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These claims wouldn't matter if the topic weren't so deadly serious. Tech leaders everywhere are buying into the FOMO, convinced their competitors are getting m

• rglover 1y ago
  > My manager told me that the time to deliver my latest project was cut to 20% of the original estimate because we are "an AI-first company". Lord, forgive them, they know not what they do.
  • leoc 1y ago
    I think Chuck Prince's "As long as the music is playing, you've got to get up and dance. We're still dancing." from the GFC https://www.reuters.com/article/markets/funds/ex-citi-ceo-defends-dancing-quote-to-us-panel-idUSN08198108/ https://www.reuters.com/article/markets/funds/ex-citi-ceo-de... is the more relevant famous line here.
    • coffeemug 1y ago
      I haven’t heard this before, this is incredible. Thanks for sharing. There were a bunch of phenomena that didn’t quite make sense to me before, which make perfect sense now that I read the quote.
    • crabmusket 1y ago
      That quote was the inspiration for one of my favourite bits in the Lehman Trilogy, "the twist". There's a glimpse of it in the trailer here https://youtu.be/Lo4VC43h7ts?si=ebl9WwK2NIgW0sHD&t=49 https://youtu.be/Lo4VC43h7ts?si=ebl9WwK2NIgW0sHD&t=49 "Bobby Lehman is ninety three years old and he dances the twist. He is 100 years old! 120! Maybe 140! He dances like a madman!"
  • bsder 1y ago
    Do not forgive them. We already have a description for them: "A bunch of mindless jerks who'll be the first against the wall when the revolution comes."
    • o11c 1y ago
      Remember, the origin of that quote explicitly specifies "marketing department". The thing about hype cycles (including AI) is that the marketing department manages to convince the purchases to do their job for them.
    • atleastoptimal 1y ago
      I think this hits at the heart of why you and so many people on HN hate AI. You see yourselves as the disenfranchised proletariats of tech, crusading righteously against AI companies and myopic, trend-chasing managers, resentful of their apparent success at replacing your hard-earned skill with an API call. It’s an emotional argument, born of tribalism. I’d find it easier to believe many claims on this site that AI is all a big scam and such if it weren’t so obvious that this underlies your very motivated reasoning. It is a big mirage of angst that causes people on here to clamor with perfunctory praise around every blog post claiming that AI companies are unprofitable, AI is useless, etc. Think about why you believe the things you believe. Are you motivated by reason, or resentment?
      • gdbsjjdn 1y ago
        Did you read TFA, which shows that developers are slower with AI and think they're faster? The two types of responses to AI I see are your very defensive type, and people saying "I don't get it".
        • atleastoptimal 1y ago
          The article is one person recording their own use of AI, finding no statistical significance but claiming since that the evaluated ratio of AI:human speed in performing various coding tasks resembled the METR study, that AI has no value. People have already talked about issues with the METR study, but importantly with that study and this blog post, it querying a small number of people using AI tools for the first time, working in a code base they already have experience and deep understanding of. Their claim following that is that because there hasn't been an exponential growth in App store releases, domain name registrations or Steam games, that, beyond just AI producing shoddy code, AI has led to no increase in the amount of software at all, or none that could be called remarkable or even notable in proportion to the claims made by those at AI companies. I think this ignores the obvious signs of growth in AI companies which providing software engineering and adjacent services via AI. These companies' revenues aren't emerging from nothing. People aren't paying them billions unless there is value in the product. These trends include 1. The rapid growth of revenue of AI model companies, OpenAI, Anthropic, etc. 2. The massive growth in revenue of companies that use AI including Cursor, replit, loveable etc 3. The massive valuation of these companies Anecdotally, with AI I can make shovelware apps very easily, spin them up effortlessly and fix issues I don't have the expertise or time to do myself. I don't know why the author of TFA claims that he can't make a bunch of one-off apps with capabilities avaliable today when it's clear that many many people can, have done so, have documented doing so, have made money selling those apps, etc.
