7 ms·

I will get probably heavily crucified for this, but to people who are ideologically opposing AI generated code — executives, directors and managerial staff thin

I will get probably heavily crucified for this, but to people who are ideologically opposing AI generated code — executives, directors and managerial staff think the opposite. Being very anti-LLM code instead of trying to understand how it can improve the speed might be detrimental for your career. Personally, I’m on the fence. But having conversations with others, and some requests from execs to implement different AI utils into our processes… making me to be on the safer side of job security, rather than dismiss it and be adamant against it.

rectang 2y ago
This has been true for every heavily marketed development aid (beneficial or not) for as long as the industry has existed. Managing the politics and the expectations of non-technical management is part of career development.
- tokioyoyo 2y ago
  Yeah, I totally agree, and you're 100% right. But the amount of integrations I've personally done and have instructed my team to do implies this one will be around for a while. At some point spending too much time on code that could be easily generated will be a negative point on your performance. I've heard exactly the same stories from my friends in larger tech companies as well. Every all hands there's a push for more AI integration, getting staff to use AI tools and etc., with the big expectation that development will get faster.
  - rectang 2y ago
    I don't think AI is an exception. In organizations where there were top-down mandates for Agile, or OOP, or Test-Driven Development, or you-name-it, those who didn't take up the mandate with zeal were likely to find themselves out of favor.
    - tokioyoyo 2y ago
      It's not necessarily top down. I genuinely don't know a single person in my organization who doesn't use LLMs one way or another. Obviously with different degrees of applications, but literally everyone does. And we haven't had a real "EVERYONE MUST USE AI!", just people suggesting and asking for specific model usages, access to apps like Cursor and so on. (I know it because I'm in charge of maintaining all processes around LLM keys, their usages, Cursor stuff and etc.)
      - rectang 2y ago
        > Being very anti-LLM code instead of trying to understand how it can improve the speed might be detrimental for your career. > I'm in charge of maintaining all processes around LLM keys Does management look to you for insight on which staffers are appropriately committed to leveraging AI?
        tokioyoyo 2y ago
        No, right now the only thing higher ups ask from me is general percentage usages for different types of model/software usages (Anthropic/OpenAI/Cursor and etc.), so we can reassess subscriptions to cut costs wherever it's needed. But to be fair, they have access to the same dashboards as I do, so if they want to, they can look for it.
  - liamwire 2y ago
    > At some point spending too much time on code that could be easily generated will be a negative point on your performance. If we take the premise at face value, then this is a time management question, and that’s a part of pretty much every performance evaluation everywhere. You’re not rewarded for writing some throwaway internal tooling that’s needed ASAP in assembly or with a handcrafted native UI, even if it’s strictly better once done. Instead you bash it out in a day’s worth of Electron shitfuckery and keep the wheels moving, even if it makes you sick. Hyperbole aside, hopefully the point is clear: better is a business decision as much as a technical one, and if an LLM can (one day) do the 80% of the Pareto distribution, then you’d better be working on the other 20% when management come knocking. If I run a cafe, I need my baristas making coffee when the orders are stacking up, not polishing the machine. Caveats for critical code, maintenance, technical debt, etc. of course. Good engineers know when to push back, but also, crucially, when it doesn’t serve a purpose to do so.
hansvm 2y ago
"Yes, of course, I'm using AI at every single opportunity where I think it'll improve my output" <<never uses AI>>
- giobox 2y ago
  This simply doesn't work much of the time as an excuse - virtually all the AI tool subscriptions for corporations provide per user stats on how much each staff member is using the AI assist. This shouldn't come as a surprise - software tool purveyors need to demonstrate ROI to their customer's management teams and as always this is in reporting tools. I've already seen several rounds of slacks: "why aren't you using <insert LLM coding assistant name>?" off the back of this reporting. These assistants essentially spy on you working in many cases, if the subscription is coming from your employer and is not a personal account. For one service, I was able to see full logging of all the chats every employee ever had.
  - codr7 2y ago
    The very second someone starts monitoring me like that I'm out. Let them write their own software.
    - tokioyoyo 2y ago
      It's not necessarily just monitoring though. I actively ask that question when I don't see certain keys not being used to inquire their relevancy. Basically taking feedback from some engineers, and generalizing it. Obviously in my case we're doing it in good faith, and assuming people will try to get their work done with whatever tools we give them access to. Like I see Anthropic keys get heavily used among eng department, but I constantly get requests for OpenAI keys for Zapier connects and etc. for business people.
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
feoren 2y ago
> executives, directors and managerial staff think the opposite Executives, directors, and managerial staff have had their heads up their own asses since the dawn of civilization. Riding the waves of terrible executive decisions is unfortunately part of professional life. Executives like the idea of LLMs because it means they can lay you off; they're not going to care about your opinion on it one way or another. > Being very anti-LLM code instead of trying to understand how it can improve the speed might be detrimental for your career. You're making the assumption that LLMs can improve your speed. That's the very assumption being questioned by GP. Heaps of low-quality code do not improve development speed.
