Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

johnjwang.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

171–179 of 179 posts

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

#171

Post by fooker »

maplethorpe wrote: post #132
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.

You don't have to automate all of it, just whatever parts you do not consider fun so you can get to the fun parts with less friction.

But I suppose it depends on what you consider fun. I genuinely know people who love to meticulously write many many unit tests. I think that's great as a craft, but you probably can not expect to get paid for it, similar to how you likely can not be profitable by selling handmade shirts now unless you are already independently wealthy and well known.

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

#172

Post by tdeck »

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…

> Your team's screwdriver usage is only 30% of the company's target. 80% of other teams at Taylor Manufacturing Co. are leveraging Screw Driving tools more often as a regular part of their daily work. If your team doesn't improve, we'll need to come up with a retraining plan.

> But we're the accounting team?

> Doesn't matter. This is a SD-Native company now. We believe everyone can be more productive with an SD-based workflow.

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

#173

Post by eddd-ddde »

phyzome wrote: post #62
paxys wrote: post #5

You must be living in a different universe if you think ICs aren't enamored by AI. Every developer I know basically can't operate now without Claude Code (or equivalent).

So what you're saying is that now the worst devs can produce code faster and their velocity is no longer limited by their incompetence. Why is this supposed to be a good thing?

Meh not really.

I _could_ do my job without AI, but it would take twice the time and I would feel miserable having to type out every single character like a caveman.

Just AI auto complete alone is a massive life changer. It reduces my typing at least in half, and is highly accurate to what I want to write.

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

#174

Post by pizzafeelsright »

phyzome wrote: post #100
Esophagus4 wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Come on man, that’s not what GP is saying.

How is it not? It reads to me as them saying that all these devs have deskilled from "barely competent" to "completely helpless". Or is your claim that they were actually really good devs, and the deskilling has been even more intense than I'm picturing? Because that also sounds real bad!

My personal experience is we're seeing a magnification of results. The slog is reading hundreds of files, updating some active code to remove some old function from 100k lines of code. Last week the modification, while trivial, would have took weeks and AI agents were able to correct the code with 100% verified accuracy in 20 minutes.

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

#175

Post by cedws »

Because they don’t work with it. It’s a simple as that. I don’t trust people who don’t work with a terminal these days, the further they get from a terminal, the less grounded their views are. They rely on hearsay and CEO hype. To make matters worse, they say whatever they think will earn them a bonus/promotion, which leads to a cascade of BS down the chain.

I seriously doubt Satya Nadella is sitting down for hours a day to use Copilot to draft detailed documents. He's being fed fantastical stories by his lackeys telling him what he wants to hear.

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

#176

Post by whattheheckheck »

glouwbug wrote: post #161
bitwize wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Right, but Carmack has always delivered. I need someone without Carmack’s ability to show me what value they can deliver with AI

They cant, its your job to train them or take their salary

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

#177

Post by lowbloodsugar »

For ICs the midwit meme applies here. The really terrible programmers love AI because they aren’t smart enough to determine how bad the code it generates for them really is. The middling programmers are just smart enough to know that it generates bad code for them, and that confirms their world view and they stop there. The great programmers sit down and figure out how to use it effectively.

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

#179

Post by gerdesj »

gamblor956 wrote: post #164
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…

This is actually a really good analogy, because electric drivers are the wrong tool 99% of the time and most people don't use them.

I drive an EV and am a complete tool!
Post reply on HN