4 ms·

Things that have a bigger impact than coding assistants

110 points by flail 1y ago

begueradj 1y ago
Strong title but empty content.
- neogodless 1y ago
  As someone in a work environment that does NOT have these 5 boring things in place, I can certainly speak to how much that slows productivity. So I think there's some value there, but it doesn't go into much detail, nor give you a game plan for implementing those things in your workplace. (And in many cases, you aren't empowered to implement them, so you either attempt to manage up or you find a new job.)
- carlosneves 1y ago
  Empty is not the same as succinct & straight to the points. I'd say strong title, succint content. Each of the points invites as much thought as you can give it.
  - itchyjunk 1y ago
    Content is left as an exercise to the readers.
- mooreds 1y ago
  Not totally empty, but would have been much better digging into each of the 5 things and why they aren't commonly implemented. Author hand waves at "organizations not wanting to open a can of worms" when I wanted to examine each squirmy helminth.
- deleted 1y ago
  [deleted]
- notarobot123 1y ago
  Only because you've heard this advice already. The point is that these practices imply other practices and propagate their own culture. It's simple and not new but still unreasonably effective.
aqme28 1y ago
Any time critics single out “autocomplete” in AI coding tooling, I know they haven’t really played around with this stuff. Autocomplete is barely useful with or without AI. The real game changers are “chat-with-codebase” or agentic development tools (do these have a better name?)
- apwell23 1y ago
  they are "game changers" if you are a mediocre software dev thats churning out crud widgets . any decent software developer uses and creates abstractions instead of generating reams of code using AI. From what i've seen at work AI is "game changer" for coding in worst sense. reams and reams of duplicated code that looks slightly different from other generated code doing similar things. Before AI ppl used to stop and create some library now they just generate shit because its so easy. AI is death of software engineering.
  - righthand 1y ago
    Any good engineer enjoys creating abstractions too instead of hoping a machine trained on code golf will solve the problems. My manager probably adds 10+ hours to my week by pushing Llm code at our projects only to follow up with several merge requests to fix his work. I just approve whatever he pushes because he isn’t interested in actually solving the problem. He’s interested in seeing if he can fiddle the solution out of an Llm. Each time it involves me telling him the answer. His boss is the same way. Literally dragging the company efficiency down and proving the efficiency gains are meaningless.
    - apwell23 1y ago
      This is all of junior engineers on my team now. I shudder to think about having to maintain all this generated crap.
      - righthand 1y ago
        You don’t maintain it, you wait until a bug comes your way from their work and pass it down to them to screw around with more. Let them maintain it and eat their own careers.
wewewedxfgdf 1y ago
Sounds like its written by an AI non believer. I've been able to write things in a week that would literally take me six moths previously. The critics don't know the facts about how much time you can really save because their anti AI so they don't use it so they don't know, but they're happy to tell you some "facts" about how your new found AI assisted productivity is less than you really think it is.
- apwell23 1y ago
  > I've been able to write things in a week that would literally take me six moths previously. you wrote a tic-tac-toe game for android? so what ? what does that prove? have you seen rails blog demo from 15 yrs ago ?
- neogodless 1y ago
  When you write things in a week rather than six months, what was the context? Small teams, more frequent releases, solving problems incrementally, working across the solution rather than having to bridge silos, feeling empowered and safe to try things? If you already had those things, and took them for granted, then it may be hard for you to estimate the impact they might have had if they weren't present. Would you still have been able to use AI to build something so much more quickly if your hands were tied by organizational policy?
  - wewewedxfgdf 1y ago
    Sounds like you're trying to find out why I'm wrong about my productivity boost from AI.
    - neogodless 1y ago
      I'm not claiming you're wrong about the boost you got. I'm saying you may have already had 5 boring factors that laid a good groundwork to enable you to get that boost, but you are discounting those factors. If I'm wrong, then tell me the context - were you in a situation where you didn't have those factors in place?
    - 1y ago
givemeethekeys 1y ago
Your boss disagrees.
deleted 1y ago
[deleted]
bix6 1y ago
