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CEOs who think AI replaces their employees are just bad CEOs

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Re: CEOs who think AI replaces their employees are just bad CEOs

#311

Post by skydhash »

DanielHB wrote: post #292
onion2k wrote: post #224

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People think otherwise with AI partly because Anthropic kept telling us that they didn't have to write code or review code any more for most of their work. Even if that were 100% true, it only collapses the coding effort to near zero. Anyone who's built and shipped a real product should know that coding is maybe 50% of the work, and on a mature product it can be much less.

I work on a 10+ year old codebase, there are some weeks I barely change any code. Sometimes it takes hours of discussion and tracking down decision-makers just to figure out what the intended behavior is.

And even when you can easily find the intended behavior, you need to trace the modules that relies on the current behavior, especially if the change is located near the core of the software.

Re: CEOs who think AI replaces their employees are just bad CEOs

#312

Post by techblueberry »

wisty wrote: post #272
techblueberry wrote: post #190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’ve been wondering if “you’re not google” when learning about googles software dev process applies to Anthropic. Anthropic is a company that A. Has cheap unlimited access to its models and B. Is probably largely insulated from the types of tradeoffs that the rest of industry has had to observe in the post-ZIRP era. Like did they break through the productivity seal? Or are they willing to spend that much more on it s…

Why try to disrupt software though? Isn't this the classic "dev wants to do start-up, has no skills ouside dev, do builds a dev tool" trap?

I don’t think they chose software, software chose them. Its the only real entry point they have to make serious money.

Re: CEOs who think AI replaces their employees are just bad CEOs

#313

Post by ChrisMarshallNY »

Quothling wrote: post #234
ChrisMarshallNY wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is true. I have always prided myself on writing concise, high-Quality code, because it tends to be quite debt-free. So far, LLMs seem to deliver code with "Louie Da Loan Shark"-levels of tech debt.

> So far, LLMs seem to deliver code with "Louie Da Loan Shark"-levels of tech debt. Maybe a couple of years ago, but these days, Opus 4.8 is frankly writing better software than what I've seen over the previous decades in non-tech enterprise. These previous two months, we've replaced so much technical debt we've been dragging along for the previous 5 years as our team went from 25 to 3 people. This is in non-tech ent…

Not sure why this got dinged.

It likely depends on the implementation, and the tool.

In my work, the Swift code is not really that good (but it’s not terrible), but the PHP code is very good (better than mine). I use ChatGPT. Maybe Claude might give better Swift, but I’ve invested quite a bit of context in ChatGPT.

Re: CEOs who think AI replaces their employees are just bad CEOs

#314

Post by trolleski »

alex_sf wrote: post #226
wwweston wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If L2 support work is the example then I doubt we’re near replacement. L2 issues are already involved in some way often revealing some kind of system failure, requiring context and exploration to understand, and judgement (and perhaps even system overrides) to fix. I could see “automated L2 is the new L1” improvements, but without a big capability jump and/or a resource bonfire, I don’t think even frontier models wou…

My agent is currently doing the work of ~6 senior engineers, based on ticket closures. These are not trivial tasks: all of them involve a mix of code, judgement, executing remote commands in a production environment, etc. This is at a well-known tech company operating at massive scale (and resulting complexity). L1/L2 tech support is completely dead within a couple years. The delay is only around how long it takes pe…

I've got 12 agents. They're doing the work of 120 engineers, and three CEOs. Lately, one of the agents has been laid off due to AI, and another went to see the Burning Man so another 10 work overtime. The CEO agent became an evangelical Christian, and wrote how cool Peter Thiel is on X, so we no longer need people, the future is here.

Re: CEOs who think AI replaces their employees are just bad CEOs

#315

Post by jimbokun »

fuzzfactor wrote: post #198
jimbokun wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Any data to support those claims?

Not usually the kind of data that the greediest capitalists would appreciate. There are some case studies here, but it's only one professor in a largely non-capitalist approach overall: https://www.reddit.com/r/Cooperative/comments/1bm5s5s/richar...

