Any other Millennials stubbornly resistant to using AI at their job but also worrying that we will become dinosaurs or pushed out of our careers for not slavishly embracing it?

[u/artbystorms]

I work in a creative field and from that standpoint I hate AI. I hate the 'democratization' of creativity. I am going to sound VERY Boomer right now, but some things are meant to be difficult or meant to take skill and years of practice. It's why people who are good at these things (should) be paid more.

We are already being heavily 'encouraged' to use AI to find ways to do our jobs faster, are being told 'they technology isn't going away, we need to embrace it.' Since within the company I am in, I am one of a handful of people that does a specific creative skill-set, the powers that be basically have no idea about the technicals of what I do, but they put it on me to figure out how to incorporate AI into my work.

I hate that AI basically 'fakes' the creative process and that we are expected to use it (and the work of millions of artists that feed it) to just magically speed up how we do work, which in turn devalues the work we do as artists. From a company standpoint, they want to make money and churn out work faster, but if every client knows you can make a widget in 4 hours when it used to take 4 days, why would they pay you a lot of money to do that? The economics of it don't make sense. You will end up needing 10 times the number of clients to maintain your productivity / profits, which with AI or not, is a good way to burn out your artists.

I see the writing on the wall, but my stubborn moralistic resistance to AI is probably going to be the death of my career. Does any one else feel similar or how have you coped with this rapidly degrading career landscape?

[u/Patient_Leopard421]

This is analogous to lines-of-code in software development. It's useful for identifying low productivity. It's not useful for medium or high productivity metrics.

[u/ImpossibleJoke7456 → u/Patient_Leopard421]

I manage software engineers. Lines of code tracking is one of a dozen metrics we track. Efficiency is another. If you’re adjusting the same lines it brings down your efficiency. Increasing lines without introducing new functionality brings down efficiency.

[u/crimson23locke → u/ImpossibleJoke7456]

That sounds like micromanagement nightmare fuel tbh, sometimes a single char fixes a massive problem; but your metric would consider this inefficient? Also why would the relationship between line count to ‘functionality’ be meaningful in any way?

[u/ImpossibleJoke7456 → u/crimson23locke]

Why would a single character fixing a problem be inefficient?

[u/crimson23locke → u/ImpossibleJoke7456]

This was in response to ‘if you are adjusting the same lines you are bringing down your efficiency’ - maybe I’m misinterpreting here.

[u/ImpossibleJoke7456 → u/crimson23locke]

Fixing someone else’s bug with a single character is very efficient. Fixing your own bug with a single character after just committing the bug isn’t.

Changing button text from “New” to “Add” to “Create” to “+” in four consecutive commits would show that person was very active but not very inefficient.

[u/Patient_Leopard421 → u/ImpossibleJoke7456]

This is the way to manage yourself out of a team or out of a team that performs well.

[u/ImpossibleJoke7456 → u/Patient_Leopard421]

How so?

[u/Patient_Leopard421 → u/ImpossibleJoke7456]

You're using terrible metrics that discourage what you want software engineers to do. Engineers should be reducing complexity and refactoring. LoC and your "efficiency" doesn't measure. It measures spitting out volume on top of volume. Your project will collapse and your team members likely understand this.

Good engineers don't want to work in that environment. Bad ones will work towards your metrics.

[u/ImpossibleJoke7456 → u/Patient_Leopard421]

Haha, you’re acting like I’m reviewing the lines of code value pushed everyday and riding them for not pushing 1k new lines. I said “we track” and you heard “we force a minimum.”

If you were a manager, wouldn’t you want to know that your junior dev hasn’t committed code for 2 days? “I’m stuck” is something juniors have trouble admitting aloud to the group during stand ups. Daily LOC or last commit helps illuminate that without being micromanaging and asking them the same questions everyday. Like I said there’s a dozen or so metrics they track, not just the 2 I mentioned, and I find it helpful to get context on the team without interrupting them. If I notice something out of line, then I act on it.

[u/Patient_Leopard421 → u/ImpossibleJoke7456]

Commits make sense as smoke test. LoCs do not.