Beating humans isnt really what matters. Its enabling developers to design who cant.
Last month I had a staff member design and build a distributed system that would be far beyond their capabilities without AI assistance. As a business owner this allows me to reduce the dependency and power of the senior devs.
Why? We fully checked the design, what he built, and it was fully tested over weeks for security and stability.
Don't parrot what you read online that these systems are unable do this stuff. It's from the clueless or devs coping. Not only are they capable but theyre improving by the month.
Oh, they are definitely capable, I am using them every day, and build my own MCP servers. But you cannot test a distributed system "fully". The only test I believe in is understanding every single line of code myself, or knowing that somebody else does. At this point, I don't trust the AI for anything, although it makes a very valuable assistant.
Very soon our AI built software systems will break down in spectacular and never before seen ways, and I'll have the product to help with that.
I have no idea why you think you can't test a distributed system. Hopefully you are not in the business of software development. You certainly wouldnt be working at my company.
Secondly, people are not just blindly having AI write code with no idea how it works. The AI is acting as a senior consultant helping the developer to design and build the systems and generating parts of the code as they work together.
I'm very confused by this. I have in no way seen AI that can act as a senior consultant to any professional software engineer. I work with AI all the time and am not doubting that it is very useful, but this seems like dreaming to me. It frequently gets confused and doesn't understand the bigger picture, particularly when large contexts are involved. Solving small problems it is often helpful but I can't imagine how anyone could believe it is in any way a replacement for a senior engineer in its current form.
I can't tell on this site who has genuinely experienced radical changes in software development from dedicated LLM usage, and who is trying to sell something. But given previous hype cycles with all exciting new tech at the time, including past iterations of AI, I tend to believe it's more in the trying to sell something camp.
Well, youre right to be skeptical because the majority of "AI" going on is hype designed for the purposes of either a scam, getting easy investment funds or inflating company valuations.
But.. the capabilities (and rate of progression) of these top tier LLMs isn't hype.
Its his and his managers product, so yes. We don't care if they code it, don't code it, whether an AI builds it or a cheap Indian. Theyre still responsible.
I run a software development company with dozens of staff across multiple countries. Gemini has us to the point where we can actually stop hiring for certain roles and staff have been informed they must make use of these tools or they are surplus to requirements. At the current rate of improvement I believe we will be operating on far less staff in 2 years time.
Thanks -- this is what I mean by evidence, someone with actual experience and skin in the game weighing in rather than blustering proclamations based on vibes.
I agree they improve productivity to where you need fewer developers for a similar quantity of output than before.
But I dont think LLMs specifically will reduce the need for some engineer to do the higher level technical design and architecture work, just given what Ive seen and my understanding of the underlying tech.
I believe that at current rate your entire company will become irrelevant in 4 years. Your customers will simply use Gemini to build their own software.
Wrong. Because we dont just write software. We make solutions. In 4 years we will still be making solutions for companies. The difference will be that the software we design for that solution will likely be created by AI tools, and we get to lower our staff costs, whilst increasing our output and revenue.
If they are created by AI tools which we all have access to that means everyone will now become your competitor, and with all the people you are planning on letting go they can just as easily as you use these AI tools to create solutions for companies. So in a way you will have more competition, and calculation that you will have more revenue might not be that easy.
It means what it says. We dont just write software. An LLM cannot do the service that the company provides because it isnt just software and digital services.
Not at all. We dont care whether the software is written by a machine or by a human. If the machine does it cheaper, to a better, more consistent standard, then its win for us.
That might be the case if we were an organisation that resisted change and were not actively pursuing reducing our staff count via AI, but it isnt. In the AI era our company will thrive because we are no longer constrained by needing to find a specific type of human talent that can build the complicated systems we develop.
So what will happen once most/all your staff is replaced with AI? Your clients will ask the fundamental question: what are we paying you for? You are missing the point that the parent comment raises: LLMs are not only replacing the need for your employees, they are replacing the need for you.
