ByElizabeth Hours Updated
Comments 177 Comments

Frugal Friday’s Workwear Report: Satin Essential Shirt

This post may contain affiliate links and Corporette® may earn commissions for purchases made through links in this post. As an Amazon Associate, I earn from qualifying purchases.

A woman wearing a light blue button-front blouse, black belt, black pants, and carrying a black handbag

Our daily workwear reports suggest one piece of work-appropriate attire in a range of prices.

A silky button-up shirt always looks so elegant, and this one from Ann Taylor is a real winner. If real silk isn’t in your budget, this machine-washable top would be a great addition to a business formal wardrobe. When it comes to classic business looks, it’s hard to beat a suit and button-up, and this one comes in a bunch of fabulous colors. I would wear the light blue with a navy blazer for a day in court. 

The top is on sale for $55.65 at Ann Taylor and comes in sizes XXS-XXL and XXSP-XLP, although in fewer color options. 

Standards & Practices has a plus-size option at Nordstrom that's available in 1X-3X for $88. (If it ends up being too shiny, you can take advantage of the free returns policy!)

Looking for real silk?

Some of the best silk blouses for work in 2026 include Kobi Halperin, Equipment, Everlane, Vince, L'Agence, M.M.LaFleur, Cuyana, Elie Tahari, and Ruti — also keep an eye out for Amour Vert blouses on resale sites. If you're on a budget, check out Quince.

woman wears black silk blouse
Ruti
beige silk bodysuit that looks like a blouse tucked into white pants
Quince
royal blue stretch silk blouse with split neck
Kobi Halperin
model wears a silk blouse with black and blue dark florals
L'Agence

Sales of note for 2/6:

177 Comments

  1. Data scientists, please help! I need to learn to scrape data from a website ASAP (terms of service do not prohibit this) for an advocacy project. I have experience with data analysis in R and some familiarity with Python but have no clue about scraping. Web searches do not yield helpful results. I find Stack Exchange chaotic and disorganized. Can anyone point me to a good resource for getting started?

    1. I don’t personally use it or recommend it for various reasons but the people I know would no doubt ask ChatGPT for a script to do it.

      1. This will probably require BeautifulSoup4 and a lot of digging around the html of the page. You can do this by going to View -> Developer mode.

        It may require Selenium, but that’s a pain.

        I think asking for a chatgpt generated script in R or Python as a starting point could totally work. If not there are a lot of examples of how to use BeautifulSoup online

          2. AI is good for corporate speak, peopleing, and generic issues. It flounders with anything technical or highly skilled. Comms, social media posts, emails… great. Analysis of complex scientific issues… not so great.

          3. “Using AI at work is what makes me think it’s often not the right tool.”

            Preach. It is great for closed-ended tasks, like categorizing structured documents that use a restricted vocabulary. Not much else.

          4. What model were you using? I wasn’t impressed with the first coding assistant we had but the ones I use now are pretty good.

          5. lol don’t worry, at my work it’s the people using AI getting rude awakenings. Like another poster memorably said, they look dead behind the eyes and it’s starting to show in their progression (or lack thereof).

        2. It’s easier, faster, and can customize the script to your actual requirements. A forum post may have some of what you need but rarely does one stack exchange post solve everything you need.

          1. This makes sense to me if you’re not going in clueless. Without any context or experience, it’s harder to assess if what you got is what you needed.

          2. I feel like it’s pretty useful if you’re not sure how something works, tbh. You can ask it to break down each step and explain what the code does, why it wrote it that way, where to find the documentation, etc. All instantly. You don’t have to give it a few days to see if anyone replies to your post with actual good advice.

        3. anything on sub stack and GitHub is tailored towards experts, and chatgpt will happily translate it to your individual level of experience. Imagine someone doesn’t speak English, and it would be a high amount of effort to translate technical content into 100+ languages to make it accessible to an audience with a diverse set of languages. LLMs can solve exactly that problem, scaling the translation perfectly to the specific audience with ease.

          1. I find it difficult to work with ChatGPT in areas of low expertise, because it is much harder for me to tell what it has gotten wrong. But I’ve successfully followed step by step instructions in areas of extreme non-expertise like solving a tech problem by running some kind of script (and if that is the wrong language, I wouldn’t know). I can see using ChatGPT to help troubleshoot or apply a solution I found elsewhere.

      3. If you want an all-in-one resource to read instead of piecing together stack overflow, you want Ryan Mitchell’s Web Scraping with Python. The Armadillo book.

    2. You may also be able to use ai deep research to do this, depending on what you need to scrape. Google “RPA (robotic processing)” if you want to actually code it but as suggested below have AI write the code.

    3. If it’s just one website, you can use Beautiful Soup in a python script. If you want to describe your requirements in more detail there may be a better approach. You can also use AI to help you generate what you need. This is one of the practical uses of AI.

      1. Yes, it’s a single website. I have a list of individual entities for which I need to pull one variable. I need the script to search for each entity on the list, click for detail, and then extract one value from a table on a pop-up.

