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Ask HN: AI productivity gains – do you fire devs or build better products?

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Ask HN: AI productivity gains – do you fire devs or build better products?

#1
i was rolling my eyes at the hype, but reading about this is totally different from experiencing it. if you have any old repos out there - try it, you might actually be amazed.

i'm not sure i buy the long-term "*90% productivity*" claims for complex, legacy enterprise systems, but for the boilerplate, libraries, build-tools, and refactoring? the gain is gigantic. all the time-consuming, nerve-wrecking stuff is mostly taken care of.

you start off checking every diff like a hawk, expecting it to break things, but honestly, soon you see it's not necessary most of the time. you just keep your IDE open and feed the "analyze code" output back into it. in java, telling it to "add checkstyle, run mvn verify and repair" works well enough that you can actually go grab a coffee instead of fighting linter warnings.

the theory is that what remains is just the logic and ideas. we'll see how that holds up when the architecture gets genuinely tangled. but for now, letting it branch off, create boilerplate, and write a simple test while you just iterate on the spec works shockingly well. you only write source code when it's too annoying to write down the spec in plain english.

it raises the real question: if your competitor Y just fired 90% of their developers to save a buck, would you blindly follow suit? or would you keep your team, use this massive leverage, and just *dwarf* Y with a vastly better product?

Re: Ask HN: AI productivity gains – do you fire devs or build better products?

#2
In certain industries, increasing productivity by 90% does not mean 90% increase in profit. This is because growth depends on market TAM and growth rate.

Another way of increasing profit is to simply reduce your headcount by 90% while keeping the same profit.*

Hence, I think some companies will keep downsizing. Some companies will hire. It depends a lot.

*Assuming 90% productivity increase.

Re: Ask HN: AI productivity gains – do you fire devs or build better products?

#3
"I just got my third coffee and I'm feeling really good about the quality of this code. I don't even bother to look at it. Keeps my tests simple to not test at all. You know, 'in theory'. Of course when the architecture gets genuinely tangled... Just keep your IDE open so the code knows where to go. Whoa, too much caffeine, super sleepy..."

Terafab is suddenly making so much sense!

Re: Ask HN: AI productivity gains – do you fire devs or build better products?

#4
Why do people keep ralking about AI as it actually worked? I still don't see ANY proof that it doesn't generate a total unmaintainable unsecure mess, that since you didn't develop, you don't know how to fix. Like running a F1 Ferrari on a countryside road: useless and dangerous

Re: Ask HN: AI productivity gains – do you fire devs or build better products?

#6
yes you fire if you are a burned out company that only needs to maintain its product and slowly die...

you hire more if you are growth and have new ideas just never had the chance to implement them as they were not practical of feasible at that level of tech (non-assisted humans clicking code and taking sick leaves)

Re: Ask HN: AI productivity gains – do you fire devs or build better products?

#8

Why do people keep ralking about AI as it actually worked? I still don't see ANY proof that it doesn't generate a total unmaintainable unsecure mess, that since you didn't develop, you don't know how to fix. Like running a F1 Ferrari on a countryside road: useless and dangerous

Yeah its great but as the OP said you have to watch every P.R. like a hawk

Re: Ask HN: AI productivity gains – do you fire devs or build better products?

#9

Why do people keep ralking about AI as it actually worked? I still don't see ANY proof that it doesn't generate a total unmaintainable unsecure mess, that since you didn't develop, you don't know how to fix. Like running a F1 Ferrari on a countryside road: useless and dangerous

Because it's working for a lot of people. There are people getting value from these products right now. I'm getting value myself and I know several other folks at work who are getting value.

I'm not sure what your circumstances are but even if it's not true for you, it's true for many other people.

Re: Ask HN: AI productivity gains – do you fire devs or build better products?

#10

Why do people keep ralking about AI as it actually worked? I still don't see ANY proof that it doesn't generate a total unmaintainable unsecure mess, that since you didn't develop, you don't know how to fix. Like running a F1 Ferrari on a countryside road: useless and dangerous

Consider it this way as a reasoning step: We've invented a cross compiler that can handle the natural languages too. That's definitely useful; but it's still GIGO so you still need your brain.
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