121–124 of 124 posts
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Can AI build Google? 100,000 developers can.
It is irrelevant whether it can or can not, since most SWEs are not building google but building yet another CRUD API.(and Google was not built by 100k developers but a much smaller but extremely talented small number of developers).
HN is so weirdly optimistic that SWE jobs will not decline terribly in the age of LLMs. Yes claude code can not write a new web browser from scratch or even some innovative project, but almost nobody is doing that. Most of non big tech is writing the same CRUD apps with trivial differences. Even 90% of big tech (outside the core infra) is just writing CRUD apps. I have worked at two big tech companies in fairly senio…
> HN is so weirdly optimistic that SWE jobs will not decline terribly in the age of LLMs. I mean, this is about the fourth "this will massively reduce the need for programmers" thing in the last 20 years. And it increasing feels like the previous ones; lots of hype, lots of marketing, very little empirical evidence that it's doing anything much. For CRUD stuff _in particular_, people have been promising CRUD without…
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Why would you expect different? Companies don't exist to benefit their employees (or their customers).
I would expect different because there are two major philosophies in business, and they indicate the direction a business will go. There is the philosophy of focus on profit/growth, or focus on costs/value-extraction. Before anyone straw mans "but you can do both", yes, you can, but only one can be the MAIN way you run a business. A focus on profit and growth will lead to seeing employees as strategic resources ready…
We all know the story of WhatsApp having a billion users with 50 employees. While Slack had significantly more employees and not necessarily a better product/business.
If Slack were to cut their staff down to 50, that would mean they are the ruthless type that only care about value extraction and doesn't value their employees, right? But if they started with 50 and kept it there, they'd be celebrated for efficiency like WhatsApp?
Point is, there is no way to know how efficient a company is, or what their philosophy is, just by looking at their financials and their headcount. Even if the headcount moves.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I would expect different because there are two major philosophies in business, and they indicate the direction a business will go. There is the philosophy of focus on profit/growth, or focus on costs/value-extraction. Before anyone straw mans "but you can do both", yes, you can, but only one can be the MAIN way you run a business. A focus on profit and growth will lead to seeing employees as strategic resources ready…
Respecfully disagree... We all know the story of WhatsApp having a billion users with 50 employees. While Slack had significantly more employees and not necessarily a better product/business. If Slack were to cut their staff down to 50, that would mean they are the ruthless type that only care about value extraction and doesn't value their employees, right? But if they started with 50 and kept it there, they'd be cel…