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There's no such thing as a small software team anymore

jacob.gold

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Re: There's no such thing as a small software team anymore

#161

Post by jatora »

lelanthran wrote: post #102
jatora wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Continual gains that have not stopped and there is clearly much gain to be had even if model intelligence stopped scaling. I find it borderline nasty how so many people are positively hoping for a bubble to pop or an AI winter to come so that they can feel like they can cope with the evolving world...despite all evidence to the contrary that any of these things will happen very soon at all.

Speak to young folk. My numerous nieces and nephews use ChatGPT all the time and yet they still hate it. They are contemplating a lifetime of devalued skills, because they can see that prompting a model is an unskilled task.

I'd suggest that they need better education then. Prompting isn't unskilled. Neither was googling before that. There is critical thinking involved, and the method in which you utilize the outputs that matters as well.

Yes skills are going to be devalued, but that isn't happening yet for the vast majority. So its not really apt for them to think this way.

Re: There's no such thing as a small software team anymore

#162

Post by echelon »

RealityVoid wrote: post #157
echelon wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The models got good at this seven months ago. Your hypothesis that your job is secure because the models hit a ceiling is based on seven months of observational history. We've been watching the models get progressively better for years now. It's not going to stop in place. In some amount of time from now, these models will absolutely require less hand holding. It's as though everyone with your perspective isn't looki…

And if it comes, it comes. I have no doubt a model can be as good or better than humans. I don't think humans are the peak of possibly. I just don't think the current crop of models will get there. And I do not think fast takeoff will happen. In the meantime, I keel hearing psychotic chants of "don't even read the code anymore, bro!" While the code these things output is severely lacking. At this point, it _is_ cool-…

> I keel hearing psychotic chants of "don't even read the code anymore, bro!"

In just these seven months since Claude got good, I'm at $5M annualized at 65% MoM growth with 30% margins and plenty of opportunity to take that to 70%+. As a dev team of essentially one.

You're in a new game. Stop thinking with preconceived notions and take full advantage of it.

There are going to be a lot of winners and losers with this disruption. Don't lock yourself into the old regime because you grew up on newspaper.

Re: There's no such thing as a small software team anymore

#163

Post by shimman »

chrismorgan wrote: post #93
shimman wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's pretty impressive. I always like bespoke web utilities tailored for specific dev purposes. What approach are you taking? I'm about to start a mithril.js project, was always under the impression it was the most efficient approach. Are you doing something similar or different or are you referring to WASM?

Completely seriously, and I don’t think this is particularly controversial: outperforming React is not impressive. React was never particularly good at performance—VDOM is fundamentally overhead, and there are a variety of faster and lighter techniques employed by various competitors, and even among VDOM libraries it’s not as fast as it could be. React sold itself as fast initially, but what it was faster than (rebui…

I don't disagree, I'm always curious if there are new techniques out there to adopt. It's just hard to find out about them because as you said, sometimes they are bespoke single use tools that aren't easily shared/discussed about.

Re: There's no such thing as a small software team anymore

#164

Post by tokioyoyo »

kikimora wrote: post #142
samrus wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

By what metric is twitter dead? I dont like twotter but i still see content from it linked everywhere

Twitter content is trash

It's like us saying TikTok content is trash, but a good chunk of people would disagree.

Re: There's no such thing as a small software team anymore

#165

Post by blanched »

echelon wrote: post #162
RealityVoid wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And if it comes, it comes. I have no doubt a model can be as good or better than humans. I don't think humans are the peak of possibly. I just don't think the current crop of models will get there. And I do not think fast takeoff will happen. In the meantime, I keel hearing psychotic chants of "don't even read the code anymore, bro!" While the code these things output is severely lacking. At this point, it _is_ cool-…

> I keel hearing psychotic chants of "don't even read the code anymore, bro!" In just these seven months since Claude got good, I'm at $5M annualized at 65% MoM growth with 30% margins and plenty of opportunity to take that to 70%+. As a dev team of essentially one. You're in a new game. Stop thinking with preconceived notions and take full advantage of it. There are going to be a lot of winners and losers with this…

I'd like to consider myself somewhere towards the middle of the spectrum on AI outlook, but posts like yours in this thread depress me. It's difficult for me not to see it as spreading FOMO so that you can gain financially.

When's the last time you worked as an IC? Is there any reason to take your opinions on "my job" seriously when downward pressure on salaries is only beneficial to you and whatever AI companies you're attempting to start?

"The world will be better off as a whole". Why do you think this? How are you contributing to making the world better with AI? Is there any reason that's not related to making money?