        1. You got this. I’m sure you could search for a Beautiful Soup tutorial to parse the data and then make a request to any url that’s used for the popup windows and scrape that data. Or use selenium, as someone suggested. If you get stuck AI will probably do it for you with good prompting.

    4. I would reach out to the local colleges and ask if a recent graduate is available to help deliver this, either bachelor or masters student.

      So many of our recent graduates are not working and need experience. I would most definitely throw this their way and offer to provide references and assistance with finding work if they do a good job.

        1. I am OP and I am doing this myself for free! Definitely not asking or hiring anyone else.

    1. Also their pants. Sales associate brought them to me after I was having a full on theory pants induced melt down and years later, they are still my favorite.

    2. I went to their website and oof — those sandals the model is wearing. I can feel my feet blistering.

  3. Any recs for ankle socks that dont slide down but also dont have a tight elastic? I keep striking out. Google says I should be looking for diabetic socks?

    1. I have some ankle-style compression socks and they are VERY tight.

      Have you tried Goldtoe socks? The ones I like are crew-style but I think they have ankle styles too.

    4. All I can think of–and it’s a distinct look–are the socks that have the lettuce-edge finish, like the Bombas ones. Probably not what you’re looking for?

    5. I bought Celersport socks on Amazon earlier this year on an influencer recommendation and they seem to fit your criteria. I have the quarter/ankle height, not no show, bc the no shows always slide down for me. I’ve now bought a few packs because they’re pretty soft and 6 months in haven’t stretched out or slid down much.

      If your socks always slide down when walking or running (mine do bc I have a narrow heel), I’d recommend checking out the lace lock technique. This reduces the friction and my socks fall down a lot less.

    6. My go to ankle socks are Smartwool running socks. I bought a bunch 10 or 15 years ago and they’re still going strong, so I don’t think they make that particular model anymore, but there are several similar looking ones. I’m very sensitive to tight elastic, but these don’t bother me, and they don’t slip at all.

    8. Are you wearing socks that are the right size for your foot length and circumference?

      As a hand knitter who makes socks, socks that fall down are either way too big in circumference (so they fall b/c there is no friction to keep them on), way too small in circumference (so they fall b/c they are trying to find the skinniest spot to rest), or too short in the foot (so they “fall” because you can’t actually pull them up all the way in the first place).

    10. you could also take a look at Wide Open socks on amazon — haven’t tried them but was looking at them for my plus-sized mom who can’t stand socks with elastic that cut into her.

      Have you tried bombas? I love those. Not sure how they might be seen as having a tight elastic.

  4. My nerves are fried — pending storm (we are due for ice and most certainly will lose power, the reconnect time is often long enough for indoor temps to go down below 50 degrees and with any ice it will be hard to move to a hotel (debating moving now)) and then last night’s e-mail outage while I’m on deadlines has me working on little sleep today. Ugh.

    While waiting up for e-mails to start flowing, I dove into the Beckham family drama and he is like Barbie, no, of the many careers in little time? Photographer, book author, chef, hot-sauce entrepreneur? Very first world problems of the .01%.

    Now, back to the grind.

    1. Why not check into a hotel now? Make sure you’ve got that covered and call it a staycation.

          2. Fun fact: I used to live around the corner from an active national guard base. They were “priority for the power grid,” (whatever that means) and apparently we were on the same grid (again, right lingo? idk..), so our power almost never went out, and we were in a location where power went out with some frequency. Or, if it was something physical, like a downed line, the response time was nearly instantaneous and it was more than just the local municipality – state police and other services showed up to repair ASAP. So, book a hotel near some significant infrastructure maybe to have the highest probability of power staying on?

          4. I’m on the same grid as a *very important building* the most I’ve ever lost power for was 13 minutes.

          5. Our house is on the same line as our local FD. Power outages were always fixed within minutes until that FD installed on-demand generators. Once those generators went online, outages turned into days-long affairs for us.

          6. Luckily the buildings in question will never get generators and actually have a purpose built power station, so I’ll have the most reliable power forever.

    2. Well first-world problems as in OK, go looking for problems and you’ll find a mother-in-law and a vulnerable young woman stepping into a tight-knit family. But famously mother-in-law and daughter-in-law relationship issues transcend cultures and class and are relatable worldwide, unfortunately. I say this as a former young wife who had a very poor relationship with my now ex-mother-in-law but I’m sure she is still a good grandma to my kids

      1. Yeah, my husband was cast in the role of family failure by his primary parenting influences. He is the most responsible and hardworking person in his entire family. But it took a while to ditch the family script. I imagine similar dynamics here.

    3. A lot of the media coverage I’ve seen has taken the parents’ side. I wonder if the wealth and fame weren’t there it would go otherwise? Although she’s from a wealthy family too.

      1. I feel that the press has always been merciless towards Posh (cannot act or sing, fair). But she was one of the first modern celebrities to actually get married and have kids and really embrace that. I haven’t seen her monetizing her kids really, especially since influencers now monetize their whole manufactured lives. BUT I also have not paid a lot of attention to someone I view as a mom (even though she has a clothing line, which I forgot about).

