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I don't think AI will make your processes go faster

frederickvanbrabant.com

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Re: I don't think AI will make your processes go faster

#41

Post by steveBK123 »

cmrdporcupine wrote: post #33
adam_patarino wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Completely agree. It amazes me how some folks think AI is unlike any other technology revolution. History repeats.

You're right it's just like any other mechanization/automation revolution. Except it's not. It's happening about 10x faster than any other I've seen or read about. Conceive how long it took just to get barcode scanners rolled out in grocery stores. Or direct payment terminals. Or how many decades it's been getting robotics into the manufacturing of cars at scale. I worked through the .com boom and I can tell you that…

It both is & isn't moving 10x faster.

It's highly salient to management, and being forced top-down by them at 10x speed, for sure, because they see a future cost save to reduce headcount.

For certain technical roles its a force multiplier and already very saturated for sure.

On the other hand there's a lot of solution-looking-for-problem going on in large orgs where layers of management have been banging the table for 2-3 years on AI KPIs without any value being delivered.

In the weekly AI wins mail at a friends company, multiple non-technicals were bragging how AI has saved them 15 minutes a day by summarizing their morning inbox. This was the big game changer for them.

Re: I don't think AI will make your processes go faster

#42

Post by [deleted] »

phyzix5761 wrote: post #12

I think when LLMs first came out people thought they could just say something like, "Make a Facebook clone". But now we're realizing we need to be more exact with our requirements and define things better. That has always been the bottle neck in software. When I was working we used to get requirements that literally said things like, "Get data and give it to the user". No definition of what data is, where its stored,…

[deleted]

Re: I don't think AI will make your processes go faster

#43

Post by enoint »

r2ob wrote: post #17

Large corporations with orthodox methodologies will take time to extract the best benefits from AI. Small teams, which still remember the original Agile Manifesto, will soar and overtake their competitors.

Speaking about the middle, once I was shown advice from ai that a particular ticket would stall at “frozen middle management” and should be shelved until “coordination” improved. That sounds accurate, but can you imagine what a token-obsessed PM might say?

Re: I don't think AI will make your processes go faster

#44

Post by et1337 »

steveBK123 wrote: post #22
phyzix5761 wrote: post #12

I think when LLMs first came out people thought they could just say something like, "Make a Facebook clone". But now we're realizing we need to be more exact with our requirements and define things better. That has always been the bottle neck in software. When I was working we used to get requirements that literally said things like, "Get data and give it to the user". No definition of what data is, where its stored,…

> When I was working we used to get requirements that literally said things like, "Get data and give it to the user". No definition of what data is, where its stored, or in what format to return it. We would then spend a significant amount of time with the product person trying to figure out what they really wanted. This is a big HN LLM discussion divide. I am in the same no-specs work background camp, and so the ide…

I’ve never understood engineers who complain about vague specs… if the spec was complete, it would be code and the job would be done already! Getting a 20 page spec delivered from upon high and mechanically translating it to code without any chance to send feedback up the chain sounds like… a compiler.

Re: I don't think AI will make your processes go faster

#45

Post by cmrdporcupine »

So we have spent 40 years trying to get management and investors to understand that 9 people can't make a baby in one month.

There's no point in falling under the illusion that they'll finally get it now. This will all fall on deaf ears. They're convinced they're automating us out of existence when in fact they'll need the services of people who can surf complex systems more than ever.

We will be able to do more than ever and potentially faster. The issue remains that most of the things these people ask us to do and want us to do and pay us to do remains basically stupid and as TFA points out, the last mile of getting shit properly shipped isn't going to speed up. It's going to slow down.

If you want to see what happens when you put people in charge who sincerely believe in the "AI automates SWEs out of existence" mantra, take a look at the code quality of Claude Code and the recent "bun rewrite in Rust" fiasco.

Re: I don't think AI will make your processes go faster

#47

Post by steveBK123 »

et1337 wrote: post #44
steveBK123 wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> When I was working we used to get requirements that literally said things like, "Get data and give it to the user". No definition of what data is, where its stored, or in what format to return it. We would then spend a significant amount of time with the product person trying to figure out what they really wanted. This is a big HN LLM discussion divide. I am in the same no-specs work background camp, and so the ide…

I’ve never understood engineers who complain about vague specs… if the spec was complete, it would be code and the job would be done already! Getting a 20 page spec delivered from upon high and mechanically translating it to code without any chance to send feedback up the chain sounds like… a compiler.

Yes, I don't think a job where I am programmed by a product manager would be terribly interesting. I would move on to be the product manager if I found myself in such a role.

Probably why I haven't ended up in any.

Re: I don't think AI will make your processes go faster

#48

Post by eastbound »

steveBK123 wrote: post #38
rubyfan wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We now have product owners trying to farm out their work to an LLM. The process didn’t work before because the person writing the requirements either put out vague requirements or bad requirements because they didn’t understand the business intent (or were careless). LLMs just take the same vague or poor requirements and make them look believable until you dig in to them.

Plausible requirement generators as inputs to plausible code generators.. what could go wrong!

It’s a giant tragedy of the commons. I’ve fired remote people who pretended to work, knowing that I wouldn’t hire remote workers ever again after AI.

Re: I don't think AI will make your processes go faster

#50

Post by somenameforme »

I think there's an interesting dichotomy. I find that for things I'm already capable at, LLMs are relatively inconsequential. But for things I'm no good at, it's a huge game changer. For a large company, that's going to be able to hire out most needed roles for any given project, this means the overall effect is going to be relatively inconsequential. At best, they may be able to cut down on labor costs by having one guy do a mediocre job at 5 people's jobs in exchange for a worse product. Short-term gains for long-term costs, wcgw?

But for a small studio, or independent developer, LLMs are a big game changer. Being able to do a mediocre job at 5 people's jobs is a huge leap over trying to get by without those jobs - relying on third party assets or other sorts of content, or even worse - doing a really awful job of trying to improv those jobs. See the UI of basically any program ever that was clearly laid out by a programmer and not a designer. Or there's the whole trying to rip off stuff from dribbble, but lacking the skills to do so. Whereas with AI, you can suddenly competently rip off everything and everybody - it's basically their entire MO.

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