Thanks for the link, but Reddit is blocking it as if it’s adult content or something. But if I use the app, it will suddenly be OK. Very strange.

Re: CEOs who think AI replaces their employees are just bad CEOs

#316

Post by Henchman21 »

matwood wrote: post #238
shimman wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, look at functioning democracies. They don't need authoritarian rulers, only those that want to be authoritarians argue elsewise.

> They don't need authoritarian rulers Yet they seem still inclined to elect them.

Given the zeitgeist is controlled by a handful of Capitalists who also happen to be sociopaths intent on bringing back feudalism and chattel slavery... No. "The People" are so propagandized that we simply cannot know what The People would do unless we turn off the great distraction machine constantly inundating us all with propaganda.

Re: CEOs who think AI replaces their employees are just bad CEOs

#317

Post by satvikpendem »

everdrive wrote: post #297
matwood wrote: post #236

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> CEOs do get there with lots of politics in almost all cases. I know this can be hard for engineers to sometimes accept, but relationships (aka politics) are a key part of business. Rarely is one technical solution absolutely superior to another, making purchasing decisions come down to relationships. Politics is also about compromise and managing a bunch of differing opinions/desires, which is one of the key skills…

More engineers understand this than you may think. Many just dislike it. It doesn't fit with their disposition (for better or for worse) -- but they are not confused about the facts.

They said accept, not understand.

Re: CEOs who think AI replaces their employees are just bad CEOs

#318

Post by 59nadir »

everdrive wrote: post #300
59nadir wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not difficult at all to become one, and the work involved in being a CEO is not particularly difficult in comparison to senior technical work at all. The only thing that is harder about being a CEO is the responsibility. I'm sure being the CEO of Microsoft or whatever is plenty difficult and demanding in many ways, but most CEOs are not that, and speaking just from experience most CEOs and CTOs are clueless moro…

It's difficult in the sense that it's rare and much of it is out of your hands. That's a very different kind of difficulty than honing a technical skill. I'm happy to call it something other than difficult, but most of those engineers would not succeed in becoming CEOs -- whether or not they would actually do a good job at it.

Sure, I don't disagree that it's not exactly a position that you move into just like that, so I get your point.

Re: CEOs who think AI replaces their employees are just bad CEOs

#319

Post by conductr »

slg wrote: post #85
dijit wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> it's quite difficult to become a CEO on the contrary, it seems to be one of the few jobs that seems to require absolutely no qualifications to have. What you need to do to be CEO is.... convince someone to lend you money in the hope that you'll get it back to them. I've worked under some absolutely awful people who wouldn't pass an interview anywhere, but somehow they're CEOs, because they can smarm there way into…

>convince someone to lend you money in the hope that you'll get it back to them And it should be noted that many of these people lending money are in a similar situation of not being required to have any qualifications. Sure, some of them have worked their way up through sound investment after sound investment, but many of them were either born into their position or simply got lucky at some point along the way. Just…

Investing has some nuance, it’s not a homogeneous thing. It varies from insanely conservative to high risk gambling. I like to think everyone involved with NFT type investing is fully aware they are gambling.

Re: CEOs who think AI replaces their employees are just bad CEOs

#320

Post by strangattractor »

fuzzfactor wrote: post #184
strangattractor wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

%80 of CEOs are Meh. %10 of the CEOs add value to the company. %10 of the CEOs are actually detrimental. The %80 will always try and do what they think the top %10 CEOs do because of FOMO. The bottom %10 will do it because they know their days are numbered and hope that it might put them in the %80 keeping their jobs. A good LLM could probably replace most and not do any worse. Good CEOs don't see their employees as…

Those percent estimates look about right :0 Good CEO's make such good money on their employees that everybody gets raises and bonuses, the company grows responsibly, and the stock is a good investment. Too bad it's out of reach for so many executives. If that's too challenging, I understand, but if they had real confidence as a business operator I don't see why so many would be kicking out anybody over AI when they c…

If you replaced one CEO that was making 300 times the average salary of an employee - that is equivalent to firing 300 employees. You can have your AI and Reduction in Force without losing all those pesky people with institutional knowledge.
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