        But from a family perspective, I am not a fan of doing a public tell-off of people.

    4. Fill a cup with water and put it in the freezer. Put a quarter on top. You’ll know how melty things got inside based on how far the quarter sinks.

  5. The unspeakable irony of Trump claiming NATO soldiers didn’t fight when the Brits, Canadian and Danes did the heavy fighting in Helmand and Kandahar while thousands of US soldiers stayed in the cozy confines of Bagram airbase.

    My kids are growing up with friends who live on streets named for the soldiers who died only to have the US President spit on their graves. My cousin served and can’t be around fireworks because of how many IED explosions he survived.

    2/3 of Americans voted for this or didn’t care enough to vote. It will take decades to even begin to repair the damage he has done internationally. Long past the 2026 and 2028 elections.

    1. I’m so sorry. The damage is real and it is a horrendous way to treat our allies. This administration has no concept of history or facts.

    2. Thank you for saving this. We should all be disgraced by what our fellow Americans support. I feel sick everyday.

      1. If I had a viable path toward becoming Canadian I would in a second. Change from within seems less possible every day. America doesn’t want me here.

        1. Do you have any Canadian ancestors? The country recently changed it’s citizenship laws. My parent, siblings, and I applied through a grand/great-grandparent. There’s no limit on how far back you can go as long as you have documentation.

          1. Nope, none, sadly. I’m one generation too far removed for German, and not rich enough to buy my way anywhere.

    3. It’s sickening.

      I work closely with a Danish company and I don’t know how I’m going to look my colleagues in the face on our next call.

    4. While I 100% agree with your point, I think “cozy confines of Bagram” is out of line. There was at least one significant Taliban breach that I recall from the news, and while it was safer than the PRTs and District teams, from the nights I spent there, the dust the airstrip noise all night and the potential to be rocketed at any moment was certainly not cozy.

      2. BBC’s security correspondent used the term “relative safety” if you prefer that. Helmand/Kandahar were a whole other ballgame compared to Bagram.

        And the White House has doubled down on the dismissiveness. It’s hitting especially hard in the UK which followed the US into Iraq as well. UK has been noticeable more pro-US in the last year compared to France and other allies. They are needlessly burning any remaining allies by mocking and minimizing UK dead soldiers.

        I wonder how Tony Blair feels about being on the stupid ‘Board of Peace’ now.

        1. I appreciate you responding. I agree with relative safety. I was in Kandahar for short trips and passed through Helmand and I am very well aware of how much others sacrificed after Article 5 was invoked and I am disgusted by this. I just don’t think insulting soldiers of all nations based on where they served helps when the point is POTUS’ disgusting immoral comments ignoring the ultimate sacrifice. [I and others I worked with have PTSD diagnoses from our service even in “relative safety.”]

      3. I was in Kabul and only passed through Bagram when traveling, but every nation had its safe territory and every nation had its heated fighting. It’s not the fault of those assigned to Bagram that they were assigned to Bagram.

        1. No one is saying it is their fault they were assigned to Bagram.

          However your President is expressly stating that NATO troops did not see front line action when they actually served in some of the most dangerous areas. This was widely acknowledged at the time and a point of contention within some allied nations at the time that the Americans often kept the safer areas and missions for themselves. Try reading something other than American media.

          1. We know President Trump is lying but you should try reading an actual history of the Afghan war, and then you would know that President Obama surged 10,000+ Marines to Helmand alongside the UK during the surge. So you have basically done the same thing to those American servicemen who died in Helmand during that campaign that you are criticizing the President for.

  6. Honestly, I prefer this one and the silky top from BRF over real silk (mainly for ease of laundering).

      1. What an odd statement about a fabric. You mean because mostly older women are the demographic that can afford to invest in them? What do you prefer – poly?

        1. I think you’ve actually hit on something here — the silk (and often the cut) signals “wealthy but older,” and thus sometimes dowdy.

      2. I don’t think there’s anything inherently matronly about silk as a fabric. Are you maybe reacting to the kind of top you generally see made out of silk, or the women you are used to seeing them on?

      3. Yes, I think because they are not stretchy so they tend to be very blousy or baggy.
        Or they are shiny, leopard print, ’90s-era throwbacks…
        either way, I agree they can often look matronly.

    2. Polyester makes me sweat and stink. I used to wear it a lot in my 20s. Now, I’m over it.

  7. I’m looking for jewelry to add some interest to my basic work tops. I’m not looking for fine jewelry and would prefer to spend under $100 per piece. Where should I look for this type of thing?

    1. If you wear gold, there’s an Etsy shop called “Heart Made of Gold” where I’ve picked up some really nice basics. I also like Gorjana for pretty, delicate necklaces.

    2. Baublebar has some fun pieces that are well priced. I’m generally a fine jewelry only person – antique shops are great sources there, but I like an occasional fun piece too.

    4. You can get real silver for that price and it will hold its value. The plated stuff is like setting your money on fire.

