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Will Claude Code ruin our team?

justinjackson.ca

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Re: Will Claude Code ruin our team?

#91

Post by sam0x17 »

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.

Yeah what a lot of people are missing here is tons of small startups are laying people off, but it's not because they don't need engineers, it's because they are out of runway because their entire vertical (usually some sort of SaaS, often b2b SaaS) is basically now nonexistent. Traditionally businesses favored buying software over building it for cost reasons. Now they can cheaply build exactly what they want instead of paying through the teeth for something that is only slightly like what they want. This doesn't mean the work is gone, but it does largely mean large swathes of the SaaS vertical will be gone. The work itself is shifting to the individual businesses that were once the customers of the SaaS.

SWEs will be fine, all these small VC-funded startups building another CRUD app will not.

Re: Will Claude Code ruin our team?

#92

Post by borzi »

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…

Aaaannnnd they're out of business and it was because of slowing demand and tightening credit the whole time.

Here in Europe this is not a thing, I've been hearing about such cases mostly from the US where it's clear that there is a recession going - I don't know why this is not blatantly obvious to everyone who does not view reality as whatever is said by the talking heads on TV.

Re: Will Claude Code ruin our team?

#93

Post by ramon156 »

h4kunamata wrote: post #90

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.

Hey there! This is the exact thing that happened (although I cannot say I was a perfect employee). They replaced me for a relatively important product, where I was already the only dev along with 4 PMs that never agreed on each other.

The entire company is hell, it made that switch overnight and never looked back at the devs that have to endure all this bullshit.

Luckily I found another company that treats devs as humans. I've convinced one other employee at $EX_COMPANY to make the switch, with success! I'm planning to find everyone there a proper job that doesn't make u feel like you're under surveillance.

Re: Will Claude Code ruin our team?

#94

Post by menaerus »

paulhebert wrote: post #77
menaerus wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe you can learn to be mediocre or good enough designer or similarly good enough or mediocre engineer. But I don't think you can actually learn to be a great designer or great engineer - it just takes a different set of skills and evolutionary and genetic material which isn't available to all the people. Some people are simply not good enough in logical and abstract reasoning, math, and similar range of skills whi…

As someone who considers themselves a good engineer and a good designer (and does both professionally) I hope that last bit isn’t true

Sure, this is why I said likely. If you are good in both then I believe this isn't something commonly found in people.

Re: Will Claude Code ruin our team?

#95

Post by braebo »

sam0x17 wrote: post #91
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.

Yeah what a lot of people are missing here is tons of small startups are laying people off, but it's not because they don't need engineers, it's because they are out of runway because their entire vertical (usually some sort of SaaS, often b2b SaaS) is basically now nonexistent. Traditionally businesses favored buying software over building it for cost reasons. Now they can cheaply build exactly what they want instea…

I work for a startup that makes a b2b SaaS that is _way_ too complex for anyone to spec out in a markdown file, especially when taking things like ITAR compliance into consideration.

We have seen steady growth and there’s been no signs of slowing down.

Our software facilitates order/quote/factory floor workflow automation with auditable trails in the manufacturing space, with cad file analysis and complex procedural pricing equations for quote generation, alongside a Shopify style storefront and many more goodies. We interface with things like shipping, taxes, erp integrations, and so much more.

I don’t see anyone vibe coding an alternative to our software even if they could. Manufacturers have enough on their plate managing their factory floors.

That said, we facilitate $millions in manufacturing orders per week and our engineering team is 3 people. We couldn’t do what we do without AI, and we would have needed to hire more engineers to handle the scale of our business if it weren’t for the power of Claude Code and Cursor.

Re: Will Claude Code ruin our team?

#96

Post by threethirtytwo »

menaerus wrote: post #94
paulhebert wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As someone who considers themselves a good engineer and a good designer (and does both professionally) I hope that last bit isn’t true

Sure, this is why I said likely. If you are good in both then I believe this isn't something commonly found in people.

Hard disagree. Design is easy and trivial. Thinking it's hard is a sort of mass delusion. Engineering is the hard thing.

Re: Will Claude Code ruin our team?

#97

Post by threethirtytwo »

thunky wrote: post #74
chamomeal wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Your friends struggle with learning programming because they don't care enough about learning it. You're the only one that cares. Same can be said for any skill. Threads like this bother me a bit because it makes programmers seem so smug, like they are this gifted class that is able to wizard the machine where mere mortals cannot. Its intellectual elitism.

Regardless of that. I do think it's true that not anyone can learn it.

But the "elitism" is becoming something that is less and less relevant because people are less needing to learn it anymore thanks AI.

Re: Will Claude Code ruin our team?

#98

Post by paulddraper »

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.

HN is an interesting place.

6 years ago it was “you need that many engineers, lol, I can build a clone this weekend.”

Now it’s “you need many engineers, trust me bro.”

Re: Will Claude Code ruin our team?

#100

Post by joefourier »

paulddraper wrote: post #98
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.

HN is an interesting place. 6 years ago it was “you need that many engineers, lol, I can build a clone this weekend.” Now it’s “you need many engineers, trust me bro.”

> HN is an interesting place.

How is it interesting that in a forum with thousands of active users, someone posted a comment that disagreed with other comments from 6 years ago?

Even in this thread, there's many different opinions being expressed.

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