  • herpdyderp 1y ago
    Oh, they for sure know what they're doing.
  • DrillShopper 1y ago
    Counterpoint: fuck them, they know exactly what they do (try to extract more work for the exact same pay out of their subordinates)
• vkou 1y ago
  I'd like to see those SVPs and PMs, or shit, even a line manager use AI to implement something as simple as a 2-month intern project[1] in a week. --- [1] We generally budget about half an intern's time for finding the coffee machine, learning how to show up to work on time, going on a fun event with the other interns to play minigolf, discovering that unit tests exist, etc, etc.
  • panarchy 1y ago
    I'd rather see those SVPs, PMs, and line managers be turned into AI.
    • curvaturearth 1y ago
      This is the way
  • elevatortrim 1y ago
    I actually built something (a time tracking tool that helps developers log their time consistently on jira and harvest) that most developers in my company use in under a week. I have backend development background so I was able to review the BE code and fix some bugs. But I did not bother learning Jira and Harvest API specs at all, AI (cursor+sonnet 4) figured it out all. I would not be able to write the front-end of this. It is JS based and updates the UI based on real-time http requests (forgot the name of this technology, the new ajax that is) and I do not have time to learn it but again, I was able to tweak what AI generated and make it work. Not only AI helped me do something in much shorter than it would take, it enabled me do something that otherwise would not be possible.
• Seattle3503 1y ago
  > My manager told me that the time to deliver my latest project was cut to 20% of the original estimate because we are "an AI-first company". If we can delegate incident response to automated LLMs too, sure, why not. Let the CEO have his way and pay the reputational price. When it doesn't work, we can revert our git repos to the day LLMs didn't write all the code. I'm only being 90% facetious.
  • vorpalhex 1y ago
    I agree with you and I'm being 0% facetious. I think making stakeholders have to engage with these models is the most critical point for people having deadlines or expectations based on them. Let Claude run incident response for a few weeks. I'll gladly pause pagerduty for myself.
  • bitwize 1y ago
    The CEO doesn't care. He'll fail upwards. Be able to spin it as increasing shareholder value by cutting costs and bounce before the chickens come home to roost.
• baxtr 1y ago
  AI has become the ultimate excuse for weak managers to pressure tech folks.
• gedy 1y ago
  > My manager told me that the time to deliver my latest project was cut to 20% of the original estimate because we are "an AI-first company". Challenge your manager to a race, have him vibe code
• rootusrootus 1y ago
  > My manager told me that the time to deliver my latest project was cut to 20% of the original estimate That's insane. Who the hell pulls a number out of their ass and declares it the new reality? When it doesn't happen, he'll pin the blame on you, but everyone else above will pin the blame on him. He's the one who will get fired. Laying off unnecessary developers is the answer if LLMs turn out to make us all so much more productive (assuming we don't just increase the amount of software written instead). But that happens after successful implementation of LLMs into the development process, not in advance. Starting to think I should do the inadvisable and move my investments far far away from the S&P 500 and into something that will survive the hype crash that can't be too far off now.
  • toomuchtodo 1y ago
    VXUS Not investing advice; the bottom 490 companies in the S&P500 are nominally flat since 2022 and down against inflation, GPUs and AI hype are holding everything together at the moment. > In simpler terms, 35% of the US stock market is held up by five or six companies buying GPUs. If NVIDIA's growth story stumbles, it will reverberate through the rest of the Magnificent 7, making them rely on their own AI trade stories. https://www.wheresyoured.at/the-haters-gui/ https://www.wheresyoured.at/the-haters-gui/ > Capex spending for AI contributed more to growth in the U.S. economy in the past two quarters than all of consumer spending, says Neil Dutta, head of economic research at Renaissance Macro Research, citing data from the Bureau of Economic Analysis. https://www.bloodinthemachine.com/p/the-ai-bubble-is-so-big-its-propping https://www.bloodinthemachine.com/p/the-ai-bubble-is-so-big-... > Two Nvidia customers made up 39% of Nvidia’s revenue in its July quarter, the company revealed in a financial filing on Wednesday, raising concerns about the concentration of the chipmaker’s clientele. https://www.cnbc.com/2025/08/28/nvidias-top-two-mystery-customers-made-up-39percent-of-its-q2-revenue-.html https://www.cnbc.com/2025/08/28/nvidias-top-two-mystery-cust...
