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Why are executives enamored with AI, but ICs aren't?

johnjwang.com

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Re: Why are executives enamored with AI, but ICs aren't?

#131

Post by bitwize »

echelon wrote: post #30
SirensOfTitan wrote: post #13

I think executives are excited about AI because it confirms their worldview: that the work is a commodity and the real value lies in orchestration and strategy. It doesn't help that the west has a clear bias wherein moving "up" is moving away from the work. Many executives often don't know what good looks like at the detail level, so they can't evaluate AI output quality.

Work is delivering value. Yes, we have craftsmanship, but at the end of the day everything is ephemeral and impermanent and the world continues on without remembering us. I think both the IC and executive are correct in superposition.

Indeed. Even the ur-craftsman, John Carmack, says that delivering value to customers is pretty much the only thing that matters in development. If AI lets you do that faster, cheaper, you'd be a fool not to use it. There's a reason why it's virtually a must in professional software engineering now.

Re: Why are executives enamored with AI, but ICs aren't?

#132

Post by maplethorpe »

fooker wrote: post #26

The premise is wrong. Plenty of ICs 'enamored' with AI. If you are not, you either have a boring job or do not have any ideas that are worth prototyping asynchronously. Or haven't tried AI in the last ~3 months.

I think my job is a lot of fun and I'm not enamored with AI. Why would I want a robot to do the fun part for me? That's what makes it fun -- that I'm the one doing it.

Re: Why are executives enamored with AI, but ICs aren't?

#133

Post by thunky »

sarchertech wrote: post #110
kolinko wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Since the November/December Opus and Claude Code, I found I don't need to read the code any more. Architecture overview sure, and testing yes, but not reading the code directly any more. Me (and my friends similarly) inspect code indirectly now - telling agents to write reports about certain aspects of the code and architecture etc.

I do regularly read the code that Claude outputs. And about 25% of the time the tests it writes will reimplement the code under test in the test. Another 25% of the time the tests are wrong in some other way. Usually mocking something in a way that doesn't match reality. And maybe 5% of the time Claude does some testing that requires a database, it will find some other database lying around and try to use that instea…

> I do regularly read the code that Claude outputs

You probably could have s/Claude/Human/ in your rant and been just as accurate. I don't know how many times I've flagged these issues in code reviews. And that's only assuming the human even bothered to write tests...

What I find is that when I ask AI to write tests it writes too many, and I agree with you that a lot of them are useless. But then I just tell it that, and it agrees with me and cleans it up. Much faster feedback loop and much better final result.

I feel like people that look at a poor result and stop there and conclude it's useless have made up their mind and don't want to see the better results that are right in front of them if they just spend an extra 5 seconds trying.

Re: Why are executives enamored with AI, but ICs aren't?

#134

Post by enoint »

pigpop wrote: post #60
SirensOfTitan wrote: post #13

I think executives are excited about AI because it confirms their worldview: that the work is a commodity and the real value lies in orchestration and strategy. It doesn't help that the west has a clear bias wherein moving "up" is moving away from the work. Many executives often don't know what good looks like at the detail level, so they can't evaluate AI output quality.

The reasons given in the article are much more compelling.

I don’t think so. The article is about a manager who thinks in systems and an individual contributor preoccupied with process work. The GP comment gets closer to incentives.

Re: Why are executives enamored with AI, but ICs aren't?

#135

Post by enoint »

xixixao wrote: post #45
withinboredom wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The funny thing is that AI can probably replace the exec’s job before it can replace a devs job.

What do you think the exec job is? What do they do every day, every working hour? And how will AI replace that?

I’m in a heavily-regulated sector, fully remote. If left alone, our junior exec:

- needs a digest of where chat activity is hottest. Maybe he lurks, occasionally he gets into conversations about what’s going on in another department.

- needs some warning if the Microsoft systems are under attack or strain. The Linux systems have not needed attention; the jargon is unfamiliar.

- occasionally brings up hypothetical radical changes in strategy. I think of these as multivariate tests. Maybe I reply, “Plenty of Kubenetes developers available right now” might communicate that some small team would be ahead of us on some solved problem.

I’m surprised that:

- he has no concern that competition even exists. No awareness that our competition demos at conferences; why they’d choose to spend time that way.

- no interest in the big accounts we don’t have. If it would take a big lift, what would engineering need? If it would take a small lift, what non-engineering is blocking? No interest.

- person-to-person networking is effective at all. I just can’t imagine any value in two execs meeting without hours of preparation.

