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When everyone has AI and the company still learns nothing

robert-glaser.de

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Re: When everyone has AI and the company still learns nothing

#11

Post by embedding-shape »

pards wrote: post #7

In my large enterprise world, AI adoption hasn't made it outside of the development teams - only developers have access to Github Copilot. Code takes 6-12 months to make it from commit to production. Development speed was never the bottleneck; it's all the other processes that take time: infra provisioning, testing, sign-offs, change management, deployment scheduling etc. AI makes these post-development bottlenecks w…

> Large enterprises need to learn how to ship software faster

They haven't even learned that "less code is better" yet, I wouldn't hold my breathe waiting for them to suddenly learn "more advanced" things like that before they learn the basics.

Re: When everyone has AI and the company still learns nothing

#12

Post by _pdp_ »

pards wrote: post #7

In my large enterprise world, AI adoption hasn't made it outside of the development teams - only developers have access to Github Copilot. Code takes 6-12 months to make it from commit to production. Development speed was never the bottleneck; it's all the other processes that take time: infra provisioning, testing, sign-offs, change management, deployment scheduling etc. AI makes these post-development bottlenecks w…

Yep.

I would argue that any sufficiently large system reaches a point where more code is in fact the opposite of what it needs.

Nutrition and calories are only useful up-to a point and then we have diminishing and later on negative returns.

Even-tough it is not the best analogy because we are describing two different system, it helps put a mental model around the fact that churning more is often less.

Side Note: A got a feedback from a customer today that while our documentation is complete and very detailed, they find it to be too overwhelming. It turns out having a few bullet points to get the idea across it better than 5 page document. Now it is obvious.

Re: When everyone has AI and the company still learns nothing

#14

Post by Cthulhu_ »

On the first part of the article, I believe it describes how individual productivity gains do not seem to translate to business / larger scale productivity. I think this is expected; individual developer productivity, code volume, LOC/day never was a valuable metric on a company scale. Number of delivered features might be one, but ultimately, revenue and customer growth etc are.

While I do believe higher developer productivity can lead to faster reacting to market forces or more A/B testing, that won't necessarily lead to a successful business. Because ultimately it rarely is the software that's the issue there.

Re: When everyone has AI and the company still learns nothing

#15

Post by b112 »

rob74 wrote: post #4

One more point I noticed: since AI adoption is being promoted by companies, collaboration between developers could suffer. Why wait for a more experienced developer to have the time to explain some aspect of the codebase to you (and at the same time confess your ignorance), when AI can do it right away in a competent-sounding way (and most of the time it will probably be right, too)?

I think you hit the nail on the head, it's probably right, most of the time. Or, maybe 89% right, 91% of the time.

The more I use AI, the more I see mistakes. I've noticed others see these same mistakes, correct them, then when queried say "Oh, it gets it right all of the time!". No, having to point out "you got this wrong, re-write that last bit" isn't "getting it right". And it's not that the code is wrong overtly, it's subtle. Not using a function correctly, not passing something through it should (and the default happens to just work -- during testing), and more. LLMs are great at subtle bugs.

So moving forward with this isolation you mention, ensures that maybe the guy in the company, the 'answer guy' about a thing, never actually appears. Maybe, he doesn't even get to know his own code well enough to be the answer guy.

And so when an LLM writes a weird routine, instead of being able to say "No, re-write that last bit", you'll have to shrug and say "the code looks fine, right?", because you, and the answer guy, if he exists, don't know the code well enough to see the subtle mistakes.

Re: When everyone has AI and the company still learns nothing

#16

Post by rogerthis »

rob74 wrote: post #4

One more point I noticed: since AI adoption is being promoted by companies, collaboration between developers could suffer. Why wait for a more experienced developer to have the time to explain some aspect of the codebase to you (and at the same time confess your ignorance), when AI can do it right away in a competent-sounding way (and most of the time it will probably be right, too)?

That already happens here. I am old dev who was the goto guy for people with certain business and technical questions. Not anymore (which is part good, as I'm interrupted much less, and part bad, as sometimes they regard the wrong answer as truth).

Re: When everyone has AI and the company still learns nothing

#17

Post by TrackerFF »

pards wrote: post #7

In my large enterprise world, AI adoption hasn't made it outside of the development teams - only developers have access to Github Copilot. Code takes 6-12 months to make it from commit to production. Development speed was never the bottleneck; it's all the other processes that take time: infra provisioning, testing, sign-offs, change management, deployment scheduling etc. AI makes these post-development bottlenecks w…

Which is why there's currently a gold rush of "Enterprise AI" startups which implement / offer agents to enterprise businesses.

Re: When everyone has AI and the company still learns nothing

#18

Post by jt654 »

This is a great article. It helps you realize that the feedback loop is the goal but it won't just happen and traditional methodologies don't really support it. Has anyone here found a good way that promotes teams in a company to focus on the loop instead of productivity hack?

Re: When everyone has AI and the company still learns nothing

#19

Post by woodydesign »

Great article. The part that stood out to me is the shift in how organizations define work.

In the old model, performance and OKRs were anchored in disciplines, job titles, and role-specific expectations. In the AI era, those boundaries are starting to collapse. The deeper issue is psychological and organizational: people are constantly negotiating the line between “this is my job” and “this is not my responsibility.”

That creates a key adoption problem: what is the upside of being visibly recognized as an expert AI user? If people learn that I can do faster, better, and more cross-functional work, why would I reveal that unless the company also creates a clear system for recognition, compensation, or career growth?

Re: When everyone has AI and the company still learns nothing

#20

Post by user34283 »

rob74 wrote: post #4

One more point I noticed: since AI adoption is being promoted by companies, collaboration between developers could suffer. Why wait for a more experienced developer to have the time to explain some aspect of the codebase to you (and at the same time confess your ignorance), when AI can do it right away in a competent-sounding way (and most of the time it will probably be right, too)?

In a large codebase it‘s probably next to impossible to get people who fully understand the code to explain it to you with unerring accuracy.

AI can get a pretty good picture, near instantly, whenever you need it.

It’s not just competent-sounding, it is reasonably competent, and certainly very useful for tasks like that.

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