Hacker News with Generative AI: Work

No matter what you do, always leave a breadcrumb (garrit.xyz)
This applies to work tasks just as much as it applies to hobbies. No matter what you do, always create some sort of breadcrumb that you or someone else can pick up down the line.
Life lessons from 90-year-olds who are still working, active, financially savvy (msn.com)
The Three C's of Meaningful Work (psychologytoday.com)
In today’s rapidly evolving workplace, employees are seeking more than just a paycheck—they want meaning in their work.
How AI made your life worse (miserablyemployed.com)
Look, when they told us AI was coming, we imagined something better. Not utopia exactly, but at least... easier. Fewer meetings. Less grunt work. Maybe time to see sunlight, maybe even touch grass. But instead? It’s the same bleak dystopia, just now with predictive analytics and chatbots that want your job. Welcome to the future. You still have to write reports. You still have to go to all-hands meetings.
Experience Doesn't Stack: The Myth of Collective Knowledge (joanwestenberg.com)
We treat knowledge like so much cargo. Stack it high enough, gather enough people, and surely you'll reach critical mass. Twenty smart people, each with a year of experience, must be just as good as one person with twenty years. Right?
The cult of doing business (commonwealmagazine.org)
In his new book, Make Your Own Job: How the Entrepreneurial Work Ethic Exhausted America, historian Erik Baker calls this self-help ideology “the rot festering at the core” of our national obsession with work.
Miserably Employed (miserablyemployed.com)
Miserably Employed
Teens maintained a mainframe and it went about as well as you'd imagine (theregister.com)
This week, meet a reader we'll Regomize as "Serge," who, when he was just 16 years old, scored an amazing job: Working the night shift at a mainframe-for-hire company, alongside one of his friends.
Groundhog Day made me quit my job, move house and leave my girlfriend (theguardian.com)
When I saw Bill Murray’s classic comedy I realised that I was trapped in my own unfulfilling time loop
The coming knowledge-work supply-chain crisis (worksonmymachine.substack.com)
Remember the first time an autocomplete suggestion nailed exactly what you meant to type? Multiply that by a thousand and aim it at every task you once called “work.” AI is scaling the creation side of knowledge work at an exponential rate, but our decision-making tools and rituals remain stuck in the past. The imbalance creates bottlenecks in everything from code reviews to roadmapping and everything in between.
Are people bad at their jobs or are the jobs just bad? (annehelen.substack.com)
A Bed Assembly Drama
The Lonely Work of Moderating Hacker News (2019) (newyorker.com)
Open-plan offices offer few pleasures; one of them is snooping on other people’s browsing habits.
The April Fools joke that might have got me fired (blogspot.com)
Everyone should pull one great practical joke in their lifetimes. This one was mine, and I think it's past the statute of limitations. The story is true. Only the names are redacted to protect the guilty.
Ask HN: Best and worst jobs of your career and why? (ycombinator.com)
Ask HN: Best and worst jobs of your career and why?
Microsoft introduce two reasoning agents for work: Researcher and Analyst (microsoft.com)
Today, we’re excited to introduce two first-of-their-kind reasoning agents for work: Researcher and Analyst.
Sell yourself, sell your work (solipsys.co.uk)
Doing technically brilliant work may be enough for your personal gratification, but you should never think it's enough. If you lock yourself in a room and do the most marvellous work but don't tell anyone, then no one will know, no one will benefit, and the work will be lost. You may have derived personal satisfaction from it, but as far as the wider world is concerned, you may as well not have bothered.
5 years after Covid, the return-to-office push is stronger than ever (cnbc.com)
Show HN: I made a little tool called "Break Me" to help you cool off at work (breakme.now)
The Tyranny of Work or Why Are We Still Measured by Our Productivity? (anticapitalistmusings.com)
The idea that work is a moral duty rather than a means of survival is so deeply ingrained we rarely question it. But as technology advances and work becomes more precarious, exhausting, and intrusive, it is worth asking why productivity remains the measure of a person’s worth.
Federal employees begin to receive second work accomplishment email (thehill.com)
Federal employees on Friday began receiving a second email asking them to list bullet points on what they did during the past week, as the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) continues to recommend cuts to the workforce.
DOGE will use AI to assess the responses of federal workers (nbcnews.com)
Responses to the Elon Musk-directed email to government employees about what work they had accomplished in the last week are expected to be fed into an artificial intelligence system to determine whether those jobs are necessary, according to three sources with knowledge of the system.
Freelancing: How I found clients, part 1 (crocspace.substack.com)
It took me 2 years to get my first client as an independent freelancer.
Borrowing from a tactic at X, Elon Musk says government workers must (nytimes.com)
Elon Musk deepened the confusion and alarm of workers across the federal government Saturday by ordering them to summarize their accomplishments for the week, warning that a failure to do so would be taken as a resignation.
Ask HN: Who's regularly using LLMs at work? (ycombinator.com)
For those of you that are, what do you do and what are you using them for?
Decisions are temporary, so make the call and move on (basecamp.com)
Done. Start to think of it as a magical word. When you get to done it means something’s been accomplished. A decision has been made and you can move on. Done means you’re building momentum.
All federal agencies ordered to terminate remote work–ideally within 30 days (arstechnica.com)
All federal agencies received a memo Wednesday requiring the termination of remote work options, with return-to-office plans due by end of day Friday.
Work Is Just Work (robinrendle.com)
I love work. It drives me. It’s exciting. Everything about building things with folks is a pure thrill.
Show HN: Move Frequently – Stay active with a 1-min exercise every 45 minutes (movefrequently.com)
Help combat sedentary work culture!
America Needs to Rethink What It Means to Be Old (theatlantic.com)
As 100-year lifespans become more common, the time has come for a new approach to school, work, and retirement.
Ask HN: What's Your Morning Routine? (ycombinator.com)
recently got let go, and am trying to stay focused and productive despite all the unstructured time.<p>starting the day off with a constructive morning routine seems necessary right now.<p>what's your morning routine? does it work for you?