  • y1n0 1y ago
    > That's insane. Who the hell pulls a number out of their ass and declares it the new reality? Chatgpt.
    • 1y ago
• xbmcuser 1y ago
  For me this is the biggest disconnect the current level of AI/level is not good enough for replacing devs but is good enough to automate a lot of office work ie managers that would have cost to much time and effort to automate before. I think google seems to understand this a bit as they have replaced a lot of middle management because of AI and not as many developers.
  • insane_dreamer 1y ago
    also customer service; I was at my dental office today and there were 3 people handling checkin/checkout. I'm quite confident 80% of their workload could be automated away to where you would just need a single person to handle edge cases. That's where we're going to see a lot of entry-level jobs go away, in many domains.
    • phatskat 1y ago
      > That's where we're going to see a lot of entry-level jobs go away, in many domains. And to me this is worse news. People in higher paying jobs are the ones that would hurt the economic fabric more, but by that token they’d have more power and influence to ensure a better safety net for the inevitable rise of AI and automation in much of the workforce. Entry level workers can’t afford to not work, they can’t afford to protest or advocate, they can’t afford the future that AI is bringing closer to their doorsteps. Without that safety net, they’ll be struggling and impoverished. And then will everyone in the higher paying positions help, or will we ignore the problem until AI actually is capable of replacing us, and will it be too late by then?
      • insane_dreamer 1y ago
        > will everyone in the higher paying positions help, or will we ignore the problem until AI actually is capable of replacing us, and will it be too late by then if history is anything to go by, it'll be the latter, sadly
• boothby 1y ago
  > The mass hysteria among SVPs and PMs is absolutely insane right now, I've never seen anything like it. This isn't entirely foreign to me; it sure looks a lot like the hype train of the dot-com bubble. My experience says that if you're holding stocks in a company going down this road, I'd say they have very low long-term value. Even if you think there's room to grow, bubbles pop fast and hard.
• materielle 1y ago
  My opinion is that AI isn’t actually the root of the problem here. It’s that we are heading towards a big recession. As in all recessions, people come up with all sorts of reasons why everything is fine until it can’t be denied anymore. This time, AI was a useful narrative to have lying around.
  • osigurdson 1y ago
    I think a kind of AI complacency has set in. Companies are just in chill mode right now, laying off people here and there while waiting for AI to get good enough to do actual work.
    • baselessness 1y ago
      Everyone is bracing for a labor supply shock. It will move in the direction opposite what investors expect. 2030 will be 2020 all over again.
      • denkmoon 1y ago
        Why?
        • roncesvalles 1y ago
          1. OBBB rolled back the R&D deduction changes in Section 174 that (allegedly) triggered the layoffs and froze up hiring in 2022-2023. 2. It looks like rates will keep going down. 3. Fewer people are going into CS due to the AI hysteria. You might say oh there's a 4 year lag, but not quite. We should see an immediate impact from career changers, CS grads choosing between career and professional school, and those switching out of CS careers. The tech AI fear hysteria is so widespread that I've even heard of people avoiding non-SWE tech careers like PM.