“Smaller teams are better value/$ spent” Is this true? A more established / larger organization often has higher revenue per employee. I guess value is subjective but from a pure economic standpoint I think the F100 employee wins? Nvidia is 2xing a year right now so a smaller team / startup would have to match at least that. Certainly some will but enough to make the point valid? I think scope likely plays a big role here.
- bayindirh 1y ago
  I think there's a misunderstanding. The post doesn't say minimize the number of teams you have, but limit the size of your teams. Like "two pizza team"s of Amazon.
helsinki 1y ago
Is this LinkedIn?
jeanlucas 1y ago
What a weak article, maybe should have used a chat assistant to write it. Wait, let me try: https://chatgpt.com/share/682ddb36-50f4-8004-b54d-3e41a10ab899 https://chatgpt.com/share/682ddb36-50f4-8004-b54d-3e41a10ab8...
- whoomp12342 1y ago
  ew smells like slop. Theres enough of that content out there already
  - jeanlucas 1y ago
    Yeah, the original article is as bad as this
jmj 1y ago
I'm using agents daily and programming is fun again. Adding a small feature in the same time it takes to write the spec is a game changer.
- agentultra 1y ago
  That's good. I like programming and find using agents saps all of the fun out of it for me.
agentultra 1y ago
If you're offended that the author isn't claiming that AI is the biggest productivity gain of the last N years, consider that perhaps you could do these 5 things and still use your AI tools. The article is about the effect of these tools on an organization. If your org isn't doing these 5 things and thinks "adding AI" will finally make them more productive than ever... they might see modest gains but the article is claiming it won't be as big as if they'd used these practices. It's hard to measure which has more impact: changing your management style and organization structure or using AI. I'm willing to bet they both have some impact. From experience I believe the former has a bigger impact. But I'm not sure it's true industry-wide.
skydhash 1y ago
This article "DevEX: What Actually Drives Productivity" identifies three main categories of factors that affect productivity: Feedback loops; Flow state; Cognitive Load. With that in mind we can say that: > Smaller teams are better value/$ spent Feedback loop: Reduce the communication channels Cognitive load: A better defined responsibility area Flow state: Tasks are more coherent instead of being splited ad infinitum > More frequent releases accelerate learning what has real value Feedback loop: self evident Cognitive load: Easier to justify dropping features. Flow state: Alignment with the user needs. > Limiting work in progress – solving one problem at a time – increases delivery throughput Feedback loop: progression transparency Cognitive load: self evident Flow state: self evident > Cross-functional teams experience fewer bottlenecks and blockers than specialised teams Feedback loop: Easier to address blockers Cognitive load: No need to resort to inter-teams communication. Flow state: Easy to offload part of the problem to close teammates > Empowered, self-organising teams spend less time waiting for decisions and more time getting sh*t done Feedback loop: No need to wait for management decisions and policies Cognitive load: Experiments are easier when there's no red tapes Flow state: Natural workflow due to the above. [0] https://cacm.acm.org/practice/devex-what-actually-drives-productivity/ https://cacm.acm.org/practice/devex-what-actually-drives-pro...
perrygeo 1y ago
> Limiting work in progress – solving one problem at a time – increases delivery throughput This. Juggling 17 tasks is not a badge of honor. It just shows the world that you have neither the focus to prioritize nor the talent to execute them efficiently. Strange flex, bro. Put another way, nobody cares about your TODO list, everybody cares about what you've actually shipped. So actually ship things, one at a time.
analog31 1y ago
The cynical question that I ask is: Will AI tools make it possible to finish projects? Show me a project that goes from being 3 years late to only 2 years late, thanks to AI tools.
npodbielski 1y ago
Ugh ads will be even more weird and annoying. Looks at those faces...
tenpoundhammer 1y ago
Have done some of these recently - Smaller teams are better value/$ spent [Confirmed] - More frequent releases accelerate learning what has real value [No improvement] - Limiting work in progress, solving one problem at a time,increases delivery throughput [Continued] - Cross-functional teams experience fewer bottlenecks and blockers than specialised teams [Confirmed] Empowered, self-organising teams spend less time waiting for decisions and more time getting sh*t done [Confirmed] Additionally, smaller teams 1-3 engineers per project who are empowered are much happier. Side effect was time spent on process, tickets, communication dropped dramatically. Time spent on creating and confirming increased. In a large organization solving your own blockers can be the difference between releasing next week and releasing next quarter. More frequent releases only help in a business where users adopt new features quickly.

