An AI CEO said something honest: ExperiencedDevs

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70 points | by ivewonyoung 10 hours ago ago

14 comments

  • scuff3d 7 hours ago ago

    My job wants us to plan sprints 12 weeks in advance. That includes decomposing epics into stories with full descriptions and acceptance criteria, which anyone who's actually worked on an agile team knows is a complete waste of time. By the time imyou get 6 weeks in things will have changed too much.

    By far the most useful thing AI had done for me is let me plow through all that in a fraction of the time I would have before. They're spending a ton of money to make employees more efficient at the pointless bullshit they themselves put in our way.

    And before some scrum master shows up and tells me how important stories are, I'm not arguing against planning. I am arguing against pointlessly over planning to make a bunch of suits happy when teams aren't given the kind of time to actually plan that far in advance.

    • thewhitetulip 3 hours ago ago

      I've seen some companies expecting 2x output from Devs because they now get Cusor licence

  • viraptor 9 hours ago ago
  • JSR_FDED 10 hours ago ago

    There’s all these non-coding elements to a developer’s job that make me think AI replacing developers will take a lot longer than everyone thinks.

    What portion of a job must be done by AI before the human loses their job? 80%? Even 98% (and we’re nowhere near that) will produce a ton of friction when applied to a team of developers.

    The problem is that the narrative of imminent job displacement is the prevailing one and becomes self fulfilling.

    • sputknick 9 hours ago ago

      My hot take is that as that percentage increases, salaries will go up asymptotically, until you get to 100%, then they crash to 0. If 80% of your job can be done by AI, I'm going to give you the work of 5 people. When is 99%, I will give you the work of 100 people

      • hresvelgr 9 hours ago ago

        If you're okay with the work being done poorly and without review, then sure. Otherwise, it'll take the same amount of time and be done worse. I would not trust solely 1 person to review 5 people's work let alone 100.

        • UqWBcuFx6NV4r 7 hours ago ago

          Then it’s not the work of 100 people, is it?

          You’re arguing semantics. OP is hypothesising a future where the quality of work is comparable to that of a human. If you don’t believe that that’s on the cards, just say it, but you’re intentionally misrepresenting the hypothetical.

      • coip 9 hours ago ago

        If 80% is “done by the AI”, who is responsible for the certain failure on behalf of the AI? Given inference often is, >0%, wrong — in a word… hmm.

        How many 9s until you’re comfortable? Even then, knowing 1000 tasks could likely have at least 1 foundational issue… how do you audit? “Pretty please do the needful” and have another “please ensure they do the needful”. Do you review the 1000 inputs/outputs processed? Don’t get me wrong, am familiar with the “send it” ethos all too well, but at-scale it seems like quite the pickle.

        Genuinely curious how most people consider these angles… was tasked with building a model once to perform what literally could’ve otherwise been a SQL query… when I brought this up, it was met with “well we need to do it with AI” I don’t think a humans gonna want to find that needle in a haystack when 100,000 significant documents are originated… but I don’t have to worry about that one anymore thank goodness.

    • add-sub-mul-div 9 hours ago ago

      We don't know if it will take the form of a net drop in headcount at all, or if white collar labor will be broadly replaced with the same headcount of low paid fungible AI operators.

      But we can say that mass displacement of labor in one form or another is the goal because it's the only way to explain the amount of investment that's going into it.

      • clipsy 8 hours ago ago

        What work do you imagine a "low paid fungible AI operator" would perform, out of curiosity?

      • DANmode 8 hours ago ago

        Wanting to be ahead of the next hype-cycle narrative is plenty for a lot of speculative investors.

    • throwjjj 8 hours ago ago

      [dead]

  • nubg 9 hours ago ago

    [flagged]

    • jazzpush2 9 hours ago ago

      And yet, your entire post history is dismissive quips.