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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

#91

Post by TallGuyShort »

LeCompteSftware wrote: post #76
olsondv wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

May not have been clear. My job is not AI development. I have features to deliver. The ask from employer is to add the AI knowledge sharing on top of it. They don’t pay for that. When layoffs come, it wouldn’t save me from missed deliverables.

I refuse to use LLMs and don't have a job, so I'm just some guy. What I find strange about this is that in 2020 nobody would be this openly cynical and selfish about, say, good Python idioms, a useful emacs configuration, git shortcuts, etc. This attitude of "your job is to deliver value for the customer, anything else is a distraction, and if you share your hard-earned value-delivery techniques with others then you…

> What I find strange about this is that in 2020 nobody would be this openly cynical and selfish about, say, good Python idioms, a useful emacs configuration, git shortcuts, etc.

I definitely saw people have concerns about vimrc files and their personal library of shell scripts well before 2020, and I've seen people early in their career get burned by sharing it too. They had a tool that made them productive, it got out of their hands, and suddenly they're getting negative feedback from someone who tried using it and it didn't meet their expectations, or it got checked into the repository and now the script they used at their last job too has their current job's copyright notice and license on it, and they're perceived as being petty for trying to claw back their own intellectual property because they didn't go to the trouble of slapping legalese all over their personal tools.

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

#92

Post by arkh »

embedding-shape wrote: post #11
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.

With the factory allegory: code is stock. Stock costs and is a liability hence Lean manufacturing.

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

#93

Post by c-linkage »

ravenstine wrote: post #32
olsondv wrote: post #6

The post hits the nail on the head with the messy middle. There is simply no motivation to develop this sort of intelligence loop as a dev who has their own responsibilities which their job depend on. Management can ask as nicely as they want, but I’m not going to selflessly share my productivity gains with the broader company for free. I might share a tool if it’s useful. All the learning of how to wrangle AI or set…

It kinda racks my brain how a lot of people don't think this way. For example, way before the current state of AI, I wrote my own CLI to make aspects of my job easier and easier to write scripts to automate; some colleagues have noticed my tool and said I should share it, and my diplomatically worded answer is no. I don't share it with anyone because of the negative return in both supporting it and everyone else bein…

In my place of employment, anything I create while on company time or using company resources is the property of my employer.

So while it might be nice to say I won't share, boss-man can certainly make it so I must share.

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

#94

Post by ap99 »

olsondv wrote: post #6

The post hits the nail on the head with the messy middle. There is simply no motivation to develop this sort of intelligence loop as a dev who has their own responsibilities which their job depend on. Management can ask as nicely as they want, but I’m not going to selflessly share my productivity gains with the broader company for free. I might share a tool if it’s useful. All the learning of how to wrangle AI or set…

These "secrets" that are being hidden are basically on the same level as gary tan's list of super uber powerful prompts.

None of it is actually that crazy that everyone else could think up.

What I've noticed in my own experience here is that even when I do share my own prompts/skills few people use them (or alternatively they were so basic that everyone already had their own version).

e.g. If someone doesn't care about xyz before AI, they probably won't after AI even if I serve them it on a silver platter.

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

#95

Post by pards »

heymijo wrote: post #65
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…

What's old is new again [0][1][2] The Theory of Constraints - AI Era [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theory_of_constraints [1] https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/113934.The_Goal [2] https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/17255186-the-phoenix-...

Yep, it's 100% a theory of constraints issue. Any optimization not done at the bottleneck (post-development) only serves to worsen the bottleneck.

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

#96

Post by pards »

butlike wrote: post #83
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…

Unshipped code can't break. How is it a liability and not an asset? The money maker is making money and the changes that potentially would interfere with that are held up at the gate. Seems like a good thing from a business perspective.

It's an investment that is not generating returns. It's inventory sitting on the shelf requiring ongoing maintenance costs but generating no income.

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

#97

Post by dogleash »

pu_pe wrote: post #80
ravenstine wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It kinda racks my brain how a lot of people don't think this way. For example, way before the current state of AI, I wrote my own CLI to make aspects of my job easier and easier to write scripts to automate; some colleagues have noticed my tool and said I should share it, and my diplomatically worded answer is no. I don't share it with anyone because of the negative return in both supporting it and everyone else bein…

I don't think this way because I like to collaborate. If a colleague can benefit from a tool I made I'm proud to save them time. I also think your attitude doesn't pass the golden rule: would you like to work on a team full of people like you?

> I don't think this way because I like to collaborate.

Nice passive aggressive dig!

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

#99

Post by lxgr »

nkrisc wrote: post #59
lxgr wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My bigger concern is actually that, if a company isn't careful, the bloat (complexity, amount of code, other artifacts etc.) will just balloon and largely cancel out any gains. Feedback is often only considered once something is already on fire (financially, functionally, or literally).

That’s the game plan for the AI companies: once companies have massive codebases of critical AI generated code and a skeleton crew of prompt engineers they’re going to be locked in to the AI product to develop anything new. They’re not even selling shovels, they’re selling subscriptions for shovels.

I don't think there needs to be any intentional evil scheme for this dynamic to be worth considering and mitigating.

For example, there's also no cabal behind memory prices dropping (ignoring the development of the past months, of course), which in turn enabled web and game developers to use more memory and make their software non-viable on older devices.

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

#100

Post by impjohn »

chrisss395 wrote: post #50
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…

It's good to know your experience mirrors mine. Developers are moving faster, but the rest of the organization is holding them back because processes and decisions still rely on other parts of the org. Has anyone else observed the same? Organizations "born in AI" appear to buck this trend for obvious reasons (no legacy org. to deal with). My two cents.

I'd say there's bottlenecks within the developer processes without even considering org processes. Code review, release, post release ceremonies. Feels like they absorb much of the gained productivity in the coding phase.
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