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It's a tale as old as time that developers, particularly junior developers, are convinced they could "slap together something in one weekend" that would replace expensive SAAS software and "just do the parts of it we actually use". Unfortunately, the same arguments against those devs regular-coding a bespoke replacement apply to them vibe-coding a bespoke replacement: management simply doesn't want to be responsible…
But then keep in mind one who built the replacement will become the owner of an application that business doesn’t want to pay for and that person will be cost center for the company.
That person better get marketing and negotiating skills that Atlassian has on board because that person will be responsible for the app and will not be getting salary increases for working on something that is not core business of the company.
Even if you can make LLM to do the app for you.
It's a tale as old as time that developers, particularly junior developers, are convinced they could "slap together something in one weekend" that would replace expensive SAAS software and "just do the parts of it we actually use". Unfortunately, the same arguments against those devs regular-coding a bespoke replacement apply to them vibe-coding a bespoke replacement: management simply doesn't want to be responsible…
I hear all of the cost savings benefit, but I never see the team factoring in their own time (and others time) needed to set up and maintain these systems reliably long term.
Something IC’s at company often struggle to understand is the reason why companies often prefer to buy managed solutions even when “free” alternatives exist (read: the free alternatives are also expensive, just a different type of cost)
Earlier quoted context omitted.
sorry, what do you mean?
1. Enthusiastic employee (vibe-)codes a replacement for a turnkey SaaS product that the company uses. 2. Company uses it, maybe even starts to rely on it for important business operations, and for a time the employee supports that app. 3. Bugs creep in, feature request pile up. 4. Employee either leaves the company or moves on to another project. 5. Pain
3. Bugs creep in, feature request pile up.
4. Employee continue in the company and request help (or the managers see the need):
4.1 They hire more, but if all are vibe-coders too
4.1.1 The product gets more complicated (no more complex, that good developers can manage!)
4.1.2 Bugs creep in, feature request pile up.
4.1.3 People start to get desperate, not worries! now:
4.1.3.1 Somebody vibe-code a new alternative that solves the immediate problem
4.1.3.2 Bugs creep in, feature request pile up.
4.1.3.3 Needs to sync with the other tools
4.1.3.3.1 Somebody vibe-code the sync that solves the immediate problem
(the saga continue)
In parallel:
4.2 Eventually is obvious that need external help
THEN:
4.2.1 They ask for consultors for build tool, of course, from a company that has embraced the IA!
4.2.2 They build new shinny tool!
4.2.3 Bugs creep in, feature request pile up.
4.2.4 Needs to sync with the other tools ....
AND:
4.3.1 They ask for consultors, to teach them what to do, of course, from a company that has embraced the IA!
4.3.2 New shinny theory of how do the thing with IA is now being implemented!
4.3.3 It require a rewrite of not only past solutions but, a change of how the company behave!
4.3.3.1 Needs to sync with the other tools .......
4.3.4 And it spark beautiful office/political debates around some philosophical whatever that also trigger changes in the structure, hiring or whatever, alienating the people that has been working there, that after months, has started getting the handle of it!
4.3.5 Employees either leaves the company or moves on to another project.
4.3.6 New employees arrive, with a wild new IA tool and different vibes that vibe-coding!
... the saga continues
5. Is now clear that it need to buy a product form a well stablished software provider
5.1 And all of them are now in the IA craze!
.............
Earlier quoted context omitted.
The example I made about inventory wasn't random. One of my clients spends 500k+ on XXX licensing per year (for a 200M revenue company that's not peanuts), and on top of that has to employ 12 full time XXX developers (that command high figures just for their expertise on that software while providing very little productivity) and every single feature takes months to develop anyway. Talking about stuff like adding few…
That situation makes sense but then i have to ask why hasn't it been done already? Software developers are not rare and if the use case is so isolated and discreet then surely it would have been tried by now. Even without genAI, CRUD, RDBMS record management, SSO, row level security... none of those things are new or out of reach until now. I think what you'll find is when you sit down with the users and start asking…
There's multiple people highly involved into maintaining the status quo which do everything to take any responsibility out of them.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
In any usable product making a product is like 20% or less. Enter compliance, security, payments and a million other things. Even if you can build it in a day B2B SaaS will continue to prosper because they sell peace of mind, reliability and compliance. Not features. Also due to economy of scale it will always be cheaper to buy something from a vendor that sells it to many clients than to DIY it.