- simonw 2y ago
  I'm willing to stake my reputation on the idea that yes, LLMs can improve your speed. You have to learn how to use them effectively and responsibly but the productivity boosts they can give you once you figure that out are very real.
  - chefandy 2y ago
    Many bosses are willing to stake their subordinates’ reputations on it, too.
  - tokioyoyo 2y ago
    I'm with you on this one. If one's experience is just using it as a general chat bot, then yeah, I can see why people are reluctant thinking it's useless. I have a feeling that a good chunk of people haven't tried to use latest models on a medium-small project from scratch, where you have to play around with its intricacies to build intuition around it. It becomes some sort of muscle memory, where I can predict whether using LLM would be faster or slower. Or where it's more likely to give bad suggestions or not. Basically treating it as googling skills.
    - simonw 2y ago
      "It becomes some sort of muscle memory, where I can predict whether using LLM would be faster or slower" Yeah, that intuition is so important. You have to use the models a whole bunch to develop it, but eventually you get a sort of sixth sense where you can predict if an LLM is going to be useful or harmful on a problem and be right about it 9/10 times. My frustration is that intuition isn't something I can teach! I'd love to be able to explain why I can tell that problem X is a good fit and problem Y isn't, but often the answer is pretty much just "vibes" based on past experience.
subw00f 2y ago
I think I’m having the same experience as you. I’ve heard multiple times from execs in my company that “software” will have less value and that, in a few years, there won’t be as many developer jobs. Don’t get me wrong—I’ve seen productivity gains both in LLMs explaining code/ideation and in actual implementation, and I use them regularly in my workflow now. I quite like it. But these people are itching to eliminate the cost of maintaining a dev team, and it shows in the level of wishful thinking they display. They write a snake game one day using ChatGPT, and the next, they’re telling you that you might be too slow—despite a string of record-breaking quarters driven by successful product iterations. I really don’t want to be a naysayer here, but it’s pretty demoralizing when these are the same people who decide your compensation and overall employment status.
- adamredwoods 2y ago
  >> But these people are itching to eliminate the cost of maintaining a dev team, and it shows in the level of wishful thinking they display. And this is the promise of AI, to eliminate jobs. If CEOs invest heavily in this, they won't back down because no one wants to be wrong. I understand some people try to claim AI might make net more jobs (someday), but I just don't think that is what CEOs are going for.
  - nicoburns 2y ago
    > If CEOs invest heavily in this, they won't back down because no one wants to be wrong. They might not have to. If the results are bad enough then their companies might straight-up fail. I'd be willing to bet that at least one company has already failed due to betting too heavily on LLMs. That isn't to say that LLMs have no uses. But just that CEOs willing something to work isn't sufficient to make it work.
    - Yoric 2y ago
      Yes, but don't forget that higher-ups also control, to a large extent, the narrative. Whether laying off developers to replace them with LLMs was good for the company is largely uncorrelated to whether the person in charge of the operation will get promoted for having successfully saved all this money for the company. Pre-LLM, that's how Boeing destroyed itself. By creating value for the shareholders.
hinkley 2y ago
When IntelliJ was young the autocomplete and automated refactoring were massive game changers. It felt like a dawn of a new age. But then release after release no new refactorings materialized. I don't know if they hit the Pareto limit or the people responsible moved on to new projects. I think that's the sort of spot where better tools might be appropriate. I know what I want to do, but it's a mess to do it. I suspect that will be better at facilitating growth instead of stunting it.
- jiggawatts 2y ago
  Hmm… I wonder if there will be a category of LLM-assisted refactoring tools that combine mechanistic transformations with the more flexible capabilities of generative AI. E.g.: update the English text in comments automatically to reflect code structure changes.
  - hinkley 2y ago
    Little tools like how to pluralize nouns, convert adjectives to verbs (function takes data and arranges it into a response that the adjective applies to), would help a lot with rename refactors.
- esafak 2y ago
  What refactoring do you want IntelliJ to do that it can not?
v3xro 2y ago
As a former "staff engineer" these executives can go and have their careers and leave people who want to have code they can understand, reason about and focus on quality software well alone.
aprilthird2021 2y ago
> executives, directors and managerial staff think the opposite The entire reason they hire us is to let them know if what they think makes sense. No one is ideologically opposed to AI generated code. It comes with lots of negatives and caveats that make relying on it costly in ways we can easily show to any executives, directors, etc. who care about the technical feasibility of their feelings.
- tokioyoyo 2y ago
  > No one is ideologically opposed to AI generated code Unfortunately, that hasn't been my experience. But I agree with you comment generally.
billy99k 2y ago
I've seen the exact opposite. Management at my company has been trying to shove AI into everything. They even said that this year we would be dropping all vendors that didn't have some for of AI in their workflow.