        1. No idea what you mean by investment jewelry. Silver is readily sold; silver prices are at record highs per ounce and I just sold several older pieces for more than I paid for them.

    5. Roxanne Assouline if you want the modern day version of our beloved J Crew statement necklace. Otherwise, art museum gift shops are one of my favorite places to find quirky interesting jewelry.

    6. I find brushed metal to be far more versatile than shiny jewelry. Marjorie Baer is my go-to. Some pieces are too oversized for me but the simpler earrings are workhorses.

    7. That’s a good price point for local makers. I’m not a big social media person but I try to remember to follow people I like at pop up markets.

  8. Lawyers, is there any reason for a law firm to refuse to provide a W9 form?

    I used to work at a smallish law firm and moved to a BigLaw firm recently. One of the clients that moved with me wants the W9 form from my old firm. My old firm is being weirdly obstructionist about it. I cannot fathom why they won’t give me the W9. Is there some legitimate reason?

    This is making me glad I don’t work there anymore, but maybe I’m missing something.

    1. I’m a CPA…

      A W9 is a standard document. The client can send you what they sent the prior firm. You don’t transport that information. It’s a representation made by the client. Your prior employer is pissed you took their client but more importantly they don’t want any liability from the client providing wrong information which is later relied upon and found to be false.

      Seriously…this is the easiest form to complete which allows the party receiving funds to correctly determine if a 1099 is necessary. I am confused why your client is completing this. I would assume it’s your side completing this so you can get paid!

    3. Maybe they could give it to you directly and you could pass it on. It’s not wrong for them to resist providing what is generally confidential info.

    4. Are you sure you want your client to have this information? Your SSN? Your exact income?

    5. The client should have procured the W9 before they paid the old firm. It is standard procedure for any accounts payable department. If client just wants old firm’s EIN to issue a 1099, they can look that up on Efast if small firm was large enough to file 5500s for their retirement or other benefit plan. I am sure there are other ways, but that is the way this ERISA lawyer would find it. Or you would have their EIN on your W-2 from them.

    6. The responses make me think that I will have the client ask the old firm directly and move on.

      For clarity, the client is requesting the old law firm’s W9 because he has made payments to that firm last year. They are refusing to give me the form.

  9. My ears are angry at me from my earrings!

    I wore earrings 99% of the time during the day since getting them pierced at 27 (I’m 41 now). Over the summer I stopped wearing them regularly because I lost my favorite daily pair, then I had some planned downtime between jobs this summer, so I just fell out of habit. I wore them once here, once there, for a total of maybe 3-5 times over several months in the second half of last year. But, I got new earrings for Christmas that I love. I’ve always had an allergy to metals so I’ve always worn gold plated without any issue, which is what my new ones are.

    This week I wore them for the first time daily. They needed a slightly extra jab to get them through but it was pretty uneventful. Then, last night my ears were angryyy. One side was bleeding when I took the stud out. Both were read at lobe. This morning they’re tender. I didn’t put earrings on this morning because of all of that but like.. what! Is this what happens when a hole starts to close a little bit and you force it through? Will it heal? Any experienced wear-ers who have tips?

    1. I have really sensitive ears that got more sensitive with pregnancy, so I totally get this.

      Unfortunately you have to keep wearing earrings or the holes will start to close. I had 2nd holes in high school and college and now they’re completely gone bc I didn’t keep up with them.

      Gold plated no longer works for me; I need pure gold, hypoallergenic sterling silver, platinum, or titanium. Tini Lux and Ana Luisa earrings have worked well for me. Also, sometimes when I haven’t worn a specific earring for awhile it hurts, and I’ve learned to swab my ear and the earring with iso alcohol which usually does the trick.

    2. I have sensitive ears and only wear stainless/surgical steel earrings. I also only wear flat back small posts or huggies.

      I’ll keep the same pairs in for months at a time.

      I get cheapies from Amazon.

    4. My daughter has a hard time with this. I use dettol with warm water to clean the area over a period of 2-3 days.

      If I run out of dettol I use salt water. She has a saline spray for her bag to use during the day if her ears are bothering her.

    5. I started wearing a pair that I never take out since I wore earrings so rarely that my holes would begin to close up. Obviously, you can then change them out as desired. Something like the Comfy Earrings brand.

    6. This happened to me during the pandemic. It will heal just fine. Wash your lobes with soap and water, dry the back of your ears well and don’t apply any ointments or creams. Personally, I would give your new earrings a second try, but maybe you will have to switch to gold (18k or higher). When I was a teenager, my ears also acted up for a while, and surgical-grade, stainless steel small hoops also did the trick.

      1. Follow up, and fair point about the metal. What am I searching for so that I can get the gold studs? I search gold earings and I find.. gold earrings. I just need the stud/back to be gold if the rest of the earring isn’t a metal.

        1. I’d check with your local jewelry store. I know off hand that the back for Tiffany earrings are the same material as the earring which is part of the reason they are so pricey.