Yep. Wait until they realize one of their vibe coded apps validates everything client side and their entire DB is open to the world.
It's a tale as old as time that developers, particularly junior developers, are convinced they could "slap together something in one weekend" that would replace expensive SAAS software and "just do the parts of it we actually use". Unfortunately, the same arguments against those devs regular-coding a bespoke replacement apply to them vibe-coding a bespoke replacement: management simply doesn't want to be responsible…
But I think it’s plausible that SaaS companies will be easier to start with AI coding, and with lower costs (thanks to AI) they will be able to get into the black with a smaller addressable market. So each one can have a different mix of fewer features, for different segments of customers, at lower prices.
The result would be a loss of pricing power by the incumbent do-everything big guys: no more baked-in 10% annual increases. Which is still a pretty big change in their economics. And therefore valuations.
1. This isn't rooted in data but anecdotes "One Series E CEO told me that they’re re-evaluating the quarterly renewal of their engineering productivity software because they along with an engineer reimplemented something using Github and Notion APIs. They were paying $30,000 to a popular tool3 and they were not going to renew anymore." 2. These anecdotes are about tech startups spend, not your . Nor or they grounded…
Yeah, also if a SaaS costs, 10k a year, I promise its not not more cost effecient to pull your 10k a month engineer off their usual work to build and then maintain some vibe coded slope everytime an edge case occurs. Also many customers of SaaS have little to zero engineering staff, they are in construction, resturaunts, law offices ect. These takes are so assanine.
So many takes on here are so lazy and simpleton that when you go a few levels deeper all the flaws get exposed.
1. This isn't rooted in data but anecdotes "One Series E CEO told me that they’re re-evaluating the quarterly renewal of their engineering productivity software because they along with an engineer reimplemented something using Github and Notion APIs. They were paying $30,000 to a popular tool3 and they were not going to renew anymore." 2. These anecdotes are about tech startups spend, not your . Nor or they grounded…
- If our customers vibe coded better integration points for us, it probably improves our overall value to our customers.
- The software industry, especially startups, is such an insignificant portion of the market, its not really worth worrying about. But, I can tell you from experience, that even large software companies don't want their own developers spending much time on accounting, ERP, or HRIS systems and they "outsource" this to SaaS companies.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
We are certainly closer now to being able to prototype and go to market faster with a product. In one weekend is a little much but I think its hard to deny that building will continue to expedite. What most developers don't think about is that the marketing, sales, customer service are all non-trivial parts of the business/product and all require legwork that is more than just sitting at an IDE. The nail in the coffi…
In any usable product making a product is like 20% or less. Enter compliance, security, payments and a million other things. Even if you can build it in a day B2B SaaS will continue to prosper because they sell peace of mind, reliability and compliance. Not features. Also due to economy of scale it will always be cheaper to buy something from a vendor that sells it to many clients than to DIY it.
You build a Twitter. Profiles have posts, posts can have images, etc. It's very easy to model the database.
But then how do you make money with it? Now you need to build a separate system for advertising? Or do you want to sell subscriptions? Which means you need to build a separate system to handle payments. This is usually the big one, because when you handle money, what happens if there is a bug and you charge someone without delivering anything? How do you prevent fraud? How do you handle disputes?
Someone posted something illegal. What do you do in this situation? Do you call the police? The FBI? What kind of data do you give the authorities? How much data SHOULD you have been logging in the first place in case something like this happens?
One user doesn't like you so he bought a botnet to DDoS your website. How do you handle this? Are they mass posting? Mass creating accounts? Is it possible for them to exhaust all the usernames possible and then nobody can create an account anymore?
Your website is online but if the server blows up you'll lose all the data in the database. You need backups. You need a system to ensure the backups are actually working. But then some guy from the UK said he wants his posts all deleted. What are you going to do now, because his posts are also in the backups, and you don't want to touch those.
Trolls are posting things against the ToS. Who handles these things? Shadowban? So there needs to be a shadowban system? Moderators? So there needs to be a moderator-only section of the website? Should this be integrated with the main website or not?
Then you look at this horrendous mess of 6 paragraphs and you think back about the first paragraph that already did everything you wanted from Twitter. All these other systems, most of the work, and all you actually wanted was the first paragraph.