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This hyper-fixation on replacing engineers in writing code is hilarious, and dangerous, to me. Many people, even in tech companies, have no idea how software is

This hyper-fixation on replacing engineers in writing code is hilarious, and dangerous, to me. Many people, even in tech companies, have no idea how software is built, maintained, and run. I think instead we should focus on getting rid of managers and product owners.

jchanimal 1y ago
The real judge will be survivorship bias and as a betting man, I might think product owners are the ones with the entrepreneurial spirit to make it to the other side.
- MoonGhost 1y ago
  I've worked for a company which turned from startup to this. Product owners had no clue what they own. And no brain capacity to suggest something useful. They were just taken from the street at best, most likely had relatives' helping hands. In a couple of years company probably tripled manages headcount. It didn't help.
- HideousKojima 1y ago
  Product owners and project managers have the soft skills to convince the company that they aren't a drain on its resources regardless of what they actually are.
  - gersh 1y ago
    Yeah, but can they out-perform LLMs at soft skills? LLMs are really good sucking up, and telling people what they want to hear.
QuadmasterXLII 1y ago
it’s obviously intensely correlated: the vast majority of scenarios either both are replaced or neither
odie5533 1y ago
As a dev, if you try taking away my product owners I will fight you. Who am I going to ask for requirements and sign-offs, the CEO?
- oytis 1y ago
  Your architect, principal engineer etc. (one spot-on job title I've seen is "product architect"), who in turn talks to the senior management. Basically an engineer with a talent and experience for building products rather than a manager with superficial understanding of engineering. I think the most ambitious teams have someone like this on top - or at least around
  - odie5533 1y ago
    I've had your type of product owner, but I've also had a product owner that was an ex-staff engineer. Companies should hire ex-engineer product owners, not strictly people-manager product owners.
    - oytis 1y ago
      Technical background doesn't always help in my experience - it's just a different role. Creating great product requires deep technical expertise to understand where the cutting edge is, vision to understand how it can be expanded and business expertise to understand what makes sense economically. It's just not a manager's job, you can't perform it by collecting customer requirements in a spreadsheet.
- deadmutex 1y ago
  Perhaps the role will merge into one, and will replace a good chunk of those jobs. E.g.: If we have 10 PMs and 90 devs today, that could be hypothetically be replace by 8 PM+Dev, 20 specialized devs, and 2 specialized PMs in the future.
  - mathgeek 1y ago
    A 70% reduction in the labor force of product and engineering has a lot of consequences.
CuriouslyC 1y ago
The people who will come out the other side are domain focused people with the engineering chops to understand the system end to end, and the customer skills to understand what needs to be built.
- jackphilson 1y ago
  Yes. everyone will eventually have the job title of "problem solver"
  - Buttons840 1y ago
    Don't forget the very important role of managing the problem solvers--if you just let the problem solvers run amuck all sorts of problems might be solved.
    - CuriouslyC 1y ago
      Major Dilbert vibes
    - TeMPOraL 1y ago
      Yeah, if places like RAND or Xerox PARC or the OG Skunkworks, or even Manhattan Project and Apollo Program taught us, is that you cannot let engineers and domain experts run the show, because if you do, they start doing some world-upending shit like putting GUIs on the Moon, or building nukes, or supersonic jets, or inventing new materials that violate the natural order of things, or they generally just rock the boat too much, continuously disrupting the corporate and political pecking order. Nah, you have to put them in hamster wheels so they keep generating steady value for the shareholders, and put those in open plan offices so they get too mentally exhausted and distracted to try and change things. Throw in free cheese during good economy to keep them happy, but that's strictly optional.
eru 1y ago
> I think instead we should focus on getting rid of managers and product owners. Who says companies aren't doing that with AI (and technology in general) already?
- dorian-graph 1y ago
  Who says they are doing that? The _instead_ was a key word in my comment. I didn’t say, or imply, they weren’t working on replacing other roles with AI.

jchanimal 1y ago

The real judge will be survivorship bias and as a betting man, I might think product owners are the ones with the entrepreneurial spirit to make it to the other side.

MoonGhost 1y ago
I've worked for a company which turned from startup to this. Product owners had no clue what they own. And no brain capacity to suggest something useful. They were just taken from the street at best, most likely had relatives' helping hands. In a couple of years company probably tripled manages headcount. It didn't help.
HideousKojima 1y ago
Product owners and project managers have the soft skills to convince the company that they aren't a drain on its resources regardless of what they actually are.
- gersh 1y ago
  Yeah, but can they out-perform LLMs at soft skills? LLMs are really good sucking up, and telling people what they want to hear.

QuadmasterXLII 1y ago

it’s obviously intensely correlated: the vast majority of scenarios either both are replaced or neither

odie5533 1y ago

As a dev, if you try taking away my product owners I will fight you. Who am I going to ask for requirements and sign-offs, the CEO?

oytis 1y ago
Your architect, principal engineer etc. (one spot-on job title I've seen is "product architect"), who in turn talks to the senior management. Basically an engineer with a talent and experience for building products rather than a manager with superficial understanding of engineering. I think the most ambitious teams have someone like this on top - or at least around
- odie5533 1y ago
  I've had your type of product owner, but I've also had a product owner that was an ex-staff engineer. Companies should hire ex-engineer product owners, not strictly people-manager product owners.
  - oytis 1y ago
    Technical background doesn't always help in my experience - it's just a different role. Creating great product requires deep technical expertise to understand where the cutting edge is, vision to understand how it can be expanded and business expertise to understand what makes sense economically. It's just not a manager's job, you can't perform it by collecting customer requirements in a spreadsheet.
deadmutex 1y ago
Perhaps the role will merge into one, and will replace a good chunk of those jobs. E.g.: If we have 10 PMs and 90 devs today, that could be hypothetically be replace by 8 PM+Dev, 20 specialized devs, and 2 specialized PMs in the future.
- mathgeek 1y ago
  A 70% reduction in the labor force of product and engineering has a lot of consequences.

CuriouslyC 1y ago

The people who will come out the other side are domain focused people with the engineering chops to understand the system end to end, and the customer skills to understand what needs to be built.

jackphilson 1y ago
Yes. everyone will eventually have the job title of "problem solver"
- Buttons840 1y ago
  Don't forget the very important role of managing the problem solvers--if you just let the problem solvers run amuck all sorts of problems might be solved.
  - CuriouslyC 1y ago
    Major Dilbert vibes
  - TeMPOraL 1y ago
    Yeah, if places like RAND or Xerox PARC or the OG Skunkworks, or even Manhattan Project and Apollo Program taught us, is that you cannot let engineers and domain experts run the show, because if you do, they start doing some world-upending shit like putting GUIs on the Moon, or building nukes, or supersonic jets, or inventing new materials that violate the natural order of things, or they generally just rock the boat too much, continuously disrupting the corporate and political pecking order. Nah, you have to put them in hamster wheels so they keep generating steady value for the shareholders, and put those in open plan offices so they get too mentally exhausted and distracted to try and change things. Throw in free cheese during good economy to keep them happy, but that's strictly optional.

eru 1y ago

> I think instead we should focus on getting rid of managers and product owners. Who says companies aren't doing that with AI (and technology in general) already?

dorian-graph 1y ago
Who says they are doing that? The _instead_ was a key word in my comment. I didn’t say, or imply, they weren’t working on replacing other roles with AI.