Engineer says Claude Code has made his job "soul-sucking" as workers spend 12-hour days pressing enter

https://www.techspot.com/news/113937-engineer-claude-code-has-made-job-soul-sucking.html

227 points · 34 comments · view on lemmy.world

34 Comments

Aeder@lemmy.world · 51 pts · 1d (6 replies)

What actually makes it soul sucking is if you still have a sense of duty or responsibility to deliver high quality code, because you will be knee deep in slop code without enough time to review it, or if you're forced to review it. If you stop giving a shit, you can use that time to find another job or do research for your own project.

Semi_Hemi_Demigod@lemmy.world · 12 pts · 1d (5 replies)

To be fair, thatโ€™s about every job. If Iโ€™m not either having fun or doing something useful I check out and hate my life.

CheesyFingers@piefed.social · 3 pts · 1d (4 replies)

I hate my life by default, at least working can sometimes be a productive distraction.

Coldcell@sh.itjust.works · 6 pts · 1d (3 replies)

You okay man?

Daft_ish@lemmy.dbzer0.com · 2 pts · 11h (2 replies)

Whats there to be ok about.

I live on the edge of accepting my descent into crushing poverty as a relief from crushing social anxiety.

Its quite freeing to just let the dice fall.. every time.

Coldcell@sh.itjust.works · 2 pts · 8h (1 reply)

Absolution through inconsequence is a rough road, man. What do you have/do that makes you genuinely happy?

Daft_ish@lemmy.dbzer0.com · 1 pts · 5h

Inconsequence

ExtremeDullard@piefed.social · 47 pts · 1d (1 reply)

Yep. You're a meat proxy now.

The same thing is starting to happen at my company: the engineers ask AI to do their jobs, and simply forward requests from other engineers who also ask AI to do the job. It's utterly absurd to watch.

Soul-sucking indeed...

victorz@lemmy.world · -3 pts · 18h

Just don't? ๐Ÿ™ Use AI I mean.

Embargo@lemmy.zip · 33 pts · 1d

unmagical@lemmy.ml · 26 pts · 1d (3 replies)

Why the fuck you working 12 hour days?

MalReynolds@slrpnk.net · 9 pts · 1d

Jamie Hyneman (Mythbusters): There's your problem.

(lack of unions)

Serinus@lemmy.world · 7 pts · 1d

Some people will do it for fear of losing their job.

As though it's easy to just find other people willing to work twelve hour days.

If you're filling that extremely hard to find role for them, you're the problem. You're hurting yourself, and you're hurting the rest of us.

In a high skill job if you're putting in a really solid 4-5 hours and spending the other 3-4 hours doing easy/coasting work, you've officially worked a full day and should stop both for yourself and the rest of humanity.

Don't volunteer yourself to be a slave to your job. Many many places will pressure you into doing the work of 1.5-3 people in the name of efficiency, sometimes without even realizing that's what they're doing.

Don't enable them.

If they don't have enough people for the work, that's their problem and not yours. You should report it as such.

corsicanguppy@lemmy.ca · 1 pts · 1d

Yeah. Look at this guy getting 4 hours of OT every day.

underscores@lemmy.zip · 26 pts · 1d (1 reply)

I'm not sure if I believe any story on AI that is not experienced by me or someone I know and trust

Anything that is posted online is part psyop imo

I specifically do not trust X users

Eq0@literature.cafe · 12 pts · 1d

I have heard about this complaint already, so Iโ€™m not surprised, but i donโ€™t disagree with your stance. Itโ€™s a game of distorting mirrors

red_tomato@lemmy.world · 15 pts · 1d (3 replies)

Eventually they will figure out how to automate pressing enter

HK65@sopuli.xyz · 30 pts · 1d (2 replies)

Pressing enter makes you accountable. That's the point.