We don't produce software for clients. We provide solutions. That is what they pay us for. Until there is AGI (which could be 4 years away or 400) there is no LLM which can do that.
We have a very successful company that has been running 30 years, with developers across 6 countries. We just make sure we hire developers who know that theyre here to do a job, on our terms, for which they will get paid, and its our way or the highway. If they dont like it, they dont have to stay. However, through doing this we have maintained a standard that our competitors fail at, partly because they spend their time tiptoeing around staff and their comforts and preferences.
I dont hunt 'AI skeptics'. I just provide a viewpoint based on professional experience. Not one that is 'AI is bad at coding because everyone on Twitter says so"
and you happened to have created an account in hackernews just 3 months ago after 30 years in business just to provide a viewpoint based on professional experience?
Yes, you're right I should have made an account 30 years ago, before this website existed, and gotten involved in all the discussions taking place about the use of ChatGPT and LLMs in the software development workplace
Have you ever hired anyone for their expertise, so they tell you how to do things, and not the other way around? Or do you only hire people who aren't experts?
I don't doubt you have a functioning business, but I also wouldn't be surprised if you get overtaken some day.
Most of our engineers are hired because of their experience. They don't really tell us how to do things. We already know how to do it. We just want people who can do it. LLMs will hopefully remove this bottleneck.
Wow, you are really projecting the image a wonderful person to work for.
I don't doubt you are successful, but the mentality and value hierarchy you seem to express here is something I never want to have anything to do with.
I replied to the follow-up comment about following the guidelines in order to avoid hellish flamewars, but you played a role here too with a snarky, sarcastic comment. Please be more careful in future and be sure to keep comments kind and thoughtful.
This subthread turned into a flamewar and you helped to set it off here. We need commenters to read and follow the guidelines in order to avoid this. These guidelines are especially relevant:
Be kind. Don't be snarky. Converse curiously; don't cross-examine. Edit out swipes.
Comments should get more thoughtful and substantive, not less, as a topic gets more divisive.
Please don't fulminate. Please don't sneer, including at the rest of the community.
What if I told you that a dev group with a sensibly-limited social-club flavor is where I arguably did my best and also had my happiest memories from? In the midst of SOME of the "socializing" (which, by the way, almost always STILL sticks to technical topics, even if they are merely adjacent to the task at hand) are brilliant ideas often born which sometimes end up contributing directly to bottom lines. Would you like evidence of social work cohesion leading to more productivity and happier employees? Because I can produce that. (I'd argue that remote work has negatively impacted this.)
But yes, I also once worked at a company (Factset) where the CTO had to put a stop to something that got out of hand- A very popular game at the time basically took over the mindshare of most of the devs for a time, and he caught them whiteboarding game strategies during work hours. (It was Starcraft 1 or 2, I forget. But both date me at this point.) So he put out a stern memo. Which did halt it. And yeah, he was right to do that.
Just do me this favor- If a dev comes to you with a wild idea that you think is too risky to spend a normal workday on, tell them they can use their weekend time to try it out. And if it ends up working, give them the equivalent days off (and maybe an extra, because it sucks to burn a weekend on work stuff, even if you care about the product or service). That way, the bet is hedged on both sides. And then maybe clap them on the back. And consider a little raise next review round. (If it doesn't work out, no extra days off, no harm no foul.)
I think your attitude is in line with your position (and likely your success). I get it. Slightly more warmth wouldn't hurt, though.
> What if I told you that a dev group with a sensibly-limited social-club flavor is where I arguably did my best and also had my happiest memories from?
Maybe you did, and as a developer I am sure it is more fun, easier, and enjoyable to work in those places. That isnt what we offer though. We offer something very simple. The opportunity for a developer to come in, work hard, probably not enjoy themselves, produce what we ask, to the standard we ask, and in return they get paid.
It's our company, we own it. We are not 'some executives'. If someone develops an AI that can replace what we do and perform at the same level or higher, then I would gladly welcome it.
