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points by arend321 3 days ago | 0 comments
I may not work less, but certainly different and better. Just this morning I went for a long walk on the beach, barefoot in the water. Using nothing but voice interaction, I handled a couple of outstanding CRM tasks, sorted out some accounting issues and upgraded my search infrastructure (SearXNG) and most of all enjoyed my walk outside. I would not be able to do all this without AI and would be stuck behind my desk, daydreaming about going for that walk instead.
[–] mlsu 3 days ago
With the power of AI, soon all of us can be doing outstanding CRM tasks instead of wasting time enjoying nature. Imagine the time savings we could recover by removing all quiet contemplative moments!
[–] oxavier 3 days ago
I’m a bit puzzled by this kind of comment, which pops up every time someone mentions getting some work done while out in nature.

What it seems to miss is that we get to walk around while doing some work, not the other way around. The alternative would be being stuck at a desk or in a meeting room, not quietly enjoying nature on a day off.

[–] bagacrap 2 days ago
What is the reason you couldnt use your laptop on the beach to do work in 2019? Probably mainly that you are either working or enjoying nature, not both, and if you're working, then an office with reliable Internet, no wind or sun in your face, etc, is more suitable/efficient.

Put another way: if my twin and I are both working at competing firms doing the same job, but I do it via satellite phone while hiking the PCT and he does it from in front of a keyboard, there is no way he's not getting more done, even with AI. The bandwidth of voice/text to speech is a tiny fraction of visual.

[–] oxavier 1 day ago
Thanks for asking! I have had pain in my back and and shoulders and hands from being deskbound since I was 18 and it is a constant balancing act to get in enough exercise to offset the work in front of the computer. I have also used standing desks, 500$ ergonomic keyboards, and forced remote work during covid was a godsend because I could take regular breaks to pace my living room while I was worried to be perceived as unfocused if I did this in the open space. Speaking of living room, working on my TV from a distance of 2m alleviated eye strain too, compared to using the laptop screen or even a secondary monitor at my desk.

Believe it or not, it was not practical to take my gear into nature haha. But with the advent of agentic coding (and stt solutions like handy), I can be productive with much less typing and equipment.

I have considered leaving the tech sector because of the aforementioned friction, and just like in my message above, I don't think we are considering the same dilemmas. OP said work vs contemplation, I said indoor work vs outdoor work. You mention productivity trade-offs, but for me working in tech used to feel physically unsustainable.

Cheers

[–] mepiethree 3 days ago
The counterfactual is impossible to prove here, but I think it’s at least plausible that this poster, who I guess lives near the beach, could have enjoyed their morning coffee on the beach
[–] alt227 3 days ago
> getting some work done while out in nature

> quietly enjoying nature on a day off

You seem to have your concepts mixed up!

I for one much prefer to do work at a desk instead of wandering around.

[–] soon_to_be_sb 3 days ago
Yea, it seems that the OP neither did better work, or actually enjoyed the walk (I mean, how do you enjoy walk if you don't allow your thoughts to wander?)..
[–] rnd0 3 days ago
It may be more pleasant to work outside -or it may not (it's almost winter here in Alaska -that would be a hard pass for me!). but no -it's definitely not the same, as you pointed out.
[–] volkk 2 days ago
HN/The internet:

OP: "I had an amazing time doing something. "

Commenters: "No you didn't."

[–] keiferski 3 days ago
But wouldn't it be nicer to have that walk without being plugged into your phone, and have less actual work to do when you sit down at the computer?
[–] arend321 3 days ago
For sure, and a good part can already be automated. But certain things still require human intervention and always will. Keep in mind these work related walks do not replace other outdoor activities.
[–] keiferski 3 days ago
I get the idea and I used to try and optimize my computer time this way - working in the park, working while walking, etc.

In the end it was just a hassle and a distraction. I’d rather have 5 solid hours of work and 5 hours of non-work, rather than 10 hours of an awkward hybrid.

[–] arend321 3 days ago
The type of work indeed matters a lot, if you need any visual confirmation or have to look things up yourself it's probably not worth it. As a solo entrepreneur I manage my entire business workflow. Everything is accessible from an API, from accounting to my CRM to S3 storage or my PostgreSQL cluster. Tasks can be handed off between different agents to keep things separated.

