I know some that was told to try and use AI more on the job so they created some agent to just burn tokens and ended up using about 10x what the next highest employee used. Buddy expected to get shit but instead got an accolade and was asked to give a short talk to the other employees about how they could match their success.

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darth_avocado 4 hours ago | parent | next [-]

In my first job ever, I used to get my work done on time and leave. There were a few people who’d stay in the office until late and show up on weekends. Same output, but they got the promotions and my bonus got prorated.

This is the same thing.

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j-bos 3 hours ago | parent | next [-]

At least this one doesn't require spending the manhours moving dung from pocket to pocket, now we finally get credit for automating it!

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jazz9k 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

While output may have been part of it. It's possible that by staying later (and working longer), they had better relationships with upper management.

"I used to get my work done on time and leave"

This sounds like you just wanted to get your work done and not foster any work relationships. This is fine, but you will not get promoted this way (as you've seen).

Moving up in a company is 30% work and 70% networking/being likelable/noticed.

I stopped that nonsense years ago. I work for myself now as a consultant. If I work more, I get paid more.

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Loughla an hour ago | parent | next [-]

I took a job with the state I live in recently because friends were promoted over competent employees (not even counting myself in that because they were just promoted to my level). New job is fully remote and has a clear path to advancement based on clear work based metrics.

While it may be true that it's pretty standard, I'm convinced that any organization that relies more on face time and friendships than on actual skill is absolutely toxic.

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reactordev an hour ago | parent | prev [-]

Moving up is 100% being likeable.

	▲	mjr00 38 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		Yes, with the caveat that the 30% work allocation counts toward likability. You can be friendly, charming, well-spoken, fun, etc., but if you fail to deliver and make work for other people, cause your coworkers frustration, and make your manager look bad, you're not going to move up. You will be able to coast for a while though, as managers have a hard time firing people they personally like. It's ultimately a combination. A pretty good software developer who is friendly and pleasant is, in most organizations, going to get promoted over the grumbling angry software developer who is brilliant but everyone hates talking to. A lot of this has to do with most work at more senior levels being communication.

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bonesss 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

That’s the part I don’t get: Engineers are smart enough to ask an LLM to ask other LLMs to ask other LLMs to load the policy manual then count the R’s in “LLM fork bomb”.

Additional story points completed per week, versus token-dollar spent, or some such combo would seem more sane.

But maybe they aren’t really tracking productivity, so tracking tokens is all they have? … I dunno which part of that is dumber.

	▲	idle_zealot an hour ago \| parent [-]
		We never figured out how to track productivity anyway. Only macro-level success in achieving measurable goals. Any AI metric besides "are similar goals being met more quickly" is people encouraging specific behaviors decided a priori.

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robotswantdata 4 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

I believe it

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dominotw 6 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

i call BS on this story

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mrgoldenbrown 4 hours ago | parent | next [-]

If you've never seen this level of perverse incentive, you have been lucky. The creation of and subsequent exploitation of them aren't new. For pre computer examples: https://freakonomics.com/podcast/the-cobra-effect-2/

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runako 3 hours ago | parent | next [-]

I can't find the reference right now, but I remember reading literature about studies done at large programming organizations (like IBM, government) who used LOCs as a performance metric. Programmers could earn more money by including more lines of code in their work. This went exactly the way you'd expect.

Edit: I think it may have been from Capers Jones's _Programming Productivity_[1]. Published in 1986, based on research covering the prior 30 years(!) or so. We have known that bad incentives specifically distort the performance of programming teams for a long time.

1 - https://archive.org/details/programmingprodu0000jone/page/n1...

	▲	ascagnel_ an hour ago \| parent [-]
		And then there was Bill Atkinson. https://www.folklore.org/Negative_2000_Lines_Of_Code.html

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breppp 4 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

The worse example I know is the time the Belgians forced the Congolese to harvest more rubber by cutting their hands if they haven't reached the correct quota, ensuing a cross-tribe hands trading economy

	▲	wayeq 3 hours ago \| parent [-]
		> cross-tribe hands trading sounds like they had some cross cutting concerns </dad>

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phainopepla2 an hour ago | parent | prev [-]

While it is good story for illustrating perverse incentives, there is no good historical evidence that the cobra bounty program actually existed.

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mrandish 5 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goodhart%27s_law

	▲	aspensmonster 4 hours ago \| parent [-]
		>This article is about statistics and government policy. For Nazi analogies in internet discussions, see Godwin's law.

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zeroonetwothree 4 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

I have seen similar at my company so it is highly plausible.

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bensyverson 4 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

I call unintended consequences on this KPI culture

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elictronic 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

They polished the turd more than stating, but the bones are real.

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DANmode 5 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

I don’t.