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Will Claude Code ruin our team?

justinjackson.ca

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Re: Will Claude Code ruin our team?

#81

Post by robocat »

satvikpendem wrote: post #27
Tallain wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've been thinking of jumping into this sooner rather than later because I see this becoming a Thing eventually. Are you enjoying it?

It's fine, I suppose. It's like a puzzle, and you really need to be comfortable with banging your head against a wall trying to make work what is essentially immediately created legacy code by the LLM.

Works it (edit sp: Would it) help if the coders' prompts were available (checked in)?

If code is your documentation I assume it is hard to divine intent?

Re: Will Claude Code ruin our team?

#82

Post by whattheheckheck »

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.

Or there's just not enough parallelizable work for the business model...

Re: Will Claude Code ruin our team?

#83

Post by xlbuttplug2 »

lelanthran wrote: post #65
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.

> I won't try to speak for anyone other than myself, but my multiplier is definitely over 1.5x, probably higher than 5x. So you now complete in a single Monday what used to take you Monday-Friday? Can you even review that fast? How many LoC per day are you generating?

More like a day's worth of coding condensed into half an hour. Time to review/test is mostly unchanged.

Day to day is mainly minor feature additions into a stable product so not a huge amount of code churn.

Re: Will Claude Code ruin our team?

#84

Post by idontwantthis »

e40 wrote: post #56
idontwantthis wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do people really think like that? I see the other people at my company as human beings solving complex problems whether they are an engineer, a manager, an exec, or HR.

Absolutely. This is precisely why people are saying AI will eliminate software jobs.

Do we need more of those “If you think it’s so easy, try being me for a day!” sitcom episodes?

Re: Will Claude Code ruin our team?

#85

Post by satvikpendem »

robocat wrote: post #81
satvikpendem wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's fine, I suppose. It's like a puzzle, and you really need to be comfortable with banging your head against a wall trying to make work what is essentially immediately created legacy code by the LLM.

Works it (edit sp: Would it) help if the coders' prompts were available (checked in)? If code is your documentation I assume it is hard to divine intent?

Prompts wouldn't really help, no. You'll have a high level description based on what you're being hired for then the code tells the story.

Re: Will Claude Code ruin our team?

#86

Post by threethirtytwo »

paulhebert wrote: post #76
threethirtytwo wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Easy. I met people who tried really hard to learn how to code and failed. Design on the other hand especially modern design is easy. It's just text placement, geometric shapes and proper colors that synergize. This isn't like anatomical drawings or oil paintings. It's not just easy, it's obviously easy. What needs to be learned is how to use the tools and do it with speed which does take time and training, but again…

This shows a deep misunderstanding of what design is. What you’ve described is “visual design” which is a subset of the design field. There are many sub-specialties, but at its core design is about problem-solving, communication, and empathy. There are a lot of bad designers who are great at making things pretty. A good designer spends more time researching, understanding the problem space, interviewing users, brains…

The context of this thread is visual design for websites. Not design for off topic bullshit like furniture.

Also I agree with a lot of what you said. The only difference is I feel anyone can do it. The qualities you attributed to a good designer are trivial to learn. Make no mistake it takes time and effort to do these things and many companies neeed a specialized role where someone is only doing this thing…

But anyone can do it and learn it. And not anyone can learn how to program.

Re: Will Claude Code ruin our team?

#87

Post by xlbuttplug2 »

anon7000 wrote: post #59
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 easy to produce a high volume of code, sure, but it is not equally easy to test, verify, and integrate it. And with a high volume of code, there is a high volume of shit to review & test & integrate. For companies that give a shit about not vibe coding their way into a disaster (because they have lucrative enterprise contracts that depend on reliability & security), that’s the real blocker. (Plus, these types of…

In my case, the volume of code is roughly the same. I'm not using the efficiency towards pumping out more code, just using it to be AFK more.

I spend enough time iterating and refining to the point I'm comfortable taking ownership of the outputted code. Perhaps hypocritically, I do mald when people upload code for review that they clearly haven't taken the effort to read through critically.

Re: Will Claude Code ruin our team?

#88

Post by nine_k »

whattheheckheck wrote: post #82
bob001 wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Or there's just not enough parallelizable work for the business model...

Which again means lack of growth.

A poster-child startup is one that has a long waitlist of willing future customers, and whose engineering team is scaling the tech up, up, up to keep up with the demand.

Re: Will Claude Code ruin our team?

#89

Post by xlbuttplug2 »

GOD_Over_Djinn wrote: post #80
xlbuttplug2 wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I always hear people say this, but it’s not clear to me what exactly is so difficult about using AI that otherwise-competent developers “can’t figure it out”

My hunch is it's a combination of

* coming in with a bias of not wanting it to work

* having too high of an expectation

* giving up too early

* not trying SOTA models

* not taking the effort to communicate intuitive or painfully obvious things

But perhaps it is too dumb to solve the type of problems you guys are working on and no amount of cajoling will help. All I know is "it works for me."

Re: Will Claude Code ruin our team?

#90

Post by h4kunamata »

AI in general is ruining companies as a whole.

Companies are finding out the hard way that replacing engineers with AI, is costing them twice as much to fix the problem and having to hire people again.

If I get fired because a company went crazy into AI, things went bad, and they call me back, you sure as hell I am not returning.

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