        • rsynnott 1y ago
          If (a) companies lay too many people off because the magic robots will make engineers unnecessary and (b) the pipeline collapses, because being a software engineer is an undesirable career because it is being replaced by robots and (c) it emerges that the robots are kinda bullshit, then there's going to be one hell of a shortage. When I started a CS degree in 2003, we were still kinda in the "dot com crash has happened, no-one will ever hire a programmer again" phase, and there were about 50 people in my starting class. I think in the same course two years ago, there'd been about 200. The 'correct' number, for actual future demand, was certainly closer to 200 than 50, and the industry as a whole had a bit of a labour crunch in the early 10s in particular.
• culopatin 1y ago
  Today a friend of mine connected me with his uncle who wanted to develop an MVP for his company. He claimed he didn’t want to distract his engineers on this project, but that “it shouldn’t take you more than 5hs to do this with vibe coding”. I promptly declined, if it takes 5hs why are you reaching out to me? It would take more than 5hs just to bring me into the loop of what you want vs your own engineers. If vibe coding is that good might as well DIY while you’re showering!
  • noduerme 1y ago
    These kinds of "clients" have always been around. If they want to tell me how long they think it should take, my answer has always been that they should do it themselves. If they say something like, "it shouldn't take too long," I said "send me what you need it to do." Then I look at that and ask "what if A, B or C happens? What if a user does X?" Make a list about 15 bullet points long of edge cases they hadn't thought of showing, the flaws in their business logic. (This, btw, is what I'd do if I were instructing an LLM as well). Then it's, "well, how long will that take?" And my answer - like the best of car mechanics who work on custom rides - is: I don't know how long until I actually get in there, but minimum 5x what you think, and my rate is $300/hr. Is it worth it to you to do it right? Usually the answer is no. When it's yes, I have a free hand. And having a few clients who pay well is worth a lot more than having a few dozen who think they know everything and are too cheap to pay for it anyway.
  • gt0 1y ago
    [flagged]
    • DaiPlusPlus 1y ago
      I'm sure they justify their strong opinions on the grounds that ChatGPT, no less, had individually and specifically told each and every one of them that they're the single most leading expert in immunology in the world.
      • viridian 1y ago
• bambax 1y ago
  > My manager told me that the time to deliver my latest project was cut to 20% of the original estimate because we are "an AI-first company". Tell him to code it himself then? If it can be done with only prompting, and he's able to type a sentence or two in a web form, what's stopping him?
• KronisLV 1y ago
  > My manager told me that the time to deliver my latest project was cut to 20% of the original estimate because we are "an AI-first company". This sounds incredibly stupid. It’s going to take as long as it will and if they’re not okay with that, their delusional estimates should be allowed to crash and burn, which would hopefully be a learning experience. The problem is that sometimes there’s an industry wide hysteria even towards useful tech - like doing a lift and shift of a bunch of monoliths to AWS to be “cloud scale”, introducing Kubernetes or serverless without the ability to put either to good use, NoSQL for use cases it’s not good at and most recently AI. I think LLMs will eventually weather the hype cycle and it will settle down on what they’re actually kinda okay at vs not, the question is how many livelihoods will be destroyed along the way (alongside all the issues with large scale AI datacenter deployments). On a personal level, it feels like you should maybe do the less ethical thing of asking your employer in the ballpark of 1000-3000 USD for Claude credits a month, babysitting it enough to do the 20% of the work in the 20% new estimate, babysit it enough to ship a functional MVP and when they complain about missing functionality tell them that the AI tech just isn't mature enough but thankfully you'll be able to swoop in and salvage it for only the remaining 80% of the remaining estimate's worth of work.
• sotix 1y ago
  At my company, the tech leaders aren't doing it out of mass hysteria. They're very smart individuals. The push is coming from our investors that come from the ring of classic YC-affiliated VCs. My friend who runs a YC-backed company has been told to do it by his investors too. It's a coordinated effort by external investors rather than a mass panic by individual tech leaders. If you read VC investor literature, it's full of incredible claims about how companies who don't use AI will be left behind. The exact type of stuff you'd expect to hear from groups who aim to hit the lottery with a few of their investments.