    7. I recently started wearing earrings regularly again in my second piercings. I had made sure they stayed open by occasionally jabbing earrings through, but I hadn’t worn anything in them regularly for years. I did get the flat back style and just left them in for a couple weeks to start, so I wasn’t putting them in and out at first. They were a little annoyed, but they calmed down within a couple days. So maybe try leaving something in – ones you know didn’t irritate them before – for a couple days to see if they calm down? If they do, then you can try the new earrings again to see if it’s them or if it was just a reaction to wearing earrings again in general.

    8. They’re infected, so treat it like you would any infection. Do you have any earrings with surgical steel posts?

      For this, I take out the earrings, soak a cotton ball in hydrogen peroxide, then press it against the piercing. Do that a couple of times until you’re sure you’ve flushed out the hole. Then put neosporin on both side of the earlobe around and on the piercing. Coat the surgical steel posts in more neosporin and put them back in. If it still feels warm to the touch in about 12 hours, do the same thing again; if it still feels warm in another 12 hours (so 24 hours from now) then go to urgent care. Assuming it’s improving within a day, you can skip the H2O2 and just keep slathering neosporin on it.

  10. Was anyone else caught up in the outlook outage last afternoon and last night? I am getting corporate double-speak as to what happened.

    1. Yea – we got several pings from corporate (large multinational company) throughout the afternoon yesterday starting around 230/3 ET. For all the firm-wide comms that came out, I didn’t realize it was a global Microsoft issue until late last night. I figured it was just our own system the way they were talking about it. That said, I didn’t notice much of a disruption. Email was definitely quiet but a few were getting through. Teams was down but that’s not a huge deal for my current chair. No idea what actually happened but seems to be a-ok right now.

    2. Yep, and it’s compounded an embarrassing situation for me professionally. I gave the wrong advice to a client (based off what someone else in my office said) and another attorney was trying to email me about it last night. I responded late at night but we had to follow up this morning — when I didn’t have childcare because my nanny comes in late on Fridays. Nothing that can’t be cleaned up, fortunately. Just have some crow on my face with a good client. And had to give extra snuggles to my unhappy sick baby who was beside himself that he didn’t have mama’s full attention for a whole 10 minutes.

    3. There are public news articles describing what happened. Your corporate office can’t really hide those from you.

      My firm initially thought it was a small, internal issue so the initial messaging reflected that. Once it became more clear it was a global issue, they changed the message. The messages were disseminated through several different channels, some of which were caught in the outage so they arrived out of order. If your firm did something similar, I wouldn’t consider that double-speak, just an effect caused by the issue.

  11. Those of you saying AI isn’t good for coding are in for a very rude awakening. Both my husband and I work for tech firms and I would say 80% of what in the past has been outsourced to cheap offshore labor is being transitioned to AI. Instead of coders, we’re hiring more QA to QA the AI written code. Last week my husband was working on a project and telling me that he had 2k lines of code written by AI in the time it would have taken him to write like 200. And it was neater than what he gets from developers.

    Screen scraping and similar rote tasks fall squarely into this category.

    Does it work in all scenarios? Absolutely not. But that’s the trick- knowing when to deploy AI which is, as well call it, the equivalent of a highly educated but untrained intern.

      1. I have to imagine they’ve sold their soul to silicon valley and defend AI because otherwise they would need to take an uncomfortable look inwards.

      2. I find the refusal to use it and get comfortable with it absolutely baffling. Like it or not it’s here to stay and it’s making jobs more efficient. I’m not going to pay for law firms to spend time writing basic things like discovery responses or meet and confer letters, and I expect a much faster turn on motions. If you’re not incorporating AI into your workflow, you’ll become a performance problem. It shocks me that people don’t see this.

        1. I’m not in law but I work with executives who buy software and they say exactly this: “we expect all our vendors to be leveraging AI to a certain extent and we expect to see benefits from it, either in lower costs or higher performance.”

        2. I’m not comfortable with it precisely because I’ve used it. All it does is move time from the drafting bucket into the reviewing with a fine-tooth comb for mistakes and fake citations bucket.

          1. Not everything tracks back to citations though. And cite checking was always a thing. I expect to see briefs turned very quickly and to use either Lexi’s or Westlaw AI for that. It’s hardly a reason not to use it to draft.

        4. Conversely, I find it baffling that people insist there is value in me spending extra time arguing with an AI agent over the junk output it generates, reformulating prompt after prompt after prompt in an attempt to get it to produce anything useful, only to have to pore over the mediocre content it generated to confirm all facts, clean up formatting that is one step away from wingdings, and then not be able to repeat any of this with the next query. It shocks me that every last demonstration I have sat through, the AI tool featured fails to achieve the results the demonstration promised, only for the presenter to say “trust me, it really works in real life” and expects me to be cool with that. Any other product with as dismal a track record, we would have walked away ages ago.

      3. This is not a defense of AI. This sounds like a warning to those who refuse to get onboard. Your jobs are likely going in that direction and if you don’t want to use AI, you will likely lose your job or lose clients.