rectang 2y ago

This has been true for every heavily marketed development aid (beneficial or not) for as long as the industry has existed. Managing the politics and the expectations of non-technical management is part of career development.

tokioyoyo 2y ago
Yeah, I totally agree, and you're 100% right. But the amount of integrations I've personally done and have instructed my team to do implies this one will be around for a while. At some point spending too much time on code that could be easily generated will be a negative point on your performance. I've heard exactly the same stories from my friends in larger tech companies as well. Every all hands there's a push for more AI integration, getting staff to use AI tools and etc., with the big expectation that development will get faster.
- rectang 2y ago
  I don't think AI is an exception. In organizations where there were top-down mandates for Agile, or OOP, or Test-Driven Development, or you-name-it, those who didn't take up the mandate with zeal were likely to find themselves out of favor.
  - tokioyoyo 2y ago
    It's not necessarily top down. I genuinely don't know a single person in my organization who doesn't use LLMs one way or another. Obviously with different degrees of applications, but literally everyone does. And we haven't had a real "EVERYONE MUST USE AI!", just people suggesting and asking for specific model usages, access to apps like Cursor and so on. (I know it because I'm in charge of maintaining all processes around LLM keys, their usages, Cursor stuff and etc.)
    - rectang 2y ago
      > Being very anti-LLM code instead of trying to understand how it can improve the speed might be detrimental for your career. > I'm in charge of maintaining all processes around LLM keys Does management look to you for insight on which staffers are appropriately committed to leveraging AI?
      - tokioyoyo 2y ago
        No, right now the only thing higher ups ask from me is general percentage usages for different types of model/software usages (Anthropic/OpenAI/Cursor and etc.), so we can reassess subscriptions to cut costs wherever it's needed. But to be fair, they have access to the same dashboards as I do, so if they want to, they can look for it.
- liamwire 2y ago
  > At some point spending too much time on code that could be easily generated will be a negative point on your performance. If we take the premise at face value, then this is a time management question, and that’s a part of pretty much every performance evaluation everywhere. You’re not rewarded for writing some throwaway internal tooling that’s needed ASAP in assembly or with a handcrafted native UI, even if it’s strictly better once done. Instead you bash it out in a day’s worth of Electron shitfuckery and keep the wheels moving, even if it makes you sick. Hyperbole aside, hopefully the point is clear: better is a business decision as much as a technical one, and if an LLM can (one day) do the 80% of the Pareto distribution, then you’d better be working on the other 20% when management come knocking. If I run a cafe, I need my baristas making coffee when the orders are stacking up, not polishing the machine. Caveats for critical code, maintenance, technical debt, etc. of course. Good engineers know when to push back, but also, crucially, when it doesn’t serve a purpose to do so.

hansvm 2y ago

"Yes, of course, I'm using AI at every single opportunity where I think it'll improve my output" <<never uses AI>>

giobox 2y ago
This simply doesn't work much of the time as an excuse - virtually all the AI tool subscriptions for corporations provide per user stats on how much each staff member is using the AI assist. This shouldn't come as a surprise - software tool purveyors need to demonstrate ROI to their customer's management teams and as always this is in reporting tools. I've already seen several rounds of slacks: "why aren't you using <insert LLM coding assistant name>?" off the back of this reporting. These assistants essentially spy on you working in many cases, if the subscription is coming from your employer and is not a personal account. For one service, I was able to see full logging of all the chats every employee ever had.
- codr7 2y ago
  The very second someone starts monitoring me like that I'm out. Let them write their own software.
  - tokioyoyo 2y ago
    It's not necessarily just monitoring though. I actively ask that question when I don't see certain keys not being used to inquire their relevancy. Basically taking feedback from some engineers, and generalizing it. Obviously in my case we're doing it in good faith, and assuming people will try to get their work done with whatever tools we give them access to. Like I see Anthropic keys get heavily used among eng department, but I constantly get requests for OpenAI keys for Zapier connects and etc. for business people.

