It's somehow more tiring, reading complex plans in response to your guidance, and then making decision after decision. Reminds me of this Alan Watts bit...

A farmer who ordered a farmhand quickly discovered he was an extraordinarily efficient worker.

The first day, he put him on sawing logs, and the farmhand sawed more logs than anybody else, ever. It was fantastic — but the wood-cutting work was all done in one day.

So, the next day, the farmer put him onto mending fences. There were all kinds of broken fences around the farm. And, again, the farmhand had all the work done in one day.

So the farmer thought, “What am I going to do with this guy?”

The next day, he took the farmhand to a basement and said, “Look, here all the potatoes that have come in from this harvest. I want you to sort them into three groups: those we sell, those we use for seeding, and those we throw away.”

He left the farmhand to it. And at the end of the day, the laborer came back and said, “Well, that’s enough, mister, I quit.”

“Oh,” the farmer replied, “You can’t quit. I’ve never had such an excellent worker. I’ll raise your salary — I’ll do anything to keep you around me.”

The farmhand said, “No. It’s all right mending fences and chopping wood, but this potato business is decision after decision after decision.”

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chasd00 a day ago | parent | next [-]

> It's somehow more tiring, reading complex plans in response to your guidance, and then making decision after decision.

This is the world of a manager working with a development team hah. When writing the code yourself is it not the same? If you're writing the code by hand then you're still making the decisions and still having to plan and design. I mean someone/something has to...

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tossandthrow a day ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Historically, we make systems to make these decisions - build a method to sort potatoes. Or build a method that can build a method to sort potatoes.

Ai, as a cognitive technology, has the potential to climb that hierarchy.

Yes, current software developers need to make more decisions now. But that is just until the methodologies settle.

Then it is over.

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cadamsdotcom a day ago | parent [-]

If you think the hierarchy has a highest level, or that abstraction can only go "this far and no further".. I don't know what to tell you.

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tossandthrow 18 hours ago | parent [-]

You don't appear to have actually read the comment?

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cadamsdotcom 15 hours ago | parent [-]

I did a poor job explaining.

See, all the potato-sorting systems and the ones that drive those and so on, those are a hierarchy without end. There'll always be some other efficiency gain. And some other machine. And the whole stack will always need a human to direct and design the hierarchy, design monitoring, remediate failures, and invent new more efficient ways.

AI is not embodied and doesn't have its own drive so it can't subsume human interest and desires - humans will always direct the machines. It will never "be over".

The humans who know this will always always always be at the top, directing the machines & designing the new ones. Yes, some people won't and they will end up in the hierarchy instead of on top. But that doesn't mean it is over. It's just over for them.

You aren't responsible for how others adapt to change. Just.. work out how to not lose. Don't defeat yourself before even trying. I can't tell you how. No one can, it's your journey. But by being here on Hacker News you're already better off than most.

	▲	tossandthrow 13 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Unless you are only trying to satisfy your own desires, you are likely not winning over the Ai, also not in judgement. A characterization of a business is to satisfy as much desire as cheaply as possible. Ai,and in the not so distant future embodied Ai, will likely outdo humans if left unchecked. Even in areas such as providing companionship, sex, etc.

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leke a day ago | parent | prev | next [-]

If the AI is asking you questions and requiring you to make decision after decision, then perhaps it's a spec issue. I know I've written a good spec if the AI does not ask any questions and doesn't get anything wrong after implementing the user story.

	▲	knickish a day ago \| parent \| next [-]
		You're not wrong, but isn't that just moving the same amount of decision making to earlier in the process?
	▲	Cerium a day ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		What is a spec but a collection of decisions?

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bluefirebrand a day ago | parent | prev [-]

For me, the stress about making decisions as an employee isn't about making a choice.

It's knowing that any moment a manager is going to wander along and change it from under me. So I might as well ask the manager first.

It showed up on my performance reviews that I'm bothering other people with questions and I should make my own choices, so I started doing that and documenting every time the choice I made got overturned by a manager. Next performance review when it came up I brought out my list. My performance reviewer was pissed at me for documenting this and I was let go four months later. :)

I would love a job where people let me make decisions after decision after decision

And yeah you could say that if my manager had to overturn my decisions that often it probably meant that I made bad decisions, and maybe that's true, but I don't think so. It was often things like "this is the best solution but it will take longer", "This low priority, do it the quick way instead". But priorities changed a lot.

	▲	AnimalMuppet 10 hours ago \| parent [-]
		But for me to be able to make decision after decision, I need to know what the over-riding guidelines are. I need to know what we're trying to build, and know it well enough that I know how my part fits. And then I need to be able to tell when I can make a decision, and when I don't have enough information to make that decision and therefore need to ask questions of someone who has a better handle on the overall picture.