people who write in a second language. You can often tell because the content is thoughtful and some of the word choices or grammar is quirky.

        This is a bozo who prompted the machine for a viral essay. He did not write anything. He does not know anything.

        • gchamonlive 14 minutes ago
          Do you know this for a fact? How? Honest question.
  • lelandfe 49 minutes ago
    > You saw a colleague generate something 80% as good in four minutes using an AI agent. Maybe 90% as good if you’re being honest.

    Wish this were realistic - I'd have enjoyed the read more.

    • coffeefirst 29 minutes ago
      It’s possible the author is such a bad writer that this is really 90% as good as they get.

      Actually that’s probably the only way anyone would publish this without being embarrassed.

  • direwolf20 50 minutes ago
    The only way to win is to already have enough money that you don't need a job.

    Or get a physical job AI can't do. But all of those are commodities and pay shit wages.

    • sevenzero 47 minutes ago
      In my situation the next best alternative is to end it all. I wont go back to wage slavery fuck ass companies not respecting me nor my time.
      • nemomarx 38 minutes ago
        You can make other drastic decisions first if things seem that bad. Upend your life, move to a really cheap part of your country, change to a purely physical labor job or a self run business or something. All of those are less permanent and have a better chance of working out?
      • eptcyka 46 minutes ago
        Please consider reaching out to get some help.
    • DJBunnies 46 minutes ago
      AI is a glorified search engine, it can’t tell what solutions an org actually needs or how to plan & execute them safely.
      • unyttigfjelltol 17 minutes ago
        Yes, the problem is that many corporate resources cannot differentiate their roles from that of a glorified search engine. In fact, some experts on the human mind cannot effectively differentiate the human experience from that of a glorified search engine.
  • candiddevmike 45 minutes ago
    We're in a recession, it's the economy that's shrinking, not my job.
    • RGamma 30 minutes ago
      What also seems to be shrinking is the awareness that the presence of LLMs does not obviate the need to understand the world.

      Dreaming about the Star Trek future while we're on our way to Idiocracy x Waterworld or such.

    • api 42 minutes ago
      It’s a recession being masked by two things: inflation making nominal numbers not go down, and the fact that stock markets have fully decoupled from the actual economy. They are just casinos now.
  • mono442 48 minutes ago
    Work that can largely accelerate AI seems pointless to me in the current situation. It’s fairly clear to me that this will soon lead to an oversupply of workers and a drop in wages. It’s possible that wages may even fall to such a level that pursuing those professions will no longer make sense at all. Unfortunately it seems like software engineering will be one of those professions.
    • tharmas 10 minutes ago
      >this will soon lead to an oversupply of workers and a drop in wages

      Precisely. So why are our masters still panicking about population decline and hyping the need for immigration?

  • jofzar 25 minutes ago
    > Last week, you spent three hours writing a campaign brief. You saw a colleague generate something 80% as good in four minutes using an AI agent. Maybe 90% as good if you’re being honest.

    No it's like 60% as good, but management and other "AI for brains" people can't see it.

    • TaupeRanger 23 minutes ago
      If that's the case, then business results should get worse, and management should notice this. If business results don't get worse, then either 1) it's actually more than 60% as good, or 2) it doesn't matter to the business's bottom line that the result is only 60% as good instead of 80% as good, and management made the right decision.
      • tharmas 8 minutes ago
        recent Windows 11 update?
  • beauzero 26 minutes ago
    This belongs on reddit. Not HN.
    • OutOfHere 1 minute ago
      Users need to stop shaming Reddit. It doesn't belong on Reddit either.
  • FrustratedMonky 14 minutes ago
    The key "One critical caveat: this won’t work forever in its current form. Eventually, agents will get better at orchestration too. But it buys you three to five years. And in that time, you’ll see the next evolution coming"

    The suggestion does sound a bit like 'work faster'.

    Don't just work faster, but yes, work faster.

  • nemomarx 48 minutes ago
    I tried to take the headline seriously, but reading deeper into the piece they just do a semantic trick - the current job is "shrinking" and you need to find a new better job to do instead. This is basically what disappearing would imply anyway?

    Also very funny to use an AI to write this kind of article. I w wonder how they feel about their job writing blog posts shrinking.

  • arnonejoe 34 minutes ago
    My job as a software engineer is not going anywhere. It’s only getting more interesting. Nice vibe blog / fear mongering piece.
  • fwip 50 minutes ago
    AI-written article, as a heads up.
    • b40d-48b2-979e 45 minutes ago
      I feel this comment can apply to 80% of the content that gets posted anymore.
    • gedy 43 minutes ago
      We need a plugin to automatically detect AI posts as I'm basically skipping reading or clicking most links now due to a lot of it being generated word soup.
  • kykat 49 minutes ago
    The advice is: identify human constraints and remove them with agents.

    Yet another simple stupid idea inflated to a massive article with ai.