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Will Claude Code ruin our team?

justinjackson.ca

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Re: Will Claude Code ruin our team?

#41

Post by jghn »

threethirtytwo wrote: post #33
overgard wrote: post #3

I won’t take credit for this insight, but as someone else pointed out, everyone oversimplifies other people’s jobs. To PMs engineers are just code monkeys that they won’t need soon. To engineers, PMs are the guys that manage Jira. Designers are the fussy people that make things look pretty. The reality is all these jobs have intricacies AI absolutely sucks at but those intricacies are lost in the larger discussion. A…

No. There are intricacies to every job but these are intricacies that are learnable. It’s like learning how to drive. It’s a skill for sure but anyone can do it after practice. I thought programming was the same thing for a long time but have grown to find out that this is not the case. There are many people who cannot learn programming in a reasonable amount of time and therefore are unable to pick up the skill. It…

> I thought programming was the same thing for a long time but have grown to find out that this is not the case.

> The thing with being a PM or a designer is that this skill is learnable.

This is an absurd take. Everyone looks at the other side and says, "Yeah I could do that". Few can.

Re: Will Claude Code ruin our team?

#42

Post by chamomeal »

paulhebert wrote: post #36
threethirtytwo wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No. There are intricacies to every job but these are intricacies that are learnable. It’s like learning how to drive. It’s a skill for sure but anyone can do it after practice. I thought programming was the same thing for a long time but have grown to find out that this is not the case. There are many people who cannot learn programming in a reasonable amount of time and therefore are unable to pick up the skill. It…

Huh as someone who has a career doing both design and engineering I disagree with this take. I think both skills can be learned. I also think that people have intrinsic talents that make them better or worse at those skills. Put another way, anyone can learn to code but some people will never be great at it while others have a natural talent. Same for design. I’m curious why you think otherwise. What’s the difference…

I’m kinda getting off topic here but anecdotally: I’ve tried to get so many of my friends to learn programming. I love it, and I think a lot of em would love it too. But they hit a hard wall with the patience needed to self learn.

Like the moment something doesn’t happen like the tutorial said (error message saying “idk what python is, you mean python3?”), they just give up completely instead of googling it. I really feel like the venn diagram of “people who can code” and “people who can google errors they don’t understand for a couple hours” is nearly a perfect circle.

LLMs can smooth out those little tediums, so maybe more people really will be able to learn programming now. But then again if you don’t have the patience to trudge through the annoying parts, will you have the patience to be confused and struggle, instead of letting Claude do the hard stuff for you? I’ll be interested to see what future self-taught devs look like!

Re: Will Claude Code ruin our team?

#43

Post by devsda »

overgard wrote: post #3

I won’t take credit for this insight, but as someone else pointed out, everyone oversimplifies other people’s jobs. To PMs engineers are just code monkeys that they won’t need soon. To engineers, PMs are the guys that manage Jira. Designers are the fussy people that make things look pretty. The reality is all these jobs have intricacies AI absolutely sucks at but those intricacies are lost in the larger discussion. A…

Instead of engineer vs PM/manager I separate those jobs based on these categories.

1. How long they can survive in the job while being mediocre or outright bad at their job.

2. Probability of failing upwards.

Engineering roles tend to filter out bad candidates more early, quickly and the probability of failing upwards is less when compared to PM and managerial roles.

Also, in my experience PM and managerial roles looks like skills based jobs but they tend to select individuals with specific personality types and they are more likely to excel.

Developer roles also select towards certain personality types but I think its more diverse than we care to admit.

Re: Will Claude Code ruin our team?

#44

Post by [deleted] »

bob001 wrote: post #21
avaer wrote: post #4

I don't know why people are talking so theoretically. This was months ago. My friends have startups, I know a lot of engineers. The startups have been laying off people for months, and many of my engineer friends don't have jobs anymore. Teams are already ruined. I just don't think the companies are. In many cases this seems like rational reallocation of capital to AI, and in a VC funded ecosystem you're failing at y…

If a startup is laying off engineers then it’s dead in the water. That means it’s not growing and focused on cost cutting at the expense of velocity. Thats what a large company does. The issue isn’t AI but the startup fundamentally being broken and this being a last gasp for air before it dies.

[deleted]

Re: Will Claude Code ruin our team?

#45

Post by EagnaIonat »

mijustin wrote: post #29
xrd wrote: post #26

One phrase stuck with me from this: "they'll start to absorb lessons that it took their colleagues decades to learn." I think the point of failure now will hinge on the willingness of teams to admit what they don't know. The ones that don't won't be saved by Claude.