    3. Do people truly not understand that if we have AI do all the ‘entry level’ tasks then our entry level pipeline of talent will never be trained up and eventually there will be no more mid-level talent?
      People are STILL complaining about the lack of soft skills/training their junior people received due to Covid, offshoring all this to AI is going to make things 1000 times worse.

      1. I think people understand that! Everyone I know is worried about it – both personally, in the “will my kids be able to get jobs? will I?” sense; and in a corporate sense, how will we get senior, experienced people*. The problem is that no one thinks there’s anything they can do to solve it – it feels like an unfixable tragedy-of-the-commons. Anything you personally do has no effect if no one else does it, and make you individually slightly worse off if no one else does it. What I hear from people is much closer to despair than indifference.

        *Actually, maybe only 50% of people I know are worried on the corporate side. The other 50% basically think AI will advance quickly enough to outpace retirements of senior people, eventually culminating in a self-reinfocing super intelligence that’s smarter than any human. So we need senior people to guide AI now, but in 20 years we won’t anymore, so it doesn’t matter that we haven’t trained any.

        1. The self-reinforcing thing is what worries me. AI is already very bad at writing and many other tasks. When it starts training itself on its own output it will get even worse.

        2. Leadership at my company recently said we need to start including AI in our sales pitch because our competitors are. Even though leadership acknowledges that it will be a wash, or more manual work, when you take into account the time spent reviewing any AI output. It’s an arm’s race to the bottom.

      2. I’m a lawyer so I can’t comment on the coding side of this, but I can see AI becoming hugely useful for junior associates. For example, one of the biggest pitfalls I see for juniors doing legal research is getting lost in rabbit holes. I think AI can help them more quickly eliminate paths that they shouldn’t go down.

        I don’t think it will cut junior associate jobs, at least not more than they’ve been cut for economic reasons anyway. Most firms haven’t been hiring an army of first years like we did pre-2008. Massive built-in attrition just isn’t the business model anymore; those jobs have already been farmed out to doc review shops or whatever. I see a bigger focus on associate retention than in the past.

    4. Lines of code is not a reasonable measure for “effective at writing code”.

      But I think there are two big things that are skewing people’s perception here — free consumer grade chatgpt is a terrible environment to judge “can AI write software” by. And 2nd, knowing a *little* bit about software architecture makes your ability to prompt much much better

      I do disagree with you on the idea that the trick is knowing when to deploy AI – in my mind, that’s half the trick, but the much easier half. The much harder half is fixing things when they go wrong, which actually takes *more* experience and expertise than fixing things in your own self-written code

    5. We’ve had so many problems with consultants providing reports with fake AI generated citations that we prohibit it unless expressly permitted. And the problem is compounding. The majority of the fake citation issues we had were AI suggesting another report where a couple of that report’s citations were AI generated. So AI is missing that the initial report used fake citations and suggesting it as a source for a further report. The deeper you have to dig to confirm that the citations are fake, the more likely they are to be requoted and spread misinformation.

      On a personal level, I’m skeptical of any utility of consumer grade AI. It’s given me wrong information on whether a book was available at a local store, and not been able to put together flight options at well as my teenager, and made up cases on a minor point of law when it should have said that the subsection had never been judicially reviewed. I guess it’s useful for generating meal plans and recipes sometimes?

        1. We’re not ‘never AI’ but by starting with no AI unless you tell us what you want it for and how you will verify, at least everyone is on the same page. Translation of documents is a common one that we allow but we want a certified human translator to verify. AI + verify is less expensive than all human translation. I don’t do health related contracting but friends who work in medical transcription are having major challenges as the issue of AI hallucinations is so frequent. It’s especially problematic with multi-accent scenarios like non-first language English medical professional and heavy rural accent patients.

          1. I’ve started planning on contacting my doctor’s office to correct the chart notes now that they’re using an AI not just to transcribe but to summarize consultations. Sometimes it just comes up with plausible sounding stuff that can be the actual opposite of what was said (for example, it seems to like to say that the patient found lifestyle changes too challenging; I guess it finds that more plausible than adherence!). Sometimes it seems to take one part of a conversation and combine it with another part of the conversation to come up with unhinged nonsense that is nevertheless not great to have in one’s chart (like recording that a patient is injecting an oral medication, because injections of another medication were discussed). It’s nothing new that chart notes contain some miscommunication, inaccurate boiler plate, and misremembered details that hopefully usually don’t matter too much, but the AI notes almost seem to go out of their way to mischaracterize a conversation according to weird stereotypes.

    6. In my field, I am beta testing AI that is running at an even high level than that. 3 years ago I basically laughed in the face of our internal department that was developing our AI. Starting this year, I ran some of the QAs myself, and by summer of this year, I was looking at outputs that performed at the level of a mid-level professional.

    7. Also in tech here, and I don’t expect generative AI will ever get over the hallucinations problem. Less of an issue in tech because you can verify the code works, but in most other applications it’s a really really big issue. I’m hoping to get into cyber security soon because I can only imagine the number of security vulnerabilities that will come out of generated code that does technically work. That or analytical AI, which is solving actual problems instead of trying to be a poor substitute for a real person.

