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I used o3 to profile myself from my saved Pocket links

(noperator.dev)
524 points noperator | 6 comments | 07 Jul 25 12:44 UTC | HN request time: 0.415s | source | bottom
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saeedesmaili ◴[07 Jul 25 14:09 UTC] No.44490550[source]▶
After reading this I realized I also have an archive of my pocket account (4200 items), so tried the same prompt with o3, gemini 2.5 pro, and opus 4:

- chatgpt UI didn't allow me to submit the input, saying it's too large. Although it was around 80k tokens, less than o3's 200k context size.

- gemini 2.5 pro: worked fine for personality and interest related parts of the profile, but it failed the age range, job role, location, parental status with incorrect perdictions.

- opus 4: nailed it and did a more impressive job, accurately predicted my base city (amsterdam), age range, relationship status, but didn't include anything about if I'm a parent or not.

Both gemini and opus failed in predicting my role, probably understandably. Although I'm a data scientist, I read a lot about software engineering practices because I like writing software and since I don't have the opportunity at work to do this kind of work, I code for personal projects, so I need to learn a lot about system design, etc. Both models thought I'm a software engineer.

Overall it was a nice experiment. Something I noticed is both models mentioned photography as my main hobby, but if they had access to my youtube watch history, they'd confidently say it's tennis. For topics and interests that we usually watch videos rather than reading articles about, would be interesting to combine the youtube watch history with this pocket archive data (although it would be challenging to get that data).

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tehlike ◴[07 Jul 25 14:52 UTC] No.44491013[source]▶
You should take this as a sign, and shoot for SWE jobs - given your interest.

What you do at work today doesn't mean you can't switch to a related ladder.

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justusthane ◴[07 Jul 25 15:53 UTC] No.44491635[source]▶
Sometimes it’s nice for hobbies to remain hobbies
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1. cortesoft ◴[07 Jul 25 22:43 UTC] No.44495336[source]▶
I believed this, which is what made me avoid computer science in college; I wanted to avoid ruining my favorite hobby.

After a few years post graduation, where I wasn't sure what I wanted to do and I floundered to find a career, I decided to give software development a try, and risk ruining my favorite hobby.

Definitely the best decision I could have made. Now people pay me a lot of money to do the thing I love to do the most... what's not to love? 20 years later, it I still my favorite hobby, and they keep paying me to do it.

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2. p1necone ◴[07 Jul 25 23:21 UTC] No.44495559[source]▶
I think it heavily depends on who you're working for.

If they get out of the way and let you do the thing you love how you want to do it you'll get good results for you and them.

If they treat you like a cog in a machine and assume they need to carrot and stick you into doing things because you might not really want to be there, you'll be miserable.

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3. justusthane ◴[07 Jul 25 23:31 UTC] No.44495618[source]▶
Sure, of course. Sometimes it works out to follow your passion into a career. I was objecting to the apparent premise that that’s _always_ what you should do.
4. 8n4vidtmkvmk ◴[07 Jul 25 23:53 UTC] No.44495730[source]▶
My first software job I enjoyed. My 2nd/current job I enjoy everything except the actual work. Too much beuracracy, but it hasn't ruined my love for the craft yet. Oh well, I'm building some other skills I didn't know I had in me.
5. cortesoft ◴[08 Jul 25 20:00 UTC] No.44503509[source]▶
I have worked a few places at many different positions over an 18 year career so far.

I have enjoyed the programming part of all the jobs. I don’t really care the problem, I just like using computers to solve problems.

6. tehlike ◴[09 Jul 25 17:18 UTC] No.44512595[source]▶
It was my hobby. Then I did computer science, and now I'm at a faang, make more money in a year than my parents in their lifetime probably.