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]

feoren 2y ago

> executives, directors and managerial staff think the opposite Executives, directors, and managerial staff have had their heads up their own asses since the dawn of civilization. Riding the waves of terrible executive decisions is unfortunately part of professional life. Executives like the idea of LLMs because it means they can lay you off; they're not going to care about your opinion on it one way or another. > Being very anti-LLM code instead of trying to understand how it can improve the speed might be detrimental for your career. You're making the assumption that LLMs can improve your speed. That's the very assumption being questioned by GP. Heaps of low-quality code do not improve development speed.

simonw 2y ago
I'm willing to stake my reputation on the idea that yes, LLMs can improve your speed. You have to learn how to use them effectively and responsibly but the productivity boosts they can give you once you figure that out are very real.
- chefandy 2y ago
  Many bosses are willing to stake their subordinates’ reputations on it, too.
- tokioyoyo 2y ago
  I'm with you on this one. If one's experience is just using it as a general chat bot, then yeah, I can see why people are reluctant thinking it's useless. I have a feeling that a good chunk of people haven't tried to use latest models on a medium-small project from scratch, where you have to play around with its intricacies to build intuition around it. It becomes some sort of muscle memory, where I can predict whether using LLM would be faster or slower. Or where it's more likely to give bad suggestions or not. Basically treating it as googling skills.
  - simonw 2y ago
    "It becomes some sort of muscle memory, where I can predict whether using LLM would be faster or slower" Yeah, that intuition is so important. You have to use the models a whole bunch to develop it, but eventually you get a sort of sixth sense where you can predict if an LLM is going to be useful or harmful on a problem and be right about it 9/10 times. My frustration is that intuition isn't something I can teach! I'd love to be able to explain why I can tell that problem X is a good fit and problem Y isn't, but often the answer is pretty much just "vibes" based on past experience.

subw00f 2y ago

I think I’m having the same experience as you. I’ve heard multiple times from execs in my company that “software” will have less value and that, in a few years, there won’t be as many developer jobs. Don’t get me wrong—I’ve seen productivity gains both in LLMs explaining code/ideation and in actual implementation, and I use them regularly in my workflow now. I quite like it. But these people are itching to eliminate the cost of maintaining a dev team, and it shows in the level of wishful thinking they display. They write a snake game one day using ChatGPT, and the next, they’re telling you that you might be too slow—despite a string of record-breaking quarters driven by successful product iterations. I really don’t want to be a naysayer here, but it’s pretty demoralizing when these are the same people who decide your compensation and overall employment status.

adamredwoods 2y ago
>> But these people are itching to eliminate the cost of maintaining a dev team, and it shows in the level of wishful thinking they display. And this is the promise of AI, to eliminate jobs. If CEOs invest heavily in this, they won't back down because no one wants to be wrong. I understand some people try to claim AI might make net more jobs (someday), but I just don't think that is what CEOs are going for.
- nicoburns 2y ago
  > If CEOs invest heavily in this, they won't back down because no one wants to be wrong. They might not have to. If the results are bad enough then their companies might straight-up fail. I'd be willing to bet that at least one company has already failed due to betting too heavily on LLMs. That isn't to say that LLMs have no uses. But just that CEOs willing something to work isn't sufficient to make it work.
  - Yoric 2y ago
    Yes, but don't forget that higher-ups also control, to a large extent, the narrative. Whether laying off developers to replace them with LLMs was good for the company is largely uncorrelated to whether the person in charge of the operation will get promoted for having successfully saved all this money for the company. Pre-LLM, that's how Boeing destroyed itself. By creating value for the shareholders.

hinkley 2y ago

When IntelliJ was young the autocomplete and automated refactoring were massive game changers. It felt like a dawn of a new age. But then release after release no new refactorings materialized. I don't know if they hit the Pareto limit or the people responsible moved on to new projects. I think that's the sort of spot where better tools might be appropriate. I know what I want to do, but it's a mess to do it. I suspect that will be better at facilitating growth instead of stunting it.

jiggawatts 2y ago
Hmm… I wonder if there will be a category of LLM-assisted refactoring tools that combine mechanistic transformations with the more flexible capabilities of generative AI. E.g.: update the English text in comments automatically to reflect code structure changes.
- hinkley 2y ago
  Little tools like how to pluralize nouns, convert adjectives to verbs (function takes data and arranges it into a response that the adjective applies to), would help a lot with rename refactors.
esafak 2y ago
What refactoring do you want IntelliJ to do that it can not?

v3xro 2y ago

As a former "staff engineer" these executives can go and have their careers and leave people who want to have code they can understand, reason about and focus on quality software well alone.

aprilthird2021 2y ago

> executives, directors and managerial staff think the opposite The entire reason they hire us is to let them know if what they think makes sense. No one is ideologically opposed to AI generated code. It comes with lots of negatives and caveats that make relying on it costly in ways we can easily show to any executives, directors, etc. who care about the technical feasibility of their feelings.

tokioyoyo 2y ago
> No one is ideologically opposed to AI generated code Unfortunately, that hasn't been my experience. But I agree with you comment generally.

billy99k 2y ago

I've seen the exact opposite. Management at my company has been trying to shove AI into everything. They even said that this year we would be dropping all vendors that didn't have some for of AI in their workflow.