      1. Genuinely all generative AI ever does is hallucinate. We just call it that when we notice it happening because it’s causing a problem for us.

        My doctor’s office is using an AI service to take chart notes, and it’s been kind of hilarious to see the things it just makes up because they’re plausible things to have been said in a doctor’s appointment.

        1. I saw a specialist a few months ago who was using some sort of AI note taking tool and it inserted a completely made up medical issue into my chart. It had nothing to do with the specialty, nothing to do with my symptoms, and having it in my medical history could preclude me from getting appropriate treatment in the case of emergencies due to potential dangerous reactions. I read the notes once they were posted to my chart, called the office to have them corrected, and am still arguing with the office that having the nurse add a note stating my “symptoms have resolved” is NOT an acceptable resolution.

          1. They need to get a process in place for this since it will not be the last time! Spending time on these corrections is the cost of using the tool they’ve chosen to use. But God help the majority of patients who don’t review their chart notes.

    9. I hate what AI does to the environment and jobs and so forth. But with Trump in office making dumb rules like a 10 year moratorium on state action against AI, we’re in it. (I suppose “it” is a huge AI slop swamp full of 3-breasted women.) But I no longer see any value in refusing to use it. I totally think it will kill us all inside of 5 years, but hey.

    10. Coding is an outlier. A competent coder can achieve in a day what a whole team of other coders fail to achieve in months. So yes because of pre-existing training and hiring practices and feedback loops, it’s an industry that employs a lot of people less competent than AI. (Remember when taxpayers paid Deloitte millions to make a Vaccine Administration Management System and they just failed?) Good coders are already good at working with tools that help automate things and intuiting what can and should be automated. Also regulation is minimal (inadequate really!), and plagiarism (even when it undermines security) is already the norm. So yes AI is a big deal in coding.

  12. Does anyone have the V-Mat brand work/kitchen mats? My tired feet want this as something to try that also looks more old-school than other offerings I’ve seen. Stalking me on social right now and I’m not mad. I just haven’t heard of them before or seen it mentioned here (just Ruggables).

  13. I did the thing. I’m the poster from a few weeks back that has cracks all over her house, some new and others old, some getting larger, and is just super in my he ad that there’s something structural/more significant going on than typical settling (not in a location with sandy soil, or where this is pervasive, fwiw). 1960-ish built house.

    I called the structural engineer and we’re about to walk my house and look at the cracks in walls and whatnot. So freaking anxious my house is falling down (kidding but not).

    Send good vibes. We can afford repairs (it’ll su ck but we can do it), so I’m fortunate for that.

    1. I went through this a few months ago and paid a bunch of money to put down some helical piers. It wasn’t fun but it gives me peace of mind.

    4. Oh, I remember you! Let us know how it goes. Ever since your post, I have been eyeing the cracks in the plaster of my 120 year old small house, and wondering if that is just aging or something more sinister.

    5. Sending good vibes — and remember, even if the assessment isn’t what you want, knowing what to take care of in your home and taking care of it is worth it.

    6. Sending good vibes too! I did the thing last week and was surprised both by how simple it was once I got over the most difficult part at the beginning and how relieved I was once it was done. A friend was instrumental in helping me at the beginning. Shout out to friends that stay on us to get things done when they know how frustrated we are with the thing hanging over our heads!

  14. What, if anything, would you say/do in this scenario:

    My 4th grade daughter has been bringing home barely-scraping-by scores on her math tests and quizzes all year (eg. 65-80%s, things like 17/24, 19/28, etc). I have met with her teacher twice, both times she assured me that “these are just checkpoints, not grades, and she’s doing fine compared to the rest of the class” and “the school math coach reviews all the checkpoints to flag kids that need extra help and your kid doesn’t”. Some of the errors on these tests are careless. Others are conceptual.

    She’s not my first kid; my older two never brought home consistently almost-failing scores. I asked for her to get some practice sheets sent home (the school policy is no homework) and that happened for two weeks and the sheets stopped coming home. DH and I ordered a math book and have been using that plus my older kids’ old books and have been working with her and now the pattern is: Kiddo brings home crummy score on a quiz (“knowledge check”). We work on the stuff she clearly doesn’t understand at home and she gets a much better score on the unit test (eg. 85-90%).

    So, she doesn’t have a learning problem. I don’t know if this is worth flagging to the principal or if we should just continue on our way supplementing at home and be done with it. The reasons I’m considering talking to the principal are: 1) this is a new teacher- i think this is her 3rd year in teaching 2) the state scores have been low for the past few years at our elem in math specifically 3) you can’t fix a problem you don’t know is there. By the numbers, our daughter is doing well in math– but without our at-home intervention, she wouldn’t be. This isn’t her teacher doing well but the safety net of two parents who have time and energy to spend on helping at home, plus the benefit of having had other kids go through the school so we know what *can* happen.

    if it’s relevant, our kiddo has mild ADHD, has been tested as gifted, and we’ve been told from the outset of her diagnosis that she will is in danger of “lower performance than her potential but will fly under the radar because she’s too smart to ever just fail”.