The reason you feel safe now is because of the marketing tactics of AI companies in pushing their phished goods on the world. LLMs have done anything yet other then reduced the barrier of entry into the software field. Like what google search and stackoverflow did 10yrs ago. The same principles apply, if your only skill is using an LLMs (or google searching) then you will be the first replaced when the markets turn. The ability to reason about options of a company in making money over the short term, vs long term, should be fairly easy to reason about based on the availibility of news. AI companies already know this. The stratergy has been played out. They make more money this way. They get to suck up all the info from your corperation, because they will get that data. Once they build these models, they will replace you too. Sure your saving time and money today, but thats just the cost of building the model for them.
I am pretty sure ArthurStacks account is either a troll or an LLM gone rogue troll. There are so many contradictions among his own comments that it is embarrassing to list them all. But given the reaction and number of replies he gets, the trolling is rather successful.
Looks a bit like your comment was being downvoted, which is also interesting to see. If Arthur Stacks is a bot, then it potentially follows that there is vote-manipulation going on as well, to quell dissenting opinions.
IMO this is completely "based". Delivering customer values and making money off of it is own thing, and software companies collectively being a social club and an place for R&D is another - technically a complete tangent to it. It doesn't always matter how sausages came to be on the served plate. It might be the Costco special that CEO got last week and dumped into the pot. It's none of your business to make sure that doesn't happen. The customer knows. It's consensual. Well maybe not. But none of your business. Literally.
The field of software engineering might be doomed if everyone worked like this user and replaced programmers with machines, or not, but those are sort of above his paygrade. AI destroying the symbiotic relationship between IT companies and its internal social clubs is a societal issue, more macro-scale issues than internal regulation mechanisms of free market economies are expected to solve.
I guess my point is, I don't know this guy or his company is real or not, but it passes my BS detector and I know for the fact that a real medium sized company CEOs are like this. This is technically what everyone should aspire to be. If you think that's morally wrong and completely utterly wrong, congratulations for your first job.
Turning this into a moral discussion is besides the point, a point that both of you missed in your efforts to be based, although the moral discussion is also interesting—but I'll leave that be for now. It appears as if I stepped on ArthurStack's toes, but I'll give you the benefit of the doubt and reply.
My point actually has everything to do with making money. Making money is not a viable differentiator in and of itself. You need to put in work on your desired outcomes (or get lucky, or both) and the money might follow. My problem is that directives such as "software developers need to use tool x" is an _input_ with, at best, a questionable causal relationship to outcome y.
It's not about "social clubs for software developers", but about clueless execs. Now, it's quite possible that he's put in that work and that the outcomes are attributable to that specific input, but judging by his replies here I wouldn't wager on it. Also, as others have said, if that's the case, replicating their business model just got a whole lot easier.
> This is technically what everyone should aspire to be
No, there are other values besides maximizing utility.
No, I think you're mistaking the host for the parasite - he's running a software and solutions company, which means, in a reductive sense, he is making money/scamming cash out of customers through means of software. The software is ultimately smoke and mirrors that can be anything so long it justify customer payments. Oh boy those software be additive to the world.
Everything between landing a contract and transferring deliverables, for someone like him, is already questionably related to revenues. There's everything in software engineering to tie developer paychecks to values created, and it's still as reliable as medical advice from LLM at best. Adding LLMs into it probably won't look so risky to him.
> No, there are other values besides maximizing utility.
True, but again, above his paygrade as a player in a free market capitalist economy which is mere part of a modern society, albeit not a tiny part.
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OT and might be weird to say: I think a lot of businesses would appreciate vibe-coding going forward, relative to a team of competent engineers, solely because LLMs are more consistent(ly bad). Code quality doesn't matter but consistency do; McDonald's basically dominates Hamburger market with the worst burger ever that is also by far the most consistent. Nobody loves it, but it's what sells.
> My problem is that directives such as "software developers need to use tool x" is an _input_ with, at best, a questionable causal relationship to outcome y.