110 points by flail 1y ago

begueradj 1y ago

Strong title but empty content.

neogodless 1y ago
As someone in a work environment that does NOT have these 5 boring things in place, I can certainly speak to how much that slows productivity. So I think there's some value there, but it doesn't go into much detail, nor give you a game plan for implementing those things in your workplace. (And in many cases, you aren't empowered to implement them, so you either attempt to manage up or you find a new job.)
carlosneves 1y ago
Empty is not the same as succinct & straight to the points. I'd say strong title, succint content. Each of the points invites as much thought as you can give it.
- itchyjunk 1y ago
  Content is left as an exercise to the readers.
mooreds 1y ago
Not totally empty, but would have been much better digging into each of the 5 things and why they aren't commonly implemented. Author hand waves at "organizations not wanting to open a can of worms" when I wanted to examine each squirmy helminth.
deleted 1y ago
[deleted]
notarobot123 1y ago
Only because you've heard this advice already. The point is that these practices imply other practices and propagate their own culture. It's simple and not new but still unreasonably effective.

aqme28 1y ago

Any time critics single out “autocomplete” in AI coding tooling, I know they haven’t really played around with this stuff. Autocomplete is barely useful with or without AI. The real game changers are “chat-with-codebase” or agentic development tools (do these have a better name?)

apwell23 1y ago
they are "game changers" if you are a mediocre software dev thats churning out crud widgets . any decent software developer uses and creates abstractions instead of generating reams of code using AI. From what i've seen at work AI is "game changer" for coding in worst sense. reams and reams of duplicated code that looks slightly different from other generated code doing similar things. Before AI ppl used to stop and create some library now they just generate shit because its so easy. AI is death of software engineering.
- righthand 1y ago
  Any good engineer enjoys creating abstractions too instead of hoping a machine trained on code golf will solve the problems. My manager probably adds 10+ hours to my week by pushing Llm code at our projects only to follow up with several merge requests to fix his work. I just approve whatever he pushes because he isn’t interested in actually solving the problem. He’s interested in seeing if he can fiddle the solution out of an Llm. Each time it involves me telling him the answer. His boss is the same way. Literally dragging the company efficiency down and proving the efficiency gains are meaningless.
  - apwell23 1y ago
    This is all of junior engineers on my team now. I shudder to think about having to maintain all this generated crap.
    - righthand 1y ago
      You don’t maintain it, you wait until a bug comes your way from their work and pass it down to them to screw around with more. Let them maintain it and eat their own careers.

wewewedxfgdf 1y ago

Sounds like its written by an AI non believer. I've been able to write things in a week that would literally take me six moths previously. The critics don't know the facts about how much time you can really save because their anti AI so they don't use it so they don't know, but they're happy to tell you some "facts" about how your new found AI assisted productivity is less than you really think it is.

apwell23 1y ago
> I've been able to write things in a week that would literally take me six moths previously. you wrote a tic-tac-toe game for android? so what ? what does that prove? have you seen rails blog demo from 15 yrs ago ?
neogodless 1y ago
When you write things in a week rather than six months, what was the context? Small teams, more frequent releases, solving problems incrementally, working across the solution rather than having to bridge silos, feeling empowered and safe to try things? If you already had those things, and took them for granted, then it may be hard for you to estimate the impact they might have had if they weren't present. Would you still have been able to use AI to build something so much more quickly if your hands were tied by organizational policy?
- wewewedxfgdf 1y ago
  Sounds like you're trying to find out why I'm wrong about my productivity boost from AI.
  - neogodless 1y ago
    I'm not claiming you're wrong about the boost you got. I'm saying you may have already had 5 boring factors that laid a good groundwork to enable you to get that boost, but you are discounting those factors. If I'm wrong, then tell me the context - were you in a situation where you didn't have those factors in place?
  - 1y ago

givemeethekeys 1y ago

Your boss disagrees.

deleted 1y ago

[deleted]

bix6 1y ago

“Smaller teams are better value/$ spent” Is this true? A more established / larger organization often has higher revenue per employee. I guess value is subjective but from a pure economic standpoint I think the F100 employee wins? Nvidia is 2xing a year right now so a smaller team / startup would have to match at least that. Certainly some will but enough to make the point valid? I think scope likely plays a big role here.

