Ask HN: Are other people seeing a spike in IT problems with businesses?

PPaulHoule about 4 hours ago 4 comments

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In the last month it seems like I've experienced a surge in businesses having IT screwups. For instance my wife paid my homeowner's insurance bill but they referred my bill to a lawyer for collections and canceled my policy. (To her credit when my agent was notified she got my policy reinstated) Now I have a UPS package that seems to have been stuck in Montana for a week but what I am seeing on the tracker doesn't make complete sense.

Have I just had bad luck or are other people seeing this? Can we blame vibe coding? Are we living in Gas Town now?

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toomuchtodo•about 4 hours ago

If you push systems to failure by squeezing workers, continually rolling layoffs, and disregarding quality (because consumers are sticky and will put up with a lot, especially if there are no other options), systems eventually fail. Money is expensive now [1], labor supply will decline into the future [2], its a fight for profits and growth versus labor in an unfavorable macro. "Productivity."

(also seeing similar failures, both as a consumer and inside clients pushing their organizations as systems to failure, "how few people or inexpensive talent can we operate this business with?")

[1] https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/FEDFUNDS

[2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47680794 (citations)

Imustaskforhelp•about 4 hours ago

I think this makes up for an interesting question.

my interpretation is similar to mitchell's that there are influential people within tech (jobs,influencers and just about anything) who are genuinely and utterly convinced with AI psychosis.

If you create a non-deterministic tech that is so powerful to psychosis people (who well should know better) then, it creates for problems down the line and you are just a side-effect of that. Especially, lately it seems that most AI is directed towards investors and not consumers (There is HN post trending about it essentially)

So well, you are just side-product of a larger psychosis. I believe that the tech is cool and it has genuine use-cases and many things but there has to be nuanced opinions about it but we as humans are similar to computers in this one thing that we want either 1 and 0 and can't capture this particular nuance perhaps.

slau•about 2 hours ago

I don’t think we used to be this way. I think the binary aspect of modern discourse was designed. A lot of arguments are reduced to us v them. It is as if holding two simultaneous opinions is now a bag thing.

Politicians used to rely on facts. On evidence. Colbert, like him or not, hit the nail on the head over a decade ago: “We live in a post-truth world.”

Maybe it’s a side effect of modern media platforms. You either like or dislike. If you don’t do either… do you even exist?

The tribalism has been pushed to an incredible level. You can’t agree with part of someone’s discourse. You either fully agree or fully disagree with them.

Imustaskforhelp•about 2 hours ago

I think that people still hold nuanced opinions. It's just that the algorithm doesn't reward that. So perhaps there is some person writing nuanced opinions but there would be no views of it.

At the end perhaps I will sound un-knowledgable and technically I am because there is just so much to learn in world! but my opinion on AI has started to faze into an: "I don't know man"

so... that doesn't meaningfully add to people's life anything. What they want is validation, that either they are right about using AI and they can print millions with it or that they are right about AI and its all a fad and how they are right for not using it and falling into the trap.

So both these views get algorithm'd to people in their own feeds, especially completely pro AI psychosis. They interact with the polarizing think-piece and they achieve their goal of monetization or what-not.

This is my opinion on social media, you can find nuanced opinions but its like finding needle in hay-stack.

I want to be honest here and say this, there is a difference in using AI as well. For example, I really like to use AI to automate other people's work if I see someone doing some work. I really just think of (any) technology which can help automate or do anything which can help them or just out of curiosity, and I also build things for fun and for my own use cases.

but at the same time, I am against the fact of using AI in software industry as I have found enough evidence that aside from prototyping, it can still fall short in numerous things. I have found anecdotal evidence where tech engineers are expected to get 10x and then burn out and personally called out if they are honest ie. honesty isn't favoured yet other employees are working till late night just to do the things that they have promised.

What the fuck is this. Management doesn't even probably know or if they know, they might as well leave it knowingly unknown because this allows them to get work easier... I wish to use stronger words like exploitation as well because that is what is happening to engineers or designers or many other people just about in general.

Basically, although the intelligence metric has skyrocketed and intelligence might've become commoditized. I am unsure what is left behind or the lateral expectations left behind if we are all expected to be less honest and be more 10x engineers while that is simply not possible if you are actually good after a point. There's so much nuance that gets lost in these discussions imo but I have tried to give some nuance that I have seen personally visible talking to people online and offline.