Posted by mips_avatar 13 hours ago
[…]
Seattle has talent as good as anywhere. But in San Francisco, people still believe they can change the world—so sometimes they actually do.”
Nope, still completely fucking tone deaf.
Seattle has been screwed over so many times in the last 20 years that its a shell of itself.
As to the point of the article, is it just to say "People shouldn't hate LLMs"? My takeaway was more "This person's future isn't threatened directly so they just aren't understanding why people feel this way." but I also personally believe that, if the CEOs have their way, AI will threaten every job eventually.
So yeah I guess I'm just curious what the conclusion presented here is meant to be?
As somebody who has lived in Seattle for over 20 years and spent about 1/3 of it working in big tech (but not either of those companies), no, I don't really think so. There is a lot of resentment, for the same reasons as everywhere else: a substantial big tech presence puts anyone who can't get on the train at a significant economic disadvantage.
If you are a writer or a painter or a developer - in a city as expensive as Seattle - then one may feel a little threatened. Then it becomes the trickle down effect, if I lose my job, I may not be able to pay for my dog walker, or my child care or my hair dresser, or...
Are they sympathetic? It depends on how much they depend on those who are impacted. Everyone wants to get paid - but AI don't have kids to feed or diapers to buy.
SF embraces tech and in general (politics, etc) has a culture of being willing to try new things. Overall tech hostility is low, but the city becoming a testbed for projects like Waymo is possibly changing that. There is a continuous argument that their free-spirited culture has been cannibalized by tech.
Seattle feels like the complete opposite. Resistant to change, resistant to trying things, and if you say you work in tech you're now a "techbro" and met with eyerolls. This is in part because in Seattle if you are a "techbro" you work for one of the megacorps whereas in SF a "techbro" could be working for any number of cool startups.
As you mentioned, Seattle has also been taken over by said megacorps which has colored the impressions of everyone. When you have entire city blocks taken over by Microsoft/Amazon and the roads congested by them it definitely has some negative domino effects.
As an aside, on TV we in the Seattle area get ads about how much Amazon has been doing for the community. Definitely some PR campaign to keep local hostility low.
I think most people in Seattle know how economics works, logic follows: while "techbro" don't work is true: if "techbro" debt > income: unless assets == 0: sellgighustle else sellhousebeforeforeclosure nomoreseattleforyou("techbro") end else "gigbot" isn't summoned and people don't get paid. "techbro" health-- due to high expense of COBRA. [etc...] end end
(.. and exactly how is boeing doing since it was forced to move away from 'engineering culture' by moving out of the city where their workforce was trained and training the next generation. Oh yeah planes are falling out of the sky and their software is pushing planes into the ground.)
Anecdotally, I work at a different FAANMG+whatever company in Seattle that I feel has actually done a pretty good job with AI internally: providing tools that we aren't forced to use (i.e. they add selectable functionality without disrupting existing workflows), not tying ratings/comp to AI usage (seriously how fucking stupid are they over in Redmond?), and generally letting adoption proceed organically. The result is that people have room to experiment with it and actually use it where it adds real value, which is a nonzero but frankly much narrower slice than a lot of """technologists""" and """thought leaders""" are telling us.
Maybe since Microsoft and Amazon are the lion's share (are they?) of big tech employment in Seattle, your point stands. But I think you could present it with a bit of a broader view, though of course that would require more research on your part.
Also, I'd be shocked if there wasn't a serious groundswell of anti-AI sentiment in SF and everywhere else with a significant tech industry presence. I suspect you are suffering from a bit of bias due to running in differently-aligned circles in SF vs. Seattle.
Wrt. AI specifically, I guess we are simply a) not using AI as an excuse to lay off scores of employees (at least, not yet) and b) not squeezing the employees who remain with arbitrary requirements that they use shitty AI tools in their work. More generally, participation in design work and independent execution are encouraged at all levels. At least in my part of the company, there simply isn't the same kind of miserable, paranoid atmosphere I hear about at MS and Amazon these days. I am not aware of any rigidly enforced quota for PIPing people. Etc.
Generally, it feels like our leadership isn't afflicted with the same kind of desperate FOMO fever other SMEGMAs are suffering from. Of course, I don't mean to imply there haven't been layoffs in the post free money era, or that some people don't end up on shitty teams with bad managers who make them miserable, or that there isn't the usual corporate bullshit, etc.
If it was about the technology, then it would be no different than being a java/c++ developer and calling someone who does html and javascript their equal so pay them. It's not.
People get anxious when something may cause them to have to change - especially in terms of economics and the pressures that puts on people beyond just "adulting". But I don't really think you explained the why of their anxiety.
Pointing the finger at AI is like telling the Germans that all their problems are because of Jews without calling out why the Germans are feeling pressure from their problems in the first place.
As a customer, I actually had an MS account manager once yelled at me for refusing to touch <latest newfangled vaporware from MS> with a ten foot pole. Sorry, burn me a dozen times; I don't have any appendages left to care. I seriously don't get Microsoft. I am still flabbergasted anytime anyone takes Microsoft seriously.
Presumably the account manager is under a lot of pressure internally...
Do they repeatedly yell at you?
Do you know how your <vaporware> usage was measured - what metrics was the account manager supposed to improve?
> Bring up AI in a Seattle coffee shop now and people react like you're advocating asbestos.
can you please share the methodology you used to reach this conclusion?
in other words - what is the sample size? how many Seattle coffee shops did you walk into and yell out "hey, what do people think about AI?" (or did you gather the data in a different way, such as by approaching individual people at the coffee shop?)
what is your control group? in other words, how many SF coffee shops did you visit and conduct the same experiment?
I feel bad for people who work at dystopian places where you can't just do the job, try to get ahead etc. It is set up to make people fail and play politics.
I wonder if the company is dying slowly but with AI hype qaand old good foundations keeping her stock price going.
It has all the telltale signs: lots of em-dashes but also "punched up" paragraphs, a lot of them end with a zinger, e.g.
> Amazon folks are slightly more insulated, but not by much. The old Seattle deal—Amazon treats you poorly but pays you more—only masks the rot.
or
> Seattle has talent as good as anywhere. But in San Francisco, people still believe they can change the world—so sometimes they actually do.
Once or twice can be coincidence, but a full article of it reads a tiny bit like AI slop.
I'm not sure why you needed it for edits though, since you seem good at writing generally.
Satya has completely wasted their early lead in AI. Google is now the leader.
What's gonna be super interesting is that I'm going to have an rpi zero 2 power up my machine when I press the controller's ps-button. That means I might need to solder and do some electrical voodoo that I've never tried. Crossing my fingers that the plan ChatGPT has come up with won't electrocute me.
Big tech workers might be perceiving writing on the wall sooner - there have already been some layoffs.
I also find a lot of technpeollemsurprisinglynhabent spent as much time with AI over the past 3 years compared to other techs.
There is zero push in my org to use any of these tools. I don't really use them at all but know some coworkers who do and that's fine. Sounds like this is a rare and lucky arrangement.