bayindirh 1y ago
I think there's a misunderstanding. The post doesn't say minimize the number of teams you have, but limit the size of your teams. Like "two pizza team"s of Amazon.

helsinki 1y ago

Is this LinkedIn?

jeanlucas 1y ago

What a weak article, maybe should have used a chat assistant to write it. Wait, let me try: https://chatgpt.com/share/682ddb36-50f4-8004-b54d-3e41a10ab899 https://chatgpt.com/share/682ddb36-50f4-8004-b54d-3e41a10ab8...

whoomp12342 1y ago
ew smells like slop. Theres enough of that content out there already
- jeanlucas 1y ago
  Yeah, the original article is as bad as this

jmj 1y ago

I'm using agents daily and programming is fun again. Adding a small feature in the same time it takes to write the spec is a game changer.

agentultra 1y ago
That's good. I like programming and find using agents saps all of the fun out of it for me.

agentultra 1y ago

If you're offended that the author isn't claiming that AI is the biggest productivity gain of the last N years, consider that perhaps you could do these 5 things and still use your AI tools. The article is about the effect of these tools on an organization. If your org isn't doing these 5 things and thinks "adding AI" will finally make them more productive than ever... they might see modest gains but the article is claiming it won't be as big as if they'd used these practices. It's hard to measure which has more impact: changing your management style and organization structure or using AI. I'm willing to bet they both have some impact. From experience I believe the former has a bigger impact. But I'm not sure it's true industry-wide.

skydhash 1y ago

This article "DevEX: What Actually Drives Productivity" identifies three main categories of factors that affect productivity: Feedback loops; Flow state; Cognitive Load. With that in mind we can say that: > Smaller teams are better value/$ spent Feedback loop: Reduce the communication channels Cognitive load: A better defined responsibility area Flow state: Tasks are more coherent instead of being splited ad infinitum > More frequent releases accelerate learning what has real value Feedback loop: self evident Cognitive load: Easier to justify dropping features. Flow state: Alignment with the user needs. > Limiting work in progress – solving one problem at a time – increases delivery throughput Feedback loop: progression transparency Cognitive load: self evident Flow state: self evident > Cross-functional teams experience fewer bottlenecks and blockers than specialised teams Feedback loop: Easier to address blockers Cognitive load: No need to resort to inter-teams communication. Flow state: Easy to offload part of the problem to close teammates > Empowered, self-organising teams spend less time waiting for decisions and more time getting sh*t done Feedback loop: No need to wait for management decisions and policies Cognitive load: Experiments are easier when there's no red tapes Flow state: Natural workflow due to the above. [0] https://cacm.acm.org/practice/devex-what-actually-drives-productivity/ https://cacm.acm.org/practice/devex-what-actually-drives-pro...

perrygeo 1y ago

> Limiting work in progress – solving one problem at a time – increases delivery throughput This. Juggling 17 tasks is not a badge of honor. It just shows the world that you have neither the focus to prioritize nor the talent to execute them efficiently. Strange flex, bro. Put another way, nobody cares about your TODO list, everybody cares about what you've actually shipped. So actually ship things, one at a time.

analog31 1y ago

The cynical question that I ask is: Will AI tools make it possible to finish projects? Show me a project that goes from being 3 years late to only 2 years late, thanks to AI tools.

npodbielski 1y ago

Ugh ads will be even more weird and annoying. Looks at those faces...

tenpoundhammer 1y ago

Have done some of these recently - Smaller teams are better value/$ spent [Confirmed] - More frequent releases accelerate learning what has real value [No improvement] - Limiting work in progress, solving one problem at a time,increases delivery throughput [Continued] - Cross-functional teams experience fewer bottlenecks and blockers than specialised teams [Confirmed] Empowered, self-organising teams spend less time waiting for decisions and more time getting sh*t done [Confirmed] Additionally, smaller teams 1-3 engineers per project who are empowered are much happier. Side effect was time spent on process, tickets, communication dropped dramatically. Time spent on creating and confirming increased. In a large organization solving your own blockers can be the difference between releasing next week and releasing next quarter. More frequent releases only help in a business where users adopt new features quickly.