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> 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 thei

> 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.
- klodolph 1y ago
  I think ChatGPT isn’t the “who”, it’s just the ass that people are pulling numbers out of. A big ole extra butt you graft onto your body.
cmckn 1y ago
> He's the one who will get fired. I wouldn’t count on it.
- theandrewbailey 1y ago
  He will fire you before he gets fired.
- rootusrootus 1y ago
  In some cases, I'm sure it would play that way. But I've been on both sides, and most places I've worked have been more reluctant to fire engineers than managers.
cortesoft 1y ago
> That's insane. Who the hell pulls a number out of their ass and declares it the new reality? Product and Sales?
- Ekaros 1y ago
  Why don't we cut sales commissions by 30% and expect double the sales now. Surely LLMs will make them that much more effective and they still make more.
  - iamacyborg 1y ago
    I see you’ve met the senior leadership at my current employer
torginus 1y ago
The whole 'startup/scaleup' culture (which have become the industry titans of today) - is insane and have been insane for as long as it has been a thing - the culture of either 'just grow and figure out how to monetize'(Social media, food delivery etc.) or 'we're selling you this technology that doesn't exist yet but going to be insanely valuable in the future (AGI, self driving)' or 'we're selling shovels to the first 2' (cloud providers, Nvidia) has been insane. I'd argue that compared to a decade. 15 years ago, relatively little value has been created. If you sat down in front of a 15 yo computer, or tried to solve a technical challenge with the tooling of 15-10 years ago, I don't think you'd get a significantly worse result. Yet in this time the US has doubled its GDP, most of it owning to the top, to the tech professionals and financiers who benefited from this. And some of this money went into assets with constrained supplies, such as housing, marking up the prices adjusted for inflation, making average people that much worse off. While I do feel society is making progress, it's been a slow and steady march. Which in relative terms means slowing. Of I gave you $10 every week, by week 2, you'd double your wealth, by the end of the year, you almost didn't notice the increase. Technology accumulation is the same, I'd argue it's even worse, since building on top of existing stuff has a cost proportional to the complexity for a fixed unit of gain (and features get proportionally less valuable as you implement the most important ones first). Sorry got distracted from my main point - what happens when people stop believing that these improvements are meanigful or that technology that was priced in to produce 100x the value will come at all (and more importantly the company you're invested in will be able to caputre it)?
- dangus 1y ago
  > If you sat down in front of a 15 yo computer, or tried to solve a technical challenge with the tooling of 15-10 years ago, I don't think you'd get a significantly worse result. While you have decent points in your comment (essentially, the idea of tech industry growth slowing due to low hanging fruit being picked), if this statement going to be your barometer you’re going to end up looking stupendously wrong. You can sit your Grandma down at her computer and have her type in “please make me a website for my sewing club that includes a sign up form and has a pink background” and AI will just do it and it’ll probably even work the first time you run it. 15 years ago tossing a website on Heroku was a pretty new concept, and you definitely had to write it all on your own. 10 years ago Kubernetes had its initial release. Google Drive and Slack are not even 15 years old. TensorFlow is just hitting its 10th birthday. I think you’re vastly underestimating the last 15 years of technological progress and in turn value creation.
kunley 1y ago
Them managers have always been pulling a number out of their ass.
InsideOutSanta 1y ago
Here's a new keyboard. I've cut all your estimations by five percent; surely you can type much faster with this.

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.

klodolph 1y ago
I think ChatGPT isn’t the “who”, it’s just the ass that people are pulling numbers out of. A big ole extra butt you graft onto your body.

cmckn 1y ago

> He's the one who will get fired. I wouldn’t count on it.

theandrewbailey 1y ago
He will fire you before he gets fired.
rootusrootus 1y ago
In some cases, I'm sure it would play that way. But I've been on both sides, and most places I've worked have been more reluctant to fire engineers than managers.

cortesoft 1y ago

> That's insane. Who the hell pulls a number out of their ass and declares it the new reality? Product and Sales?

Ekaros 1y ago
Why don't we cut sales commissions by 30% and expect double the sales now. Surely LLMs will make them that much more effective and they still make more.
- iamacyborg 1y ago
  I see you’ve met the senior leadership at my current employer

torginus 1y ago

The whole 'startup/scaleup' culture (which have become the industry titans of today) - is insane and have been insane for as long as it has been a thing - the culture of either 'just grow and figure out how to monetize'(Social media, food delivery etc.) or 'we're selling you this technology that doesn't exist yet but going to be insanely valuable in the future (AGI, self driving)' or 'we're selling shovels to the first 2' (cloud providers, Nvidia) has been insane. I'd argue that compared to a decade. 15 years ago, relatively little value has been created. If you sat down in front of a 15 yo computer, or tried to solve a technical challenge with the tooling of 15-10 years ago, I don't think you'd get a significantly worse result. Yet in this time the US has doubled its GDP, most of it owning to the top, to the tech professionals and financiers who benefited from this. And some of this money went into assets with constrained supplies, such as housing, marking up the prices adjusted for inflation, making average people that much worse off. While I do feel society is making progress, it's been a slow and steady march. Which in relative terms means slowing. Of I gave you $10 every week, by week 2, you'd double your wealth, by the end of the year, you almost didn't notice the increase. Technology accumulation is the same, I'd argue it's even worse, since building on top of existing stuff has a cost proportional to the complexity for a fixed unit of gain (and features get proportionally less valuable as you implement the most important ones first). Sorry got distracted from my main point - what happens when people stop believing that these improvements are meanigful or that technology that was priced in to produce 100x the value will come at all (and more importantly the company you're invested in will be able to caputre it)?

dangus 1y ago
> If you sat down in front of a 15 yo computer, or tried to solve a technical challenge with the tooling of 15-10 years ago, I don't think you'd get a significantly worse result. While you have decent points in your comment (essentially, the idea of tech industry growth slowing due to low hanging fruit being picked), if this statement going to be your barometer you’re going to end up looking stupendously wrong. You can sit your Grandma down at her computer and have her type in “please make me a website for my sewing club that includes a sign up form and has a pink background” and AI will just do it and it’ll probably even work the first time you run it. 15 years ago tossing a website on Heroku was a pretty new concept, and you definitely had to write it all on your own. 10 years ago Kubernetes had its initial release. Google Drive and Slack are not even 15 years old. TensorFlow is just hitting its 10th birthday. I think you’re vastly underestimating the last 15 years of technological progress and in turn value creation.

kunley 1y ago

Them managers have always been pulling a number out of their ass.

InsideOutSanta 1y ago

Here's a new keyboard. I've cut all your estimations by five percent; surely you can type much faster with this.