What’s changed now, with AI, is that you can have compressed learning cycles. Folks can build, deploy, and learn faster now than ever before. Admitting when you don’t know something has always been important; but the ability to build, deploy, and find out has never been greater. Instead of theorizing about what might work, you can just build it and find out.

> Folks can build, deploy, and learn faster now than ever before

Fail faster yes. Learn faster no. The research out there shows that having the AI doing the work stops the learning process.

Re: Will Claude Code ruin our team?

#46

Post by vitaflo »

threethirtytwo wrote: post #33
overgard wrote: post #3

I won’t take credit for this insight, but as someone else pointed out, everyone oversimplifies other people’s jobs. To PMs engineers are just code monkeys that they won’t need soon. To engineers, PMs are the guys that manage Jira. Designers are the fussy people that make things look pretty. The reality is all these jobs have intricacies AI absolutely sucks at but those intricacies are lost in the larger discussion. A…

No. There are intricacies to every job but these are intricacies that are learnable. It’s like learning how to drive. It’s a skill for sure but anyone can do it after practice. I thought programming was the same thing for a long time but have grown to find out that this is not the case. There are many people who cannot learn programming in a reasonable amount of time and therefore are unable to pick up the skill. It…

One of the more ignorant comments I've read on HN which is saying something.

Re: Will Claude Code ruin our team?

#47

Post by xlbuttplug2 »

what wrote: post #38
xlbuttplug2 wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> they aren't even making 1.5x developers I won't try to speak for anyone other than myself, but my multiplier is definitely over 1.5x, probably higher than 5x. I choose to sit on my hands in my freed up time so upper management does not catch on to and exploit this fact. Eventually they will though via overzealous coworkers.

It’s not hard to 5x your productivity when you were close to zero to start with.

Is that you, boss?

People with a lower multiplier are either in the minority of developers solving genuinely hard/novel problems or, more likely, they've just not figured out how to tap into AI's potential.

Granted, to your point, a decent chunk of the HN crowd belongs to the former and can't relate to us paycheck stealers.

Re: Will Claude Code ruin our team?

#48

Post by moltopoco »

Spivak wrote: post #9
avaer wrote: post #4

I don't know why people are talking so theoretically. This was months ago. My friends have startups, I know a lot of engineers. The startups have been laying off people for months, and many of my engineer friends don't have jobs anymore. Teams are already ruined. I just don't think the companies are. In many cases this seems like rational reallocation of capital to AI, and in a VC funded ecosystem you're failing at y…

I think it's less armchair speculating about the observable outcome, that people are losing their jobs, but the why. AI coding tools aren't making 10x developers, they aren't even making 1.5x developers. They also aren't making "PMs who code" or "designers who code." It would be really cool if this was the case, I would be singing the praises of these tools finally realizing Stallman's dream of end users who can take…

Agreed, the tech job market was bad before AI was useful.

The "I'm gonna make a tool" thing is slowly happening and will probably help Linux, knocking on wood... https://x.com/xpasky/status/2030016470730658181

Re: Will Claude Code ruin our team?

#49

Post by gregoryl »

threethirtytwo wrote: post #33
overgard wrote: post #3

I won’t take credit for this insight, but as someone else pointed out, everyone oversimplifies other people’s jobs. To PMs engineers are just code monkeys that they won’t need soon. To engineers, PMs are the guys that manage Jira. Designers are the fussy people that make things look pretty. The reality is all these jobs have intricacies AI absolutely sucks at but those intricacies are lost in the larger discussion. A…

No. There are intricacies to every job but these are intricacies that are learnable. It’s like learning how to drive. It’s a skill for sure but anyone can do it after practice. I thought programming was the same thing for a long time but have grown to find out that this is not the case. There are many people who cannot learn programming in a reasonable amount of time and therefore are unable to pick up the skill. It…

Are you mistaking your interactions with low level trades roles (the guy who's making bank fixing power sockets on the weekend) with say, the people maintaining factory electrical systems? or designing them?

Re: Will Claude Code ruin our team?

#50

Post by maininformer »

tadfisher wrote: post #18
adithyassekhar wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And for people who never liked it in the first place and just wanted a quick buck.

You can't pay Claude with equity though

You can tell him and he will love it and I bet he has encoded the behavior of working better because of it just how some tried threatening LLMs to work harder
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