Why Software Factories Fail (or: harness engineering is not enough)

Post by syndacks » Sun, Jul 26, 2026, 4:24 PM UTC

stevefan1999 wrote: post #265

RugnirViking wrote: post #257

Earlier quoted context omitted.

PM = politics maestro They will out-corporate you. Better to be friends with them, or failing that, move from under them

Or fuck them, fuck the managers, fuck the c-suites (intentionally decapitalized), go for a flat organizational structure like Valve where you have no one to report to (well maybe Gabe Newell or the team leader for that project occasionally), but the culture is that everyone can manage themselves organically rather than having hierarchies and forced, useless reportings

Post by syndacks » Sun, Jul 26, 2026, 4:33 PM UTC

sgt101 wrote: post #263

gyulai wrote: post #247

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> NO EVIDENCE AT ALL It's funny how, when the hype is strong enough, the burden of proof around the need for EVIDENCE suddenly shifts. Normally, the burden of proof is on $NEWFANGLED_THING to prove it's better than $TRIED_AND_TESTED. Software dark factories where no one looks at code are that unproven newfangled thing and all he's really saying is that, in his experience/assessment, those don't work, so he's trying t…

It's just he's qualified himself as an unreliable witness. This is not someone who deeply understands and thinks about what he does or what he advises. The things that I know about, that he writes about, where I know he's got it a bit wrong.... I find myself questioning if he's right or not. Because he's a persuasive writer. But winning arguments doesn't make you right. This isn't a supported, balanced discussion it'…

Post by _doctor_love » Thu, Jul 30, 2026, 12:50 AM UTC

dhorthy wrote: post #56

_doctor_love wrote: post #2

> I haven't been able to dig up any definitive data/findings from StrongDM on how that whole dark factory went. The weather-report has a few sparse updates between February and June of this year. This was easy to find out I thought. And just with an old-fashioned google search too, no deep research agent needed. See here: https://diffusion.io/ Seems like it went pretty well if a consulting company is now being starte…

> In order for coding with LLMs to go well, there has to be more rigor, more discipline, more good engineering hard-assedness. To reiterate, the teams seeing the best results with AI were already high-discipline and high-hygiene. hard agree. But i don't think this is sufficient. Even formal verification has its limitations. > AI works on data. The better the data, the better the likelihood of a desirable outcome. Cod…