Total drivel. It is beyond question that the use of the tools increases the capabilities and output of every single developer in the company in whatever task they are working on, once they understand how to use them. That is why there is the directive.
Long bet: people are going to write much more code in 2035 than today. It's just going to be very different.
(For the record software development has nothing to do now with how it looked when I started in 2003, plenty of things have revolutionized the way we write code (especially Github) and made us an order of magnitude more productive at least. Yet the number of developer has skyrocketed. I don't expect this trend to stop, AI is yet another productivity boost in an industry that already faced a lot of them in recent time.
The only people saying this kind of thing are coders desperate to stay relevant. There is no future in coding. Its gone in a few years. Instead begin learning the skills required to work with AI to get it create what you want.
Is there any research that shows that failing years in school and remaining longer than expected is linked with blindly believing anything AI grifters say?
In my company I would have told him to start doing some work and getting stories delivered or he's gone. Yes, he's being useful in assisting others but I can easily find someone who can do that and their own work at the same time. He doesnt need to be sat there with others the whole time. What is likely going on there is Tim is playing his boss, playing up his pairing role and its benefits in order to sit being idle watching others work while providing commentary.
All these whiney creatives who feel threatened just need to suck it up and deal with it. Even if they got their way in the US, another app in another country will just use their data without permission. All they are doing is ensuring those apps wouldnt be American.
What do you mean by "deal with it?" Because to me it looks like they're dealing with it by joining in solidarity with other artists, raising awareness about how this affects them and us and lobbying for regulation they think would improve the situation.
I guess you meant they should deal with it by just letting it happen to them quietly and without a fight? Is that how you would deal with your livelihood being preventably and unnecessarily destroyed for someone else's enrichment? Maybe, but artists are not overall as cowardly as programmers.
> All they are doing is ensuring those apps wouldnt be American.
Maybe these whiny americans just need to suck it up and deal with it?
Deal with it as in them accepting there is nothing they can do to stop it. Other countries arent going to follow whatever laws they manage to get in place in the US.
That makes no sense. Even if an individual user is able to use RuGPT to generate infringing content privately, commercial entities would be prohibited from doing so. That is a clear win for "whiney creatives."
No it isnt. Because foreign companies and entities don't need to follow those laws. The whiney creative still losses. All they do is unsure that its their own country that doesnt benefit.
It's just a case that nothing can be done about it. They can protest about it, but a European, Japanese, Chinese, or Russia company will just continue oblivious that there even was any protest.
Commercial creatives have to accept it is happening and adapt.
It used to be rich people got nervous when a big group of precarious workers suddenly became desperate non-workers all at once.
> accept it is happening and adapt.
Are you going to follow this advice if they adapt by simply taking all your shit at gunpoint?
I don't know if I was positioned and planning to personally benefit from the mass destruction of people's livelihoods I'd at least keep a low key about it you know what I mean?. I wouldn't be so gleefully gloating about this in public but hey. There's a lot of cops I'm sure it's fine. It'll probably be fine for you. But it doesn't concern you a tiny bit? Just on the outside chance? Nah nevermind it's fine. Don't worry about it.
If I lived in the USA I would be concerned, but I live in Switzerland and have residency in two other wealth haven countries, with businesses across multiple European countries. It isn't something that is an issue for me given the attitudes to wealth where I live.
That sounds great you sound delightful and clearly nothing to be worried about because nothing like that ever changes so you'll be fine forever I'll leave you to your gloating now. Make sure you keep doing it all in public like this just in case though.
No it isn't going to change, because it's part of our culture and we don't easily let foreign riff-raff in to corrupt that.
If youre pinning your hopes of the future of your country on the peasants taking from the rich, youre going to be very disappointed. Usually it doesn't end well, and especially doesn't when the elite will just mow them down with military drones who will follow orders to the letter.
Last month I had a staff member design and build a distributed system that would be far beyond their capabilities without AI assistance. As a business owner this allows me to reduce the dependency and power of the senior devs.