Re: There's no such thing as a small software team anymore

#166

Post by echelon »

blanched wrote: post #165
echelon wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I keel hearing psychotic chants of "don't even read the code anymore, bro!" In just these seven months since Claude got good, I'm at $5M annualized at 65% MoM growth with 30% margins and plenty of opportunity to take that to 70%+. As a dev team of essentially one. You're in a new game. Stop thinking with preconceived notions and take full advantage of it. There are going to be a lot of winners and losers with this…

I'd like to consider myself somewhere towards the middle of the spectrum on AI outlook, but posts like yours in this thread depress me. It's difficult for me not to see it as spreading FOMO so that you can gain financially. When's the last time you worked as an IC? Is there any reason to take your opinions on "my job" seriously when downward pressure on salaries is only beneficial to you and whatever AI companies you…

I'm trying to help you by sharing and you're choosing to be dark and gloomy about it. I can only help so much.

What you did a few years ago will likely dry up as a source of supporting you and your family. There is all kinds of new value to create in the world. Find the calling that is meaningful to you. Go cure cancer instead of plumbing widgets and wizbobs at 100k QPS active-active five nines SLA.

Just don't stay as a gas station pump attendant, butter churner, or elevator button presser.

And it's also wild that you assume what I'm doing doesn't bring value to the world. There's a film being released theatrically in a few months that directly incorporates what I've worked on. I've been a filmmaker for decades outside of tech and that is deeply meaningful to me.

Re: There's no such thing as a small software team anymore

#167

Post by lelanthran »

jatora wrote: post #161
lelanthran wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Speak to young folk. My numerous nieces and nephews use ChatGPT all the time and yet they still hate it. They are contemplating a lifetime of devalued skills, because they can see that prompting a model is an unskilled task.

I'd suggest that they need better education then. Prompting isn't unskilled. Neither was googling before that. There is critical thinking involved, and the method in which you utilize the outputs that matters as well. Yes skills are going to be devalued, but that isn't happening yet for the vast majority. So its not really apt for them to think this way.

> I'd suggest that they need better education then.

I'd suggest you need better education.

> Prompting isn't unskilled.

That's not what the AI firms are selling.

Re: There's no such thing as a small software team anymore

#168

Post by blanched »

echelon wrote: post #166
blanched wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd like to consider myself somewhere towards the middle of the spectrum on AI outlook, but posts like yours in this thread depress me. It's difficult for me not to see it as spreading FOMO so that you can gain financially. When's the last time you worked as an IC? Is there any reason to take your opinions on "my job" seriously when downward pressure on salaries is only beneficial to you and whatever AI companies you…

I'm trying to help you by sharing and you're choosing to be dark and gloomy about it. I can only help so much. What you did a few years ago will likely dry up as a source of supporting you and your family. There is all kinds of new value to create in the world. Find the calling that is meaningful to you. Go cure cancer instead of plumbing widgets and wizbobs at 100k QPS active-active five nines SLA. Just don't stay a…

I didn’t assume, I asked. But you’re being particularly condescending, so I guess that’s where we’re at.

“Directly incorporates” is pretty vague and still seems like it’s financial, but good for you. I hope it’s something that assists artists and doesn’t replace them. Personally it’s hard for me to find meaning in something like that, given the thread’s context of “I don’t even look at the code”. What craft was done? In what way is the movie better now? It’s cheaper?

I won’t endorse glee about anyone losing their job, even if it means people with a lot of freedom can throw things at the wall and see what sticks. Same story as always, it’s just faster now.

Re: There's no such thing as a small software team anymore

#169

Post by pianopatrick »

zelphirkalt wrote: post #143
pianopatrick wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Seems to me the real question is "what scheme can we use to organize our code base such that an agent working on one part really can make changes and not break the other parts on accident". My current theory I might test out is to treat generative AI as generative AI. This means instead of editing things like a microservice in place you version freeze them to bug fixes only and create new versions for new features. T…

How does this freezing version and new version and so on differ from having the code in a version controlled repo?

It would be more about the release cadence and strategy. I.e. instead of deploying to production as fast as possible after merging new code, have discrete releases. Like maybe daily, weekly or monthly. And keep the last couple releases around ready to roll back as fast as possible if there are issues with the new release

Re: There's no such thing as a small software team anymore

#170

Post by hombre_fatal »

skydhash wrote: post #145
hombre_fatal wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I use Claude model=fable effort=high to write most of my initial plans, especially the hard things like re-architecture. I recommend putting time into figuring out the "soft infrastructure" of your projects, usually things you've never been arsed to do in your life (like me until this year). Start with a docs/*.md folder that you link to from AGENTS.md where you can document things that would be important for you, an…

> Or maybe there's some load bearing "make impossible states unrepresentable" platitude in my AGENTS.md I'm overlooking that's responsible for why I have such a great experience with AI and nobody else on HN apparently is. We can notice that you're describing the work, but not any result that have derived it from it. I can explain to someone how to learn vim and tmux, but the best argument is to explain the benefits…

The context here is using AI agents to automate high-quality software development, something that is slow and expensive to do by hand which committed us to suboptimal maximas like "that subsystem is too gnarly and fragile to improve, so we won't" and "we used React Native in the Windows start menu because it's what the developer knew best".
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