Coldcell@sh.itjust.works · 18 pts · 1d

"You must approve everything regardless of consequences"

"because of the consequences we're firing you because you approved it"

"we have done nothing wrong"

chuckleslord@lemmy.world · 10 pts · 1d

Reverse-centaur shit. AI requires a human peripheral to work

Gyrcas@piefed.zip · 11 pts · 1d (7 replies)

Can confirm as someone who's a programmer, I liked my job before AI, but it sucked all the fun from it :(

victorz@lemmy.world · -2 pts · 18h (6 replies)

Just don't use it? ๐Ÿ™

Gyrcas@piefed.zip · 10 pts · 17h (5 replies)

Because I'm forced to? You think I'm given a choice by my boss?

victorz@lemmy.world · 1 pts · 11h (4 replies)

Alright, hey, it was just a question. Maybe it was a possibility. ๐Ÿคทโ€โ™‚๏ธ๐Ÿ’†โ€โ™‚๏ธ

Does your employer monitor your use of AI? Maybe you can just spend tokens on bullshit and keep working normally/manually on the side?

x0x7@lemmy.world · 6 pts · 10h (3 replies)

The productivity of AI is high. Depending on the task at hand, let's say it's UI, he's not going to produce the volume AI will.

I'm not saying using AI is smart long term. It will brain rot you completely, and you will lose meaningful skills. But these companies don't care about developers' maintaining continued learning or even retained learning. They just want to extract volume. But once they spit you out you'll have no independent skills. And saying you can prompt bots good at a job interview won't be enough because everyone can do that. Using AI is a kind of mental hazard, and no one is getting hazard pay. Unless the job is paying enough to retire in 5 years it isn't enough. Continued development is a critical part of having sufficient compensation. And these prompt jobs don't offer that. So people should quit them.

victorz@lemmy.world · 1 pts · 9h (2 replies)

I would definitely not take a job that forces me to use AI. I'd rather find another line of work.

Fluke@feddit.uk · 3 pts · 5h (1 reply)

Consider for a moment that other people may not be in a position to simply "find another line of work". Perhaps they have dependants, or medical issues, or any number of other situations that could prevent them from being able to retrain into another profession, or even to be able to switch employers.

You're in a very privileged position if finding another line of work is something actually sensibly achievable.

victorz@lemmy.world · 1 pts · 3h

Consider for a moment that other people

Yup, no problem โ€” I already was only speaking for myself when I was using "I" as the pronoun. ๐Ÿ‘

resipsaloquitur@lemmy.cafe · 7 pts · 1d

Must be nice to have a soul to suck.

2fm@lemmy.world · 6 pts · 1d

*Return

HaraldvonBlauzahn@feddit.org · 5 pts · 22h

I thi that any claims about LLM's capabilities de serve heavy skepticism.

Because of the amount of misinformation and outright propaganda that is being pumped out.

This does not mean the algorithms are incapable of anything - just that you can't trust anything without cross-checking.

The thing is we are sitting in the no mans land of an information warfare zone. People have been killed for less money than what is at stakes for the "AI" companies.

victorz@lemmy.world · 4 pts · 18h

12 hours? What country has programmers working 12 hours a day? 8h max, bro. That's my hard limit.

x0x7@lemmy.world · 1 pts · 11h (1 reply)

Being a prompter is the most replaceable job. If all of these jobs are going away, prompter is the most certain one.

We have bots that can mimic human text. You are feeding all the text from your job into an AI company. They have exclusive access to that prompt data. If there is any data they like training on more than free data, it's exclusive data. They can use it to claim they have an edge over people who only have access to open data. That gets them investment. So they 100% will train on it even independent of how well it will improve the product, which it will do that too.

Prompt engineering will not be a job in two years. Will non-prompting jobs disappear? Sure. With 80% certainty. But the lost of prompting jobs is 100% certain.

Prompting is the future of work, for about one or two more years.

aesthelete@lemmy.world · 3 pts · 10h

I kinda get what you're saying and I honestly thought the same a couple of years ago. But like...CEOs and even low level managers are not going to run this shit and deliver anything. It's way, way too much like actual work.

It does, however, expose what the pain points of software development actually are: communication, understanding, requirements being unclear, etc etc etc forever.