    1. This is NOT a teacher problem, don’t go to the principal, you would look absolutely insane. Is your daughter medicated? Shes likely just not paying attention in class. Teachers can’t force kids to pay attention, especially with the way class sizes are.

      1. She is in a class of 18. There is a teacher and an aid. We are in a super well funded public school district.

        The teacher is young and new and I’m trying to figure out if it’s that, or if it’s my kid. Probably a mix of both, honestly. My older kids never had issues like this but also had other teachers and don’t have adhd.

    2. You are doing a good parenting job of following up on and reinforcing what she does at school. That’s the way it’s supposed to work. Sucks that you’re having to do a lot to get her up to where she ought to be, but it seems that she’s getting adequate instruction, but needs a lot of reinforcement at home.

    3. It’s hard to know if the teacher isn’t teaching it well for majority of the kids in the class or just your daughter. I realize in an ideal world the teacher should be able to tailor for each student, but that is not the reality in today’s school environment, especially public schools. So it is hard to know based on a sample size of 1, if it’s the teacher, your daughter or a combination of the two

      1. Op here, and exactly. If it’s a just my kid problem, we are okay keeping on with the status quo. My bigger concern is that we are being told she’s doing better than most of the class. That’s…concerning.

    4. Does the school subscribe to IXL or another type of math software for extra practice? Our kid’s teacher gives us correlating codes to the concepts learned each week as optional extra work and it’s been super useful.

      1. This. If you’re up for a hands-on approach (which for math you probably have to be!) see if she likes whatever software her school is using to teach, and then buy a parent subscription so she can do the work at home. You can get weekly reviews of what general areas she’s weakest in so you can help her shore those up. We’ve paid for versions of IXL, Aleks, Prodigy, and Khan over the years. Prodigy is like a video game if that might motivate her.

        If you prefer things on paper, check out Dad’s Worksheets — I think someone here told me about it. Free worksheets. https://www.dadsworksheets.com/

        You can also look at Teachers Pay Teachers — it can be overwhelming if you don’t know exactly what you’re looking for but lots of good stuff.
        https://www.teacherspayteachers.com/browse?search=4th%20grade%20math

    5. No advice, I’m just so caught by the fact that the teacher thinks 65/80% is fine and doesn’t seem to care if the student could do much better with a bit more effort.

      1. With the insane work load, low pay, and poor treatment from parents, students and administration why would they care?

      3. There’s quite a difference between 65 and 80. 65 is nearly failing, like OP said. 80 is a B and seems completely fine, though maybe not for a gifted kid.

    6. I’d take it to the principal, but in a “how might we solve this issue way” rather than a complaint about the teacher. If the principal insists that it’s fine and won’t try to figure out how to support your kid, then you have a few options: 1. agree and let it go; 2. get a tutor (and for this you might ask for the quizzes to come home, as well as practice sheets); 3. escalate and make it a policy issue at the level of admin.

      I don’t recommend escalating, for what it’s worth. I think probably a tutor is your best bet.

    7. The whole point of a “knowledge check” is to identify gaps so the teacher can fill them. She isn’t doing that; you are doing it at home. This is a teacher problem.

      1. I think it’s a kid problem. The kid isn’t performing here at the level the parents wants. The school isn’t failing her. Someone needs to be in the middle of the pack and that’s not a school problem. If the parents want a motivated kid, then that’s an issue to handle at home.

    8. lol I’m the OP and the spectrum of responses to the post isn’t helping :). I’m trying to figure out if I’d come across as nutty, or if I’m observing something that should be fixed in a young teacher. We are fixing the problem at home but it’s masking the gap in teaching.

      My older kids are really strong in math, my husband is an engineer and my MIL has a PhD in math. We are perfectly capable of teaching elem math at home but I was thinking more broadly of the school and my kids’ classmates who aren’t going home to a bunch of math dorks. I, too, thought it was weird to hear that these 60-80% scores are fine and in line with classmates. To me, that means the teaching is concerning. If it were just my kid then it’s a my kid problem.

      1. I would probably mention something to the principal at the end of the year. Nothing scathing against the teacher, but just noting the facts.

        Are you good enough friends with any other parents in the class to ask how math is going for their kids?

      2. I think a useful data point would be how your daughter would perform without that at home intervention. If the teacher teaches the content, does a knowledge check, and then reteaches the concepts everyone missed, then I don’t see an issue. The at home teaching may just be supplementing what is happening at school already.

        I would ask more follow on questions to understand the teaching strategy at your next parent teacher conference.

        I’m also in a well funded school district with reasonable class sizes, but the spectrum of issues a teacher deals with on a daily basis is astounding. I’d assume positive intent until you get substantive signal that something is amiss.

    9. If these are really “check points not grades” … that sounds like a pre-test. Why would you worry?

    10. The schools that we have were not designed for gifted kids with ADHD. It’s pretty normal that “twice exceptional” students will learn thanks to at home interventions and never be fully accommodated at school.

Comments are closed.