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Yes, the customer will be impressed by your speed the first time. The second time, he will expect it. The third time, when requirements have grown enough to be

by toyg 3y ago

Yes, the customer will be impressed by your speed the first time. The second time, he will expect it. The third time, when requirements have grown enough to be beyond what ChatGPT can deal with, he'll be angry that timescales have exploded.

code_runner 3y ago
I don't know if "do everything manually and slowly so that you never have to set realistic expectations" is a great way to do business. Being worse at your job on purpose isn't typically a great strategy. It sounds to me like the commenter has found a subset of his work which can be sped up significantly with chatGPT and is using that to continue conversations with a potential client. Pretty cool if you ask me.
- TerrifiedMouse 3y ago
  > I don't know if "do everything manually and slowly so that you never have to set realistic expectations" is a great way to do business. It’s called Expectation Management. It’s how successful business is done. Marketing 101: Under promise, over deliver. P.S. Apple is quite good at this IMHO. I notice they often very quickly go from product announcement to product availability. My theory for why this is good is that there less time in between for people’s imagination to run wild and fill in the information gaps with their own ideas that the actual product might not satisfy. Expectations remain ground when their customers receive the product vs a product getting hyped to the moon such that it’s practically impossible for it to ever live up to the hype.
  - code_runner 3y ago
    i'm not replying about the concept of under promise, over deliver, but more like.... why would you avoid a tool that helps you do something quickly because you don't want to explain to your client that some steps aren't as fast to do as others.
    - toyg 3y ago
      You wouldn't avoid the tool, just avoid surfacing it too explicitly - by being too fast or by explicitly boasting about it.
murukesh_s 3y ago
This comment is so relevant.. people underestimate software complexity. In software services, often it's not the algorithms that are hard to implement or maintain, as they often have very clearly defined input and output requirements, and you can and test them, but its the ever changing and regularly patched up business logic that evolves the system into a complex and fragile service needing careful maintenance.. Can't imagine an AI system taking 'charge' there as a subtle mistake by the AI system would then need a human intervention to 'fix' it which by then would be close to impossible. At that point you can't also make use of AI beyond a co-pilot role as anything complex would need line by line and careful inspection by a software dev.
hobofan 3y ago
Yeah, let's see about the long run. Right now with the increased productivity, it leads to customer engagements that previously wouldn't have been possible for me. E.g. now it's feasible from a cost standpoint to let me as a freelancer build internal tooling that previously would have been to expensive in total. It's also easier to deliver initial MVP milestones for projects for a price that's in a much more comfortable range for smaller companies. Yeah, that advantage may go away, but just like good "googling" was/is a skill that can set you apart from your peers, proper usage of LLMs is a skill as well that needs to be learned (and that many won't).
znpy 3y ago
> The third time, when requirements have grown enough to be beyond what ChatGPT can deal with, he'll be angry that timescales have exploded. Or worse, they'll feel they've been scammed, and that you're a fraud. AI or not it's not a good strategy, in life and in business, to lie regarding on what you can actually do/deliver.
- code_runner 3y ago
  its a tool. use the tool. I don't care if the house is built using an old fashioned hammer or a nail gun. I do care if you used nails when you should've used something else, or used the wrong nails.
deltarholamda 3y ago
"Your scientists were so preoccupied with whether they could, they didn’t stop to think if they should."

by toyg 3y ago

code_runner 3y ago

I don't know if "do everything manually and slowly so that you never have to set realistic expectations" is a great way to do business. Being worse at your job on purpose isn't typically a great strategy. It sounds to me like the commenter has found a subset of his work which can be sped up significantly with chatGPT and is using that to continue conversations with a potential client. Pretty cool if you ask me.

TerrifiedMouse 3y ago
> I don't know if "do everything manually and slowly so that you never have to set realistic expectations" is a great way to do business. It’s called Expectation Management. It’s how successful business is done. Marketing 101: Under promise, over deliver. P.S. Apple is quite good at this IMHO. I notice they often very quickly go from product announcement to product availability. My theory for why this is good is that there less time in between for people’s imagination to run wild and fill in the information gaps with their own ideas that the actual product might not satisfy. Expectations remain ground when their customers receive the product vs a product getting hyped to the moon such that it’s practically impossible for it to ever live up to the hype.
- code_runner 3y ago
  i'm not replying about the concept of under promise, over deliver, but more like.... why would you avoid a tool that helps you do something quickly because you don't want to explain to your client that some steps aren't as fast to do as others.
  - toyg 3y ago
    You wouldn't avoid the tool, just avoid surfacing it too explicitly - by being too fast or by explicitly boasting about it.

murukesh_s 3y ago

This comment is so relevant.. people underestimate software complexity. In software services, often it's not the algorithms that are hard to implement or maintain, as they often have very clearly defined input and output requirements, and you can and test them, but its the ever changing and regularly patched up business logic that evolves the system into a complex and fragile service needing careful maintenance.. Can't imagine an AI system taking 'charge' there as a subtle mistake by the AI system would then need a human intervention to 'fix' it which by then would be close to impossible. At that point you can't also make use of AI beyond a co-pilot role as anything complex would need line by line and careful inspection by a software dev.

hobofan 3y ago

Yeah, let's see about the long run. Right now with the increased productivity, it leads to customer engagements that previously wouldn't have been possible for me. E.g. now it's feasible from a cost standpoint to let me as a freelancer build internal tooling that previously would have been to expensive in total. It's also easier to deliver initial MVP milestones for projects for a price that's in a much more comfortable range for smaller companies. Yeah, that advantage may go away, but just like good "googling" was/is a skill that can set you apart from your peers, proper usage of LLMs is a skill as well that needs to be learned (and that many won't).

znpy 3y ago

> The third time, when requirements have grown enough to be beyond what ChatGPT can deal with, he'll be angry that timescales have exploded. Or worse, they'll feel they've been scammed, and that you're a fraud. AI or not it's not a good strategy, in life and in business, to lie regarding on what you can actually do/deliver.

code_runner 3y ago
its a tool. use the tool. I don't care if the house is built using an old fashioned hammer or a nail gun. I do care if you used nails when you should've used something else, or used the wrong nails.

deltarholamda 3y ago

"Your scientists were so preoccupied with whether they could, they didn’t stop to think if they should."