Not sure when you last tried, but I feel I would not be able to do what I do today with last years models.

[–] arcfour 3 days ago
It would be even nicer to be carried by a bunch of servants and fed exotic fruits and not have to work, too, but isn't comparison the thief of joy?
[–] talon8635 3 days ago
For many of us, this would not be a better experience. The physical and mental components of doing it yourself is half the pleasure

Of someone’s carried my ass around all day I’d be a physically atrophied and mentally addled maniac, on obese to boot if I’m stuffing my face the whole ride

Part of the dilemma with modern culture is that most people seem to be striving for and hoping technology will provide pleasure funk laziness and glut. But these things in and of themselves produce bad outcomes. I get why people really stressed out might daydream about that, but this is probably more indicative of being overworked than of the virtues of laziness and glut

[–] x187463 3 days ago
For those of us stuck in an office building, at a desk, AI models have enabled handling multiple tasks as a same time as fast as we can think. I'm absolutely doing multiple times the work I was doing before and the time between tasks is basically zero. Same pay, though, and drastically increased productivity and sense of effort.
[–] great_wubwub 3 days ago
> would be stuck behind my desk,

Or you would be unemployed and nervous about how you were going to pay your bills, replaced by someone willing to do the same work for lower cost while chained to said desk.

[–] arcfour 3 days ago
Seems excessively pessimistic.
[–] _verandaguy 3 days ago
What seems better to you, seems a bit nightmarish to me. If I'm going for a walk, the last thing I want to have on my mind is dealing with CRM software in any way.
[–] arend321 3 days ago
But it's a purpose built, tailored to my needs CRM, mostly automated. Like I ask, "which outstanding issues need my attention". I tell it what to do next, when to notify again and I'm done. All tedious form entry work is taken care of in the background.

The choice is do you want to walk or sit behind a desk when doing a task that needs human attention. It doesn't have to replace a nice "offline" outdoor activity.

[–] mgaunard 3 days ago
While giving instructions via mobile is useful, it's naive to think you'd have the same productivity as behind an actual desk.
[–] snarf21 3 days ago
But isn't the next step where your employer tasks you to codify all these tasks and capture your "process" and "reasoning" and then you can still walk on the beach all you want but you won't have work to do. Isn't the next step for a junior engineer or a single verifier to just add a minor human verification step at a higher level to remove you from the loop? I feel like there is not enough discussion about this mindset shift. Early adoption is taking away the employee moat that some people have but we don't seem to be considering that it is going to be recursive and repeating.

It reminds me of the 7-minute abs scene in Something About Mary.

[–] wainstead 3 days ago
> But isn't the next step where your employer tasks you to codify all these tasks and capture your "process" and "reasoning" and then you can still walk on the beach all you want but you won't have work to do

No, the next step is the employer to ask "why are you walking on a beach when you could be working?" and won't accept the answer that they are just orchestrating agents.

The only part the employer will focus on is "walking on a beach" and think "I don't pay you to walk on a beach."

(Caveat: OP might be running their own business. That's different. Also makes me rethink my life choices a bit).

[–] m_dupont 3 days ago
Whats your setup? If I may ask
[–] arend321 3 days ago
Vertically integrated solo business on a Patroni controlled PostgreSQL cluster spread out over multiple dedicated servers with multiple providers.

Shocks Opencomm 2 headset or my Sony xm6 earbuds connected to a custom Android app. Android local Supertonic model for text to voice, private whisper on the server for voice to text. Local Nvidia Glider LLM for PII filtering of CRM related data. The Android app controls codex app server instances (mostly working with latest GPT model on high), switches between projects and threads based on voice commands, a ton of little tweaks to optimize my workflow. Every service except the public facing website runs behind a Wireguard VPN.

[–] alerighi 3 days ago
Yes of course your employer is fine with you going walking barefoot on a beach instead of being in the office working, and it's happy to pay you the same money. Come on...

Also, you are telling me that you can get only with voice interaction an AI to write well engineered and maintainable code, something I've yet to see an AI be able to do, to me the result that they tend is at best the same of a junior developer, except that the junior developer learns, the AI continues to make the same mistakes (because it's context is limited, when it's full it's full).

[–] hobo123 2 days ago
Junior dev was maybe half a year ago. Now LLMs write seriously useful code, at least in my humble experience.