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ivanstojic commented on Where I'm at with AI   paulosman.me/2026/01/18/w... · Posted by u/crashwhip
ivanstojic · a month ago
> If you asked me six months ago what I thought of generative AI, I would have said

It’s always this tired argument. “But it’s so much better than six months ago, if you aren’t using it today you are just missing out.”

I’m tired of the hype boss.

ivanstojic commented on AI is a horse (2024)   kconner.com/2024/08/02/ai... · Posted by u/zdw
throw310822 · 2 months ago
Famously Steve Jobs said that the (personal) computer is "like a bicycle for the mind". It's a great metaphor because- besides the idea of lightness and freedom it communicates- it also described the computer as multiplier of the human strength- the bicycle allows one to travel faster and with much less effort, it's true, but ultimately the source of its power is still entirely in the muscles of the cyclist- you don't get out of it anything that you didn't put yourself.

Bu the feeling I'm having with LLMs is that we've entered the age of fossil-fuel engines: something that moves on its own power and produces somewhat more than the user needs to put into it. Ok, in the current version it might not go very far and needs to be pushed now and then, but the total energy output is greater than what users need to put in. We could call it a horse, except that this is artificial: it's a tractor. And in the last months I've been feeling like someone who spent years pushing a plough in the fields, and has suddenly received a tractor. A primitive model, still imperfect, but already working.

ivanstojic · 2 months ago
When tractors were invented, there was a notable reduction in human employment in agriculture in the USA. From a research paper (https://faculty.econ.ucdavis.edu/faculty/alolmstead/Recent_P...):

> The lower-bound estimate represents 18 percent of the total reduction in man-hours in U.S. agriculture between 1944 and 1959; the upper-bound estimate, 27 percent

I'm not seeing that with LLMs.

ivanstojic commented on Why outcome-billing makes sense for AI Agents   valmi.io/blog/an-imperati... · Posted by u/rajvarkala
altcognito · 3 months ago
This is an article written by a company/llm trying to justify huge increases to the pricing structure.

Oh! Yknow that thing we were charging you $200 a month for now? We're going to start charging you for the value we provide, and it will now be $5,000 a month.

Meanwhile, the metrics for "value" are completely gamed.

ivanstojic · 3 months ago
At the same time, I actually wouldn’t mind a world in which AI agents cost $5000 a month if that’s what companies want to charge.

I feel like at some level that would remove the possibility of making a “just as good as humans but basically free” arguments and move discussion in the direction that feels more productive: discussing real benefits and shortcomings of both. Eg, loss of context with agents vs HR costs with humans, etc…

ivanstojic commented on Why outcome-billing makes sense for AI Agents   valmi.io/blog/an-imperati... · Posted by u/rajvarkala
ivanstojic · 3 months ago
I started reading the article and immediately got hit by the incorrect statement in the opening:

> If AI agents help each support employee handle 30% more tickets, that's like adding 30 new hires to a 100-person team, without the cost.

I think this is an oversimplification designed to make LLMs seem more profitable than they actually are.

ivanstojic commented on How to manage oncall as an engineering manager?    · Posted by u/frugal10
ivanstojic · a year ago
TL;DR: on-call manages acute issues, documents steps taken, possibly farms out immediate work to subject matter experts. Rate on-call based on traces they leave behind. Separate on-call with same population, but longer rotation window handles fixes. Rate this rotation based on root cause reoccurrence and general ticket stats trendlines.

Longer reply:

I have on-call experience for major services (DynamoDB front door, CosmosDB storage, OCI LoadBalancer). Seen a lot of different philosophies. My take:

1. on-call should document their work step by step in tickets and make changes to operational docs as they go: a ticket that just has "manual intervention, resolved" after 3 hours is useless; documenting what's happening is actually your main job; if needed, work to analyze/resolve acute issues can be farmed out

2. on-call is the bus driver, shouldn't be tasked with handling long term fixes (or any other tasks beyond being on-call)

3. handover between on-calls is very important, prevents accidentally dropping the ball on resolving longer time horizon issues; handover meetings

Probably the most controversial one: separate rotation (with a longer window - eg. 2 week) should handle tasks that are RCA related or drive fixes to prevent reoccurrence

Managers should not be first tier on any pager rotation, if you wouldn't approve pull requests, you shouldn't be on the rotation (other than as a second tier escalation). Reverse should also hold: if you have the privilege to bless PRs, you should take your turn in the hot seat.

ivanstojic commented on Happy New Year HN!    · Posted by u/thunderbong
ivanstojic · 2 years ago
Thanks for being here over the years. The faces changed some, stayed the same some, but it’s good people and good conversation!

May you all have a happy new year, and many more!

ivanstojic commented on Ask HN: Tell us about your project that's not done yet but you want feedback on    · Posted by u/abj
ivanstojic · 3 years ago
I've been playing around with a limited PCB autorouter for mechanical keyboards. You feed it a KLE layout file, and it spits out a KiCad PCB, layout map for QMK firmware, and various SVG cuts for case machining.
ivanstojic commented on Ancient Earth globe   dinosaurpictures.org/anci... · Posted by u/hendler
ivanstojic · 3 years ago
The country lines on the globe are ridiculously out of date, and show countries that haven’t existed for 30 years.

u/ivanstojic

KarmaCake day996October 11, 2008
About
I'm a principal engineer with a history of working for large software companies in Europe and the US.

All opinions are my own.

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