I’ve seen BI tooling around each of these. I wonder if a daily “facts of our department” slide to begin each meeting, if that would replace/augment 51% of visible exec.

Re: Why are executives enamored with AI, but ICs aren't?

#136

Post by enoint »

ilaksh wrote: post #69

Executive's job is to increase profit. Reduction in employees is a primary way to do that. AI is the most promising way to reduce the need for employees. Executives do not need actively functional systems from AI to help with their own daily work. Nothing falls over if their report is not quite right. So they are seeing AI output that is more complete for their own purposes. But also, AI is good enough to accelerate…

Best comment here. I’ve never met someone with that status choosing to be an engineer. And I’m unsurprised that an upper class executive is preoccupied about $30/day in labor margin.

Re: Why are executives enamored with AI, but ICs aren't?

#137

Post by sigbottle »

Eufrat wrote: post #89
gerdesj wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

MD here, of a really small company (and I'm not a doctor). I'm (mildly) excited by LLMs because I love a new shiny tool that does appear to have quite some utility. My analogy these days is a screwdriver. Let's ignore screw development for now. The first screwdrivers, which we still use, are slotted and have a habit of slipping sideways and jumping (camming out). That's err before LLMs ... something ... something. Fa…

> I'm (mildly) excited by LLMs because I love a new shiny tool that does appear to have quite some utility. I really think a lot of folks were conned by a smooth operator and a polished demo, so now everyone has to suffer though having this nebulous thing rammed down our throats regardless of its real utility because people with higher pay grades believe it has utility. It feels like a lot of “AI is inevitable; you a…

Classic kafka trap! The mere sign of resistance is a sign of a deeper psychological incompatibility that fundamentally needs to be worked through until you agree with the state.

Re: Why are executives enamored with AI, but ICs aren't?

#138

Post by sarchertech »

thunky wrote: post #133
sarchertech wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I do regularly read the code that Claude outputs. And about 25% of the time the tests it writes will reimplement the code under test in the test. Another 25% of the time the tests are wrong in some other way. Usually mocking something in a way that doesn't match reality. And maybe 5% of the time Claude does some testing that requires a database, it will find some other database lying around and try to use that instea…

> I do regularly read the code that Claude outputs You probably could have s/Claude/Human/ in your rant and been just as accurate. I don't know how many times I've flagged these issues in code reviews. And that's only assuming the human even bothered to write tests... What I find is that when I ask AI to write tests it writes too many, and I agree with you that a lot of them are useless. But then I just tell it that,…

How do you know whether the tests it’s spits out are bad if you don’t read the tests.

We’re not dealing AGI here. Tests aren’t strictly necessary for humans. They are for AI. AI requires guardrails to keep from spinning out. That’s essentially the entire premise of the agentic workflow.

Re: Why are executives enamored with AI, but ICs aren't?

#139

Post by UncleMeat »

thunky wrote: post #133
sarchertech wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I do regularly read the code that Claude outputs. And about 25% of the time the tests it writes will reimplement the code under test in the test. Another 25% of the time the tests are wrong in some other way. Usually mocking something in a way that doesn't match reality. And maybe 5% of the time Claude does some testing that requires a database, it will find some other database lying around and try to use that instea…

> I do regularly read the code that Claude outputs You probably could have s/Claude/Human/ in your rant and been just as accurate. I don't know how many times I've flagged these issues in code reviews. And that's only assuming the human even bothered to write tests... What I find is that when I ask AI to write tests it writes too many, and I agree with you that a lot of them are useless. But then I just tell it that,…

In comparison, I see this issues in fewer than 1% of the changes I review. Because when it happens you can effectively teach people to stop doing it.

Re: Why are executives enamored with AI, but ICs aren't?

#140

Post by thunky »

sarchertech wrote: post #138
thunky wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I do regularly read the code that Claude outputs You probably could have s/Claude/Human/ in your rant and been just as accurate. I don't know how many times I've flagged these issues in code reviews. And that's only assuming the human even bothered to write tests... What I find is that when I ask AI to write tests it writes too many, and I agree with you that a lot of them are useless. But then I just tell it that,…

How do you know whether the tests it’s spits out are bad if you don’t read the tests. We’re not dealing AGI here. Tests aren’t strictly necessary for humans. They are for AI. AI requires guardrails to keep from spinning out. That’s essentially the entire premise of the agentic workflow.

> How do you know whether the tests it’s spits out are bad if you don’t read the tests.

I do read the tests (quickly, I admit) and so does OP:

Architecture overview sure, and testing yes, but not reading the code directly any more.

Reading that again I may have misunderstood what they meant by "testing yes", though.

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