Comment by teyopi
14 hours ago
I’ve started doing a quick background check on authors before I dive into their content. This piece starts with the assumption that the writer is closely involved in engineering, but a little research reveals they don't actually work in active software development.
I’ll pass on this.
p.s. I’m happy to read authors with opposing views. Issue is with people who make claims, without having recent direct experience.
A better test is to see if the author stands to financially (or other ways) benefit from the posts future predictions coming true. They also fail this one.
That is also an influence, although that has a risk if one over-indexes on it and getting into tunnel-vision territory.
If the opposing view is indeed correct and I dismiss them just because they voted with their feet or money, that would be unfair and damage building a diverse view of the debate landscape and opinions.
But you can be a software dev even if you do not work in software dev. Plenty of those individuals in open source, for example.
writing software for a hobby is different from hundreds of thousand that do it 40+ hours per week, go into planning into retros into milestone review meetings etc.
I am painting in my free time as a hobby. I do not think I am an authority or should be taken seriously when taking about impact of AI on artists.
It's easy to spend way more than 40 hours per week on a hobby. Even if you don't, a few hours per week from age 